InReach Supports Your Brand Archives - InReach Continuing Education Management System

Your Brand: by InReach

InReach — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:57:56 +0000

Ways to Leverage Your Brand

If you were to gather your learners into a room and ask them to match brands to logos like a white check mark, a blue bird or a little apple symbol, how well do you think they would do? What if you did the same exercise with your logo and those of your competitors? Do you think the results would be the same?

Branding Consistency

Associations and continuing education providers rarely have the marketing budgets of Nike, Twitter, or Apple. However, those companies use branding consistency, and that approach fits any budget. When you shop for shoes or a smartphone, you often look for brands with strong and consistent messaging. That consistency makes the brand easy to recognize. If you want to stay competitive, you must work to build that same level of consistency. One easy way to improve your consistency is to audit your InReach-powered catalog. Some things to look for:

Does the banner or header match your current website’s banner/header?
Do the navigation menus get your learners to where you want them to go if they’re going back to your organizational website?
Is there consistency in the color pallet and fonts across the catalog and your organization website?
If you use the right hand real estate on the catalog home page, are you using that to reinforce your brand, or is it housekeeping language that could be placed elsewhere?

Email Blast Branding

In addition to the catalog pages, when was the last time you looked at the system-generated emails that are delivered through InReach? Are the emails fully branded or simply plain text? Utilizing these informative emails as another extension of your brand is a great way to not only inform your learners of their registration information, completion status, etc. but also add another learner touch point to your brand.

Are you ready to become the Nike, Twitter or Apple of continuing education? Contact your Client Success Manager today explore the possibilities and become emPowered by InReach.

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Volunteer Appreciation: Show Them You Care!

InReach — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 20:14:37 +0000

Volunteer Appreciation

Many InReach clients are professional organizations that rely heavily on volunteers to develop and deliver professional continuing education. Because of this, volunteer planners and presenters play a vital role in the success of continuing education offered by associations, law schools, medical associations, and other organizations. Although CE professionals recognize this symbiotic relationship and understand its importance, in practice, few have implemented measures to nurture, measure, or improve relationships with volunteers. As a result, most CE organizations limit volunteer recognition to a simple speaking gift — yet, there is so much more that can be done!

Broadly speaking, volunteer initiatives can fall into three main buckets: training them, working with them, and showing appreciation for them. With that in mind, here are a few ideas:

Training Volunteers

Welcome and provide orientation
Confirm expectations as a volunteer
Provide speaker training
- Online and live
- Address best practices in presentations, slides, and materials
- Give out a certificate!
Create speaker mentoring program
- Makes it easier to retire speakers
- Creates a better prepared new volunteer

Working with Volunteers

Start out working with new volunteers on limited tasks
Provide a manageable workload with clear deadlines
Don’t waste your volunteers time
- Be prepared
- Provide support
Check in with volunteers during the timeline where deliverables are being worked on
Answer emails and return calls as soon as practically possible
Communicate with appreciation in all emails and calls throughout the period

Showing you Value Each Volunteer

Acknowledge success
- Thank you notes
- Thank you on social media
- Thank your volunteer’s boss or superior
Provide evaluation summaries
Provide your volunteer with an evaluation of your staff: how was it working with us, and how can we improve? Implement appropriate changes
Celebrate National Volunteer Week!
- Provide a pizza lunch
- Post to social media
- Solicit new volunteers
Provide and publish on volunteer contributions; data for leadership and organization’s members
Publish a thank you to your volunteers in a published ad or article in your organization’s professional publications
Create an annual award spotlighting one volunteer

Resources:

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Referral Marketing – Your Opinion Matters

InReach — Thu, 15 May 2025 18:47:00 +0000

We Love a Good Referral

How many of you buy a grocery product because your Mom or Dad told you a certain brand was the best? If you are like me, you didn’t do any independent research to verify your parents’ recommendation. You trusted them and acted on it. You’re welcome, Tide. In its simplest form, this is referral marketing.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is defined as a “method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of mouth. Such referrals often happen spontaneously but business can influence this through appropriate strategies.” Studies and surveys have proven that referral marketing is powerful, and it is one of the most effective forms of advertising when it comes to sales.

A Nielsen online survey found that 84% of global respondents, across 58 countries, said referral, also known as “earned advertising” is the most trusted of all advertising. A mere one percent of millennials trust traditional advertising and not only purchase based on referrals but also share referrals. Gen Xers fall into this category too.

Targeted Marketing

Another powerful characteristic of referral advertising is that it is extremely targeted. After all, the goal is to create a personal recommendation to a family member, friend, or colleague. Trust drives the effectiveness of referrals too. Almost all people trust a person’s opinion over standard advertising. Last, with social media, an average consumer can reach many people within seconds! These benefits make referral marketing an attractive way to drive new sales.

The InReach product has features that support referral marketing.

If you are not using these features, please consider doing so! If you have any questions on these options, please contact your Client Success Manager.

Add a ratings and reviews tab to your course description by publishing your evaluations results.
Activate the “Customer Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature.
Encourage your staff, program planners, speakers, and registrants to use the social media choices in the product description: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, and email. It’s an easy post.
Include evaluation comments on your catalog landing page.

Other ways to use referral marketing:

Develop a referral campaign for a limited time frame and purpose. Use InReach’s sales survey and discounting options to make this work.
- For example, include in your generic advertising on an upcoming webcast that registrants will receive a discount on a future program if they refer a new learner to the webcast, and the learner registers. The criteria can be of your choosing—a new learner to that program only, or a new learner overall that has never purchased an online course.
- Email last year’s batch of new lawyers and offer them a discount if they refer a brand-new lawyer to buy anything in your online catalog.
- If you have a mandatory course that is also made available through another provider, ask the past registrants of your mandatory course to refer someone that still needs the mandatory offering.
Include evaluation comments and ratings in all your standard adverting. This works especially well for those programs that are done year after year.

InReach continues to work on other product features that help market and merchandize for you. If any ideas about features that support referral marketing, if you have effectively used referral marketing, or you have some lessons learned to share, pleases contact me. I’d love to hear from you.

Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referral_marketing

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2013/under-the-influence-consumer-trust-in-advertising.html

http://www.adweek.com/digital/marketing-to-millennials-and-the-necessity-of-social-brand-advocacy/

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/24/388592666/how-do-you-market-to-millennials

https://www.extole.com/blog/how-to-crack-the-millennial-code/

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