Millennium Forum invites educators to undertake their own journey of self-development, while building social and emotional competencies, to support their own well-being. This translates into meaningful developmental relationships with students, which support positive student outcomes, and helps educators feel renewed, alive, and resilient.
Margaret Golden Director, Forum Program Millennium Forum
Millennium Forum was struggling to create a cohesive, streamlined experience for their online members due to a disjointed tech stack. The platforms they were using were not integrated with one another and a great deal of manual work was required to guide members through the experience. Ultimately, the organization was not set up to scale their efforts to meet their ambitious membership goals. TL;DR: Their system was not set up to meet their goals.
In order to help Millennium Forum build a better experience for both their members and staff, we needed to evaluate and rebuild their tech stack from the ground up. This started with a tech stack audit that included discussions with staff and looking under the hood of key platforms. The first piece of the puzzle was implementing HubSpot as their first-ever CRM and single source of truth. We then built up around it by integrating, using first-party apps and Zapier, with the organization’s website (Squarespace), member community site (Hivebrite), online meetings tool (Circles), webinar provider (Zoom), existing documents (Google Sheets), and staff email service (Gmail). We then made strategic changes to improve the user experience, including an eCommerce platform selection process that resulted in replacing Squarespace Commerce with Shopify and ReCharge Payments and instituting Zapier in order to create connections between multiple platforms.
HubSpot, Squarespace, Shopify, ReCharge Payments, Hivebrite, Circles, Zoom, SurveyMonkey, Zapier, and Google Suite
We began by implementing HubSpot as a true CRM and database of records for the organization. This included migration of all user records from previous systems and spreadsheets in a way that cleaned up and recategorized the data under a new, more cohesive contact model structure. We also configured a set of custom properties in Hubspot to ensure all their member’s unique information was collected properly.
Next, we fully integrated HubSpot into the organization’s entire tech stack by first integrating their Squarespace website, including tracking codes, signup forms, and domain authentication.
Lastly, We integrated Zoom Webinar, Zapier, and Hubspot to track, organize, and communicate with registrants. This process also included incorporating Hivebrite, the organization’s members-only community. In the process, we developed a custom reporting dashboard in HubSpot so that staff could monitor both registrations and attendance among prospective new members as part of ongoing marketing efforts.
We identified a weak point in the organization’s tech stack, their eCommerce platform, and helped select a replacement solution. This resulted in a custom recurring membership system using Shopify and ReCharge Payments that integrated with their CRM via first-party plugins and the IPaaS platform Zapier.
After integrating Millennium Forum’s entire tech stack it was time to leverage the power of all their new CRM, Hubspot.
We began by building powerful workflows and email automation. This included a registration + welcome series for new members that nurtured them through the new member process ultimately inviting them to their private member community.
We also were able to leverage Hubspot to communicate reminders to members including the individual member’s time slot, group number, and meeting link.
With any tech implementation, the product is only powerful if you know how to use it on your own. We provided hands-on training to Millennium Forum staff and developed detailed documentation for the team to reference and use when onboarding new employees.
In addition to training, we provide ongoing MarTech support to troubleshoot any issues that occurred.
