Associations must wear many hats these days. Many are choosing to become webinar and event managers, publishers, awards organizers, newsletter distributors and more. Topical website competitors and online discussion groups and forums are raising the ante on what gets by even for an Association website these days. Short of throwing a lot of money at the problem, easy answers are hard to come by … until now. mBLAST was designed to  help groups like Associations to better manage all these responsibilities, to meet these competitive threats, and to do more as well --  so Associations can focus more time on other more pressing issues facing their memberships.

With mBLAST, Associations can:

• Develop a 365-day Relationship with Their Membership: Many Association and Forum websites aren’t used as a resource by their memberships. The reason? Most are static sites, updated only when the Association is announcing their own news. What about their members’ announcements or industry news, events, or white papers that have an impact on their membership?  mBLAST can help Associations strengthen their relationship with their membership, becoming a 365-day resource. With mBLAST Associations can create topic-driven microsites, content mash-ups and membership news sections that showcase their organization’s industry leadership. You control the type of content you want to present (such as articles, press releases, white papers, events, etc.), what sources you want to use (such as key publication partners or events), and what specific content from within those sources you want to display. The content can then be published to your website or newsletter with a single mouse click using mBLAST’s open APIs.
• Launch New Products that Boost Your Memberships’ Marketing: With mBLAST you can easily develop and customize new revenue-generating offerings that provide new opportunities for your membership to market themselves and their products better. Programs such as Awards, Buyer’s Guides, Directories and specialized-content microsites can really raise your stature in the eyes of your membership and your industry at large, adding to your status as a 365-day organization.
• Get the Word Out About Events and Webinars: Associations can better publicize their live and online events by posting them once with mBLAST’s EventSync™ service and watching the listings flow to events listing sites, Publisher websites and other sites across the Web. With EventSync, you can make sure the word gets out about your regular meetings, any special conferences, and any other event that you want on the public’s calendar. EventSync supports the whole lifecycle of an event, from early on when you want people to set aside that date in their calendar, to later on when the venue firms up and more details are added. EventSync allows you to add information at any time to mBLAST, and the new details flow through to all the sites where you have published them.
• Grow your Membership Base and Nurture Existing Members: The more you know about your member companies and the more opportunities you provide for them to grow, the more value your organization holds in the industry. mBLAST helps you track your relationships with your members, prompts them automatically to keep their company profile and staff member lists current, and provides detailed reporting as part of its standard packages.  mBLAST helps you build relationships with those people who don’t attend your group meetings but who you need to know. Many trade associations have a very specific group of participants, such as engineers to develop standards, but relationships are needed with tradeshow managers and marketing personnel to coordinate booths, PR representatives to coordinate joint press releases, and so on. mBLAST helps you find new members too, by alerting you to new companies in your space.
• Slash Your Costs and Time to Market: Slash costs by getting your products to market more easily and quickly than ever before. With mBLAST, Event Organizers can cut their concept-to-market time by as much as 80%.

mBLAST’s online solutions for Associations include:

• 

  Awards Management

  The premiere online Awards Management solution that streamlines the Awards process end to end from Call to Entries to Winner’s Circle. The solution includes complete a complete communications system, ecommerce, a robust judging portal, in-depth analysis and reporting, plus dozens of extras that make this solution easier to use and more cost efficient than whatever in-house process you are now using.
• 

  Buyer's Guides

  A dynamic living Buyer’s Guide solution with comparative tools, a complete communications system, ecommerce and reporting built right in. Vendors can update their own product information any time from anywhere.
• 

  EventSync

  A dynamic tool that allows Associations to manage -- with a single entry -- their event details on listing sites throughout the Web.
• 

  ContentSync

  A powerful search, retrieve and posting tool that lets Associations find information relevant to their publication and feed it directly to their website or database. Some publishers have used ContentSync to build focused microsites virtually overnight. Users can also post their own content for others to use so they can watch their website traffic grow.
• 

  Directories

  A customizable Directory Management solution that allows Associations to quickly and easily develop robust directories and membership lists.
• 

  Media Credentialing

  An automated Media Credentialing solution that streamlines the press accreditation process end to end for Associations that run Events.

mBLAST is not an association management system or a voting system or a documents repository for standards work – mBLAST complements these systems. mBLAST front-ends and back-ends these systems using APIs to feed content and process results into the software, adding market-leading relationship management capabilities to their existing functionality. mBLAST has open, industry-standard ways to interface with just about any system you might use. Associations can choose just those portions of mBLAST they wish to adopt, and link to them in whatever way works best. mBLAST’s  Implementation Services are bundled with our services solutions to make sure your end-to-end experience is a complete one.

mBLAST brings an entirely new level of efficiency to Associations. mBLAST is an easy to use, web-based system that can feed data and results into just about any system you currently use, and output information flexibly, however you want to distribute it to others. mBLAST is a logical tool for any Association trying to do more with less. We can also show you numerous easy ways to use mBLAST to generate additional non-dues-related revenue for your Association.

See for yourself why more and more Associations are using mBLAST. Subscribe now, or contact us to learn more.