The Northeast Association of REALTORS® is all about building relationships that strengthen the careers of its 2,000+ members and improving the lives of those who live and work in the communities they serve. This is done by connecting members to the information they need when they need it. Over the years, doing so became more difficult, which led to the switch to GrowthZone.
The Challenge
After years of working with a few solution providers who really weren’t providing solutions specific to the real estate industry, Northeast Association of REALTORS CEO Maria Brogan led the charge to look for other alternatives.
“We found that the custom membership module of the platform we were using was often down and when it wasn’t, it was extremely time-consuming to use for membership coordination,” said Brogan. “Plus, we were paying a lot of money in credit card fees, which really ate into our bottom line.”
The Solution
During the process of weighing their options, Brogan spoke with other real estate associations as well as chambers of commerce. GrowthZone came highly recommended from others, which made the decision that much easier.
“GrowthZone ended up checking all our boxes,” said Brogan. “They help customers like us solve problems with tools that are specific to us, such as their integration with NAR’s membership database and NRDS, which is crucial to providing the benefits of membership. Coupled with their integration to NAR’s e-Commerce function, I think we’ve saved over $20,000 in credit card fees just in our first year.”
The Results
Using GrowthZone’s E-Commerce function, the association is now paying credit card fees only on its portion of membership dues. With their previous platform, they were responsible for the fees on the entire cost of membership, including the portion of membership charged by state and national.
“I really can’t express how saving all this money on credit card fees has benefitted us,” added Brogan. “And members love it because they can make payments in just a few clicks. Our staff no longer has to be involved to process registrations or following up after the billing cycle.”
“Smaller associations like ours really benefit from GrowthZone,” said Brogan. “We don’t have a budget for custom solutions for all that we do so we see great value from all that GrowthZone offers through their templates. We’ve had very few calls from members with confusion about dues like we used to get, so it’s working and we’re immediately using the time saved expanding our services to members.”
TOP 3 BENEFITS
According to CEO Maria Brogan, here are the top three benefits of GrowthZone:
- Key Integrations – “We can easily integrate with NRDS and platforms like GoToWebinar and Zoom for holding online classes and automatically processing continuing ed credits.”
- Ease of Use – “It saves time for our staff of three to do other things. And I love how we don’t need IT knowledge to get the most out of the software.
- Website Management – “They make website management easy. Everyone on our team feels empowered to modify content. And we haven’t even scratched the surface on using all the features provided to us.”