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Higher Logic Thrive

Score7.6 out of 10

37 Reviews and Ratings

What is Higher Logic Thrive?

Higher Logic Thrive is a private community platform that empowers members, customers, support and product teams to create and manage meaningful, engaging online communities. The solution is designed to keep users coming back. They can find support, best practices, peer-to-peer connections, resources, events, and networking, all in one destination.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Higher Logic Thrive Community logged in view
Bring members together 24/7. Discussions, Q&A, events, and engagement tools like automation and a mobile app – Higher Logic Thrive Community provides everything you need to bring members back from wherever they are.
Higher Logic Thrive Community logged out view
Your value proposition shines on the logged out view of Higher Logic Thrive Community. Use this valuable space to remind members and prospects about the important work your association does.
Target groups
Tailor every email or automated campaign with dynamic content, segmentation, and personalization. Integrations with your AMS or online community make adding contacts and creating compound distribution lists a breeze.
Message designer
Save time with pre-built email templates and automated campaigns based on nearly two decades of association experience.
Reports
Refine your programs with data. Gain insight from email interactions and web tracking so you can refine your offerings and prove ROI.
Engagement scoring
See how engaged your members are so you can be sure you are providing value.

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Higher Logic Community Connects Members Online Like We Couldn't Before.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Higher Logic Community to create a primary community for all our members to communicate with each other as well as to form focused communities based on people's professional interests and personal communities. This has allowed us to give our members private groups to communicate with their peers, ask questions and establish relationships with other members from all over the country.

Pros

  • Allows a safe space for community members to communicate with each other
  • Offers the organization an area to provide updates that are relevant and timely to the community members
  • Connect members with similar interests with online events and, when Covid allows, in person events

Cons

  • It would be nice if it could integrate with non-Higher Logic marketing automation platforms to better monitor communication limits
  • A more visual interface would be nice so it would be easier to maintain brand integrity
  • Better analytics is always something the marketing department is looking for

Most Important Features

  • Private groups for our members.
  • Easy communication from our organization to members of specific communities
  • Ability to connect to our LMS to allow for a smooth registration process

Return on Investment

  • We have been able to expand our "community based" and "practice based" online communities to 15 with plans to expand more soon
  • These communities offer an opportunity for members to engage in discussion, hear from experts, and build valuable connections with peers. It's not revenue generating but it something we couldn't do before implementing this tool.
  • We have seen a substantial increase in our DEI efforts by creating groups and events specific to divers communities.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Service Hub

Other Software Used

Higher Logic Communications, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Asana, iStock, from Getty Images

Nice Platform : As Long as You Know What to Expect

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Higher Logic for our email marketing efforts. The communications department actually facilities the sending of these emails, but we send emails on behalf of the entire organization, including all of the other departments. It integrates with our association's membership database and we send a weekly e-newsletter to our distribution list of about 150,000 individuals. We also send about 10 other one-off emails each week to smaller subsets of our full distribution list--such as certain targeted interest groups or event registrants, etc.

Pros

  • Integration: Higher Logic does a nice job of integrating with our membership database and management software. This allows us to identify specific interest groups and types of members to send them targeted emails that actually pertain to them. The info then goes back into our membership management software so we can keep track in there who has opened and clicked on emails.
  • Analytics and Reporting: Higher Logic's analytics and reporting are great for what we need. You can easily see a basic overview of the email performance such as open rate and click rate, but you can also drill down further to see exactly who has opened the email, who has clicked it, what links were clicked the most, etc. There is also a heat map that gives you an idea of where people clicked the most. This is especially useful for our weekly e-newsletter which contains multiple different story items because it allows us to see which types of content performed the best.
  • Easy to Set Up: Each email is easy to set up and there are a lot of different formatting options. It gives you the option to just drag and drop items as needed, but then you can also edit the HTML if you'd like. Setting up A/B testing is also very simple, and so is adding in your distribution lists and interest groups.
  • Intuitive: The software, in general, is very intuitive and easy to use. Things are where you think they should be and everything is easy to find within the platform.

Cons

  • Customer Service: Maybe we're just unlucky, but we've had very sub-par customer service when dealing with Higher Logic. They've been hard to get in touch with, difficult to schedule meetings with, and when we finally did have a meeting with a representative, she seemed very disgusted to have to be talking with us--and then rushed us off of the call because she had another call immediately afterward (we understand things like this happen, but it was just even more discouraging after an already poor experience).
  • Down Time: The platform seems to be down more often than I'd like it to be. They often have scheduled downtime for system maintenance at off-hours, and this is totally fine. But somewhat often, it seems to be down in the middle of the day when I try to login to create or schedule an email. And it takes a little while (sometimes even several hours) for it to come back up. This is very disappointing when you're trying to get something done (especially when it's time-sensitive) and have to wait around to do it because the system is down.
  • Inconsistent Data: When the analytics and data are correct, it's great! But we've noticed this isn't always the case. There are several different places on the platform that report data, and sometimes they don't match up. Or the percentage data and the raw data numbers don't equal each other and are totally different, so clearly, at least one is incorrect, but how do we know which one it is? Additionally, the numbers on the heatmap are sometimes way different than the numbers in the general data report. We brought this to their attention and they said they were aware of the problem but we're working on other more important things at the moment and would maybe get around to fixing it later (this goes back to the previously mentioned poor customer service). As of a few weeks ago, I thought it was indeed finally fixed, but then again last week we noticed it was back to being inconsistent.

Return on Investment

  • Higher Logic's email marketing platform allows us to consistently stay in touch with our audience and send them high-quality, targeted emails.
  • It allows us to see which types of emails and email stories (within our weekly e-newsletter) perform the best. We can use this information to curate better, more engaging content for our readers.
  • It's easy to use and intuitive, so it doesn't take up too much time to put together e-blasts and email campaigns, which allows us to save time while still performing our e-marketing efforts.

Alternatives Considered

Mailchimp

Other Software Used

Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform, Episerver CMS, Sprout Social

Positive Committee Engagement

Pros

  • Easy to use - with just a few short informational handouts that we created in-house even our members who are less computer-savvy have been able to engage and connect on our site.

Cons

  • This may seem a small detail, but when tracking through our pages of communities, the user has to manually scroll back to the top after navigating to the next page. This can be a little frustrating!
  • Sometimes the load time can be slow.
  • We've experienced more outages with the site than we thought we might. Our members and leadership get frustrated when this happens. They don't want a break in their communications!

Return on Investment

  • Higher Logic has definitely provided us the tools to allow our committees and special interest groups to engage with each other between meetings. This has encouraged a different type of committee engagement, which has been positive overall.

Other Software Used

Adobe Acrobat DC, Microsoft 365 Business

Higher Logic gives a lot of bang for your buck!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Higher Logic as a primary means of sending out large-scale communications to our members. This includes important messages, surveys, and demographically targeted outreach.

Pros

  • Very thorough: Higher Logic works precisely as advertised and can do many things to provide insight into your membership.
  • Data-driven: Higher Logic gives you a ton of insight into how customers interact with your messages. This is extremely beneficial information if you know how to interpret it.
  • Price: Higher Logic is priced fairly for the features you get.

Cons

  • Clunky-- Higher Logics' user Interface can use some work. At first glance, it can be tough to navigate.
  • Ease of use-- it's a robust program so there is definitely a learning curve. Some of their competitors are a little better "out of the box."
  • Customization-- at least from my perspective there is a little to be desired from a branding standpoint.

Return on Investment

  • Understanding preferences-- Higher Logic helps us tap in to how our members want to hear from us.
  • Data collection-- Since we started using Higher Logic the amount of data we get from our members has increased greatly.
  • Consolidation of tools-- Higher Logic replaced 2 or 3 additional SAAS options being utilized by us. This helped save money!

Alternatives Considered

MailChimp

Other Software Used

Formstack, Asana

Higher Logic Review

Pros

  • Higher Logic is responsive to help desk questions or addressing problems or situations we may not understand. It's great because we always have support.
  • The platform is easy to explain to members how to use. They don't have to go through a lot of steps to get set up and are able to move around the platform quickly.

Cons

  • The admin dashboard (which is already going to be changing). I think the new setup will be really beneficial for new staff members who may come on to assist with the community.

Return on Investment

  • The community laid dormant for a while before we revitalized, but it has encouraged more communication between members and then when they have the chance to meet at our annual meeting, they feel like they already know each other and want to sign up for the meeting to communicate with their new friends.