Meat Business Women
Meat Business Women (MBW) is the global network for individuals working within the meat and food supply chain. From farming to manufacturing, retail and food service, this inspirational organisation celebrates the collective power of women across the industry.
Founded in 2015, MBW began offering online membership services such as events and mentoring during the pandemic to maintain connections with its members. Since then, MBW has built a strong and engaged network of individual and corporate members in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, with ambitions to expand into Europe.
The Challenge
The MBW team had ambitious goals to grow their membership to 5000 in 5 years. However, with a small team of three using disjointed systems to manage membership processes, the ripple effects of Covid, and no unified view of their members, the task often seemed impossible.
A mix of separate email, finance, and event management systems, data managed on spreadsheets and a siloed website, resulted in a clunky experience for new and existing members and made life difficult for the team.
The team needed a single source of truth to give them a full view of their members’ locations, bookings, interactions and the split between their individual and corporate members. They wanted to send regular reports to their corporate partners updating them on the status of their multi-user membership - from the number of spaces being used, to how their employees were using the website.
"We wanted to give corporate members the insights needed to get the most out of their membership. We were spending so much time downloading and merging reports, but with our disconnected systems producing a patchy overview, it was getting increasingly difficult to understand how to support our members and increase engagement.” - Rebecca Fearon, Membership Marketing Manager, MBW
MBW's survey confirmed their assumptions: members valued the services but struggled with website navigation, leading to higher enquiry rates and increased lapsed memberships. Without a CRM, staff logged interactions across disparate systems, making it difficult to build an accurate picture of individual and corporate members, and even more challenging to create an engagement and growth strategy.
After lengthy conversations with a variety of agencies, the MBW team found Pixl8 Group, a partner with years of combined experience in the membership sector, and as a result, had developed ReadyMembership, a unified member experience platform.
The Approach
After exploring the list of ‘essential, must-have, and nice-to-have’ requirements, the MBW and ReadyMembership teams kicked off with discovery workshops to map out the project scope. At the top of the essentials list were:
- A membership portal where individual and corporate members could pay their subscriptions online, access services, and manage their accounts.
- A CMS with design functionality and flexibility to showcase the MBW brand without needing major input from agencies.
- Event management and email marketing tools with strong personalisation capabilities, making communications with members feel relevant to them as individuals and organisations.
- A community function where members could connect and chat online over shared experiences and create specialist peer support networks.
- The ability to create and customise reports on individual and corporate members
Armed with their combined knowledge of MBW members and the expertise of ReadyMembership, the teams reimagined a smooth and personalised workflow for new, existing, and lapsed members.
All members would have access to a personalised portal to manage their membership payments, access events, and see relevant prompts which would be automated by rules on the system.
We needed to hit the ground running, so we were looking for a ready-made and user-friendly platform which we could start using from day one. It had to be flexible enough to add bespoke elements as our membership services grew. The ReadyMembership team understood exactly what a membership organisation needs and had the technical expertise to address our challenges.
Benefits and Results
Meat Business Women has embraced change, and with the support of ReadyMembership Customer Success and Training Managers, they are using ReadyMembership to build a community of engaged members who also want to give back by hosting events and becoming mentors.
This includes personalising the onboarding of new members. In the first three weeks after registering, members receive a weekly email highlighting different features of their new membership portal with tips on making the most of them. The team are pleased with the results seen so far:
- Event bookings have increased by approx 20%
- Membership growth has increased by approx 30%.
- Approx 20% of the whole membership community log in each month.
- Website dwell time increased from approx 1.5 mins to 2 mins
MBWs vibrant brand has been reimagined and revitalised in the ReadyMembership CMS. With clear and intuitive navigation, it guides visitors effortlessly through the membership journey.
Personalisation has been enhanced through dynamic content on member login, displaying specific messages to different members and creating a truly personalised experience.
Events are now managed centrally, and with the significant benefit of Zoom integration, members no longer have to leave the site to navigate to a different online space. They simply book, login, and the event begins—a real win for the less tech-savvy.
For corporate members, the platform provides easy-to-use self-service tools, enabling them to control access and update staff details without contacting the MBW team.
All data is hosted within the platform and can be reported on at an individual or organisation level. This enables the MBW team to identify gaps, provide additional support when needed, and connect with highly active members who might be interested in becoming peer supporters or mentors.
For an organisation with community at the heart of its ethos, the new MBW membership directory has unlocked opportunities for members to connect and communicate on a deeper level. Members can now search for peers by job title, interest, and location, starting secure private and group chats.
Of course, this project was about the technology, but it was always more than that. Fundamentally, it was about creating an engaging space where women across the industry could share their knowledge, support each other, and feel part of something bigger. Thanks to ReadyMembership and the hard work of our small team, our community is ready to grow. That’s a really exciting place to be because we’re ready for the challenge."
