January 2025 Roundtable on Web Engagement
No Slides Available
The roundtable introduced a new website engagement add-on that extends PropFuel’s personalization approach from email into the web experience. The discussion framed associations’ current challenge as largely one-way communication via email and static websites, and positioned PropFuel as enabling two-way interactions on the site by asking questions, capturing responses, and triggering immediate, personalized actions. The product supports three interaction types—banners fixed at the bottom of a page, configurable pop-ups that can appear in different positions, and inline content that renders as part of the page itself. Implementation requires adding a short JavaScript snippet globally in the CMS, which is typically a quick task for a technical admin. Once installed, the site calls PropFuel on page load to determine whether to display an interaction based on conditions such as page, behavior, and whether a visitor is anonymous, cookied, or authenticated.
A central strategy emphasized starting with broad, high-traffic prompts to build a base of cookied visitors over several months, then shifting to narrower, targeted use cases as identification improves. Identification is achieved through first-party cookies placed on the association’s domain, email-to-web bridging where links from PropFuel emails carry an identifier that binds the cookie to a person, and optional single sign-on integration that confirms identity when members log in. Anonymous engagement can later be merged into a user’s profile when a connection is established, allowing the system to unify prior web responses with known member data and use that history for segmentation and workflows. The team noted compliance with cookie banners, the use of first-party cookies rather than third-party tracking, and addressed that ad blockers or cookie clearing can limit tracking, making SSO the most reliable identity link.
Demonstrations walked through practical use cases. On a homepage, asking whether a visitor is a member helps route members to login and value content or, for nonmembers, branches into follow-up questions that clarify goals—such as job seeking—then guides them to relevant resources and calls to action. For education, an inline or pop-up question on an LMS storefront can ask about preferred format and topic to deep-link visitors to filtered results, reducing friction from manual searching. On order confirmation pages, an inline rating can capture satisfaction with the purchase process and branch immediately for qualitative feedback tailored to high or low scores, enabling analysis of themes for improvement. Other examples included renewal prompts for cookied or authenticated users with expiring memberships, conference flows that differentiate member and nonmember messaging (e.g., join-and-save offers), and award nomination prompts on relevant pages to drive submissions. The same actions available in email—landing pages, redirects, and follow-up questions—apply on the web, and email can hand off to a contextual website interaction that cookies the user and continues the conversation.
Early results from beta usage showed strong engagement. A year-end giving pop-up displayed hundreds of times achieved a response rate near ten percent and outperformed an existing lightbox by more than double, even when PropFuel’s pop-up appeared second. A medical society’s CME-focused prompt produced responses that sent many users directly to login and some to join now, demonstrating the value of aligning messaging to immediate needs. An awards program saw a marked increase in submissions compared to historical baselines. The team discussed upcoming enhancements including exit-intent triggers, more granular frequency controls beyond the current one-time-per-user setting, and broader deployment across related properties such as LMS, community, career centers, and conference microsites. They also noted potential integrations with tools like AI assistants to pass prompts based on web responses. The overarching guidance is to orchestrate email and web touchpoints so that intent gathered in one channel immediately informs personalized actions in the other, progressively improving relevance as more visitors become known or authenticated.