Digital upgrade drives up membership and engagement at HIA

“The dream is using augmented reality to stitch together every construction system, from local authority permits and building codes to suppliers and materials. That would be a game changer for us and every builder and homeowner in Australia,” says Ben Brooker, General Manager for Digital at the Australian Housing Industry Association (HIA).

The HIA offered a wealth of information and knowledge on the residential building and construction industry via its website, social media, and press coverage. But it needed to focus on delivering a more intuitive experience and satisfy 18 lines of business. The website also had no clear customer journey through to acquisition, and much of the content was locked to non-members.

There was growing pressure to change. Members, especially younger ones, expected a better digital experience with online tools and services. Brooker – the HIA’s first head of digital – wanted to create a centralised and unified digital customer experience that would raise and capitalise on awareness, increase sense of belonging, grow the membership and revenue, and build an efficient digital operating model.

Working closely with Sitecore implementation partner, Switch, the HIA developed a comprehensive digital transformation strategy encompassing almost every aspect of the organisation. The HIA upgraded to a centralised, Sitecore-powered digital platform that delivers hyper-personalised experiences, uses data at the heart of decisioning, and enables e-commerce and marketing automation and other features like geolocation.

By consolidating data within the platform, the HIA has developed three primary personas of core members, non-members using services, and anonymous users, with 26 additional sub-personas to fine-tune personalisation.

Using Sitecore technology, the HIA has improved its onboarding and membership model, overhauled its structure for e-commerce and continuing professional development, and created a digital resource library. Plus, to overcome the issue of previously hidden content, the organisation created three tiers – free, register-based, and member-only.

A key element of driving digital transformation was getting buy-in across the organization, including hands-on involvement from senior management.

“We took a huge step with the Sitecore-powered digital transformation project,” says Brooker. “Sitecore has been pivotal in changing how our service delivery models operate and is now the foundation for us for the future.”

Within a month of deploying its new Sitecore-powered digital platform, the HIA experienced a 10% increase in membership sign-ups. HIA also saw a 40% increase in customer goal completions, an 800% increase in upselling and cross-selling, a 370% increase in new business and upselling leads and a 10% fall in customer service calls, indicating improved UX and effective self-service features.

Internally, Sitecore has improved and streamlined business processes, helping the HIA to document, unify, and integrate business systems, processes and operations that used to be fragmented. For example, by successfully integrating Sitecore with Microsoft Dynamics and fulfilment, the HIA is now providing seamless commerce experiences to customers and automated processes that make payments more secure. Internal attitudes to digital transformation have also changed.

"Sitecore enables the HIA to see how the customer views us, our products and services, and also to modify the way we speak to them and about ourselves to ensure their journey is consolidated around customer need,” concluded Brooker. “It has made a huge improvement in the way that we talk about ourselves and with our members.”