Frequently Asked Questions About Clowder’s Platform

Clowder is the #1 mobile engagement solution for professional communities. Our platform allows associations and other similar organizations to build custom member engagement apps for both iOS and Android that facilitate year-round community connection and participation. Think of Clowder as a private social network for your organization that provides members with personalized, mobile-first experiences that reinforce the value of their memberships and boost retention. 

Clowder is designed for professional and trade associations, unions, community groups, and other membership-based organizations like homeowners associations, fraternities and sororities, and cultural institutions. More than 150 organizations across all of these categories use Clowder, ranging in size from local interest clubs to multi-chapter, multi-national associations. Because of the platform’s mobile focus, Clowder is especially useful for organizations whose members spend much of their time on the go.

A member engagement app is a mobile-based hub where members can connect year-round with each other and your association, union, or other membership-based organization. It provides access to professional development resources, networking opportunities, event supplementary materials, and other membership benefits all in one convenient location on members’ smartphones or tablets.

Mobile apps stand out among digital member engagement strategies for their accessibility, flexibility, and attention-grabbing nature. The average American spends more than five hours per day on their smartphone, and just 6% of that time goes toward using mobile web browsers, while over 90% is spent on apps. These numbers mean that your members are most likely to access your organization’s engagement offerings if you meet them where they already are—on their mobile devices with an app-based solution.

Although members could also access a social media group through an app, platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn give your organization less room for customization and personalization as compared to a dedicated app. And while email is a tried-and-true member communication tool, about half of association members feel like they get too many emails from the organizations they’re part of. Mobile messages and push notifications cut through the clutter and reach members in a way they’re more likely to respond to.

Clowder is a year-round mobile engagement platform with event features built into it. By integrating Clowder with your AMS or CRM, you can manage all aspects of conferences and other events through it without needing a separate event app. Plus, members often prefer downloading apps that are worth keeping on their phones for longer than a few days, and Clowder provides exactly that for your organization. 

As of a 2023 acquisition, Clowder is owned by Advanced Solutions International (ASI). ASI is a leading global provider of cloud-based software for associations and nonprofits, with its flagship solution being the iMIS Engagement Management System. Other ASI-owned solutions include the TopClass learning management system (LMS) and the application and review management platform OpenWater.

Every app built with Clowder is white-labeled, meaning yours will be branded to your organization. Members will see an organization-specific listing in the App Store and Google Play Store when they go to download your app, and every aspect of your app will feature your logo, color scheme, fonts, visual design style, and organizational messaging.

Very! In addition to branding your app to your organization, you can configure every feature to your users’ preferences, create all of your own content, and set your own rules for app access and contributions. The Clowder team understands that your organization’s app has to align with your unique goals and members’ preferences to meaningfully impact your engagement efforts, and we’ll give you everything you need to make that happen.

Yes! If your organization has multiple chapters, you can designate an administrator for each one, who will be in charge of sharing tailored communications and local engagement opportunities with members in their chapter. Clowder’s Subgroup Integration also lets you create up to 30 segments so you can more effectively target different membership statuses, interest groups, and committees.

Clowder’s main member communication features include:

• News feeds where your organization can provide each member with personalized updates
• One-to-one messaging that allows members to contact each other and your team directly and securely
• Discussion forums so members can ask each other questions and talk about their shared interests

For all of these features, members can enable push notifications so they never miss an update, plus they can share and access documents, courses, multimedia content, and other items from your app’s resource library in their communications.

Clowder’s event engagement features include:

• An agenda builder where members can view conference schedules and plan which sessions they want to attend in advance
• Registration and check-in management to make it easy to track event attendance and signup fees
• Digital badges and business cards with scannable QR codes that link to member profiles for streamlined networking
• Polls and other gamification options that keep attendees engaged during sessions and encourage them to share their feedback

Your organization can also enable event-specific push notifications and create discussion forums related to your events to boost app engagement.

Yes! Clowder makes it easy to manage relationships with sponsors with straightforward touchpoint tracking on the app’s backend. On the front end, in-app advertising and sponsored content provide your business partners with additional visibility among your member base and your organization with a new revenue source.

Yes and yes! Every member who downloads your app will automatically get their own profile within Clowder, which will sync with their profile in your AMS or CRM if you connect Clowder to those systems. Your team can use these profiles to tailor messages to app users’ preferences, and members can search your public-facing directories to find other app users they may want to network with.

Yes! Clowder Web is available as an add-on feature, and it allows users to access app content from a desktop or laptop via a dedicated URL. Your organization’s Clowder Web interface updates automatically when you publish new content to your app, allowing members to stay connected on all of their devices and complete tasks that may be less suited to a smartphone (such as working through an online course in your app’s resource library) on a larger screen.

• Full content and user management
• Configuration, integration, and branding options
• Subgroup and chapter administration
• Reporting and analytics

Clowder provides detailed insights into every aspect of app engagement, from sign-on numbers and most-used features to member retention rates and revenue generation totals. Your organization can configure the robust dashboards in its Command Center to align with its  needs and quickly pull reports of any data to help you fine-tune your strategy or prove the value of your app to organizational stakeholders.

Clowder integrates with more than 200 AMS, CRM, job board, and marketing solutions. We’ve taken an integration-first approach from the start, and our team frequently builds new integrations upon customer request. Some of Clowder’s notable integration partners include:

• iMIS
• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Higher Logic
• MemberClicks
• Fonteva
• Protech
• YourMembership
• NetForum
• WordPress

Clowder provides custom quotes for each organization based on feature usage, number of backend users and members, and setup assistance needs. Contact us to get a personalized estimate!

Most likely, yes! In total, Clowder customers have:

• Saved $220 million in staffing and IT costs
• Reduced administrative time spent on member engagement activities by up to two hours per organization per week
• Enhanced their average productivity in member engagement by 68%
• Generated $95 million in incremental revenue from their apps
• Seen an overall return of four times their initial investment in the platform

To learn more about how Clowder has benefited individual associations, check out our customer case studies!

Naturally, the first step in getting members to download your organization’s app is creating an app they’ll want to download! But once you have the foundation of an app that adds value to your members’ experiences with your organization, you can encourage adoption by:

• Launching your app in conjunction with a conference or other large-scale event to ensure members pay attention to it
• Offering incentives to the first members to download the app, such as early access to new resources, discount codes, or entries into prize drawings
• Marketing your app across multiple platforms, including your organization’s website, email, social media, text messages, and word of mouth from early adopters

For more advice on encouraging downloads, check out our complete guide to association app adoption.

Clowder provides personalized customer support every step of the way, from walking your team through setup to troubleshooting ongoing issues for both administrators and members. Our team is available via email and phone, and we’ll always respond to queries within one business day. We also send out a quarterly client newsletter and have published many blog posts and downloadable resources, all of which can help you make the most of your organization’s app.

If you’re an association member or work for an organization that already uses Clowder, emailing your question to info@clowder.com is the best way to get it answered, and we may add it to this page if we get it often enough! If your organization doesn’t use Clowder yet, you can schedule a demo to see the platform in action and ask a software expert your specific questions one-on-one.