What this helps you do
Your membership or association-management system keeps the roll: who is a member, their status, dues, renewal, class, chapter placement, credentials and designations, and who is eligible to vote or stand. Your event system keeps registrations; your election or ballot process keeps nominations and votes; your publications and member community live where they live. The Hub knows none of it. It holds the people who receive your messages (an email address and a name), the audiences your organization put them in or they chose, and what you sent. It is a communication channel, not a membership record and not a system of record for anything. The doors are four: a CSV you upload on Members, the inbound webhook, signed outbound events, and the Zapier app on request.
When to use it
Use a CSV from a communication-only export when you start, and again when you add people in bulk. Use the inbound webhook when your join form should add a new member. Use outbound events when your own systems should know who connected or opted out. None of this is required.
How to do it
- Export only the email addresses (and names) of members who agreed to receive your messages, with an audiences column naming audiences you already created, and upload the CSV on Members. Any other column, like a member ID, status, dues, a paid-through, renewal or join date, a class or a note, is discarded before anything is saved.
- If a member class or designation should drive communication, create it as a named audience and put its name in the audiences column. The audience assignment is kept; the class or designation field itself is not.
- Point your join form at the inbound webhook on Integrations. Only email, name and interests (names of audiences you already created) are kept; every other field is discarded.
- Add your HTTPS endpoint under events out so your own systems hear when someone connects or opts out.
- Ask for the Zapier app if you would rather connect the two ends without code.
Example
A society exports email, name and an audiences column naming chapters and committees, and uploads it. When the Coastal Chapter meeting moves, one message reaches that chapter. The membership system still owns who is a member and who has renewed.
Good to know
- There is no connector to a membership, association-management, event, ballot or community system, and the Hub does not know a member's status, dues, renewal, class, chapter, credentials or eligibility.
- A lapsed member keeps receiving until a person removes them or they opt out: nothing in your membership system reaches the Hub.
- The Hub takes no payment and processes no dues. A renewal message links to your own renewal page.