Finger on the Pulse: IASA Gauges Industry Thoughts

For the past two-and-a-half years, members of IASA have been taking the pulse of the insurance community. Now they're upgrading their survey distribution methods via social media outlets to better attract feedback from the thousands of IASA members.

The Industry Pulse is a monthly survey composed and presented by the IASA's publishing group to assess the interests of its members and give them a voice on a variety of industry topics, explains Celeska Fredianelli, vice president of publishing and chair of the publishing committee for IASA's quarterly magazine, the Interpreter, and its Internet version, e-Interpreter.

“We've been branching into social media slowly,” says Fredianelli, who is also accounting manager at North Pointe Insurance Co. inSouthfield,Mich.

Collaboration among the association's various subcommittees has helped the survey evolve; the monthly poll is now posted to such social media outlets as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, according to Victoria Newman, marketing director at industry services vendor KeyMark Inc. of Liberty, SC.She chairs the Pulse subcommittee of the publishing group. “We also post when the polls are getting ready to open and close.”

It's the second year that the Industry Pulse will be done on-site at the annual conference, reports IASA director of member and volunteer services Tricia Stillman.

“It's a little bit different. We call it our 'buzz poll' to find out what people are buzzing about at the conference,” she says. The group conducts a single poll question each day, specific to the conference: Why are they going to see certain vendors? What is their favorite part of the conference? What have they learned? Can they describe in one word what they've gotten out of the conference?

“We download the results, and Celeska and Victoria do the analysis,” Stillman says. “We post [the results] through our social media outlets the very next morning. So that is a very quick way to get our information

to attendees.”

While the original purpose of the Industry Pulse was to assess the interests of IASA members, the group is now using recent polling results for two executive education programs, including a roundtable discussion at the annual conference.

The Pulse has also just been launched as a smart phone app — in time for the conference inSan Diego — via a partnership with TripBuilder Inc. ofWestport,Conn., a custom mobile application specialist.

“Victoriahas already downloaded the app to her iPhone,” Fredianelli says. It can be used on most smart phones, she adds.

Attendees can use the Pulse app to access the conference schedule, look up exhibits, see who's speaking, follow technology sessions, and even view the convention center's floor plan. There are also tips for visiting localSan Diego attractions.

“I think that with this application and with the number of young people and up-and-coming technologies that are going to be at the conference, I'm anticipating we'll have a lot more social media followers after the event,” Fredianelli says. “And this will turn around to more participation in the polls.”

Some of the past Pulse surveys have held a surprise or two, Stillman says. Those revelations have increased as the monthly polls grow larger and member participation increases.

“I was surprised personally by the amount of people in one of our polls talking about IT, and the amount of people going to new back-office programs,” Stillman says. “I thought with the economy, there wouldn't be that much interest in new policy administration systems. It seems like it's high on everyone's priority list.”

While many respondents did focus on overall expenditures, “capital expenditures were not the issue,” she says.

Newman uses poll responses for presentation topics at IASA state chapter talks. Doing the polls gets more interesting as the Pulse evolves, she says.

“Now that we've had a few of them, we're trying to compare them against various social media, using same questions, same answers, for a direct comparison of those results,” Fredianelli says.

The Industry Pulse group has even polled its membership about what they'd like to be polled about. “We asked members about what kinds of topics they would like to see,” she says. “We've taken that feedback and sent out a new questionnaire.”

The publishing group is also able to pull up answers from its regular IASA association members, and compare them with same-question answers from its vendor members. “For some of the polls, it's interesting to see what the vendors are thinking and what the actual members are really thinking,” Fredianelli says.

Such collaborating of ideas has helped insurers, IASA members and vendors alike learn how to better provide services to the IASA membership.

“For me, it's been interesting as an IASA volunteer and a vendor,” Newman says.

In an earlier effort to encourage poll participation, the group instituted a monthly prize raffle, offering an IASA-branded item and the winner's name and company mentioned in the following month's Pulse. Prizes have included autographed books from some of IASA's conference keynote speakers. It's been a popular way to bring members to the forefront.

“It's really been a lot of fun,” says Fredianelli, “to do that and give them a little bit of feedback.”