Name: Enriching the Guest Experience with Blackbaud Altru
Uploaded: 2026-04-30T17:16:47.320Z
Duration: 29 min 32 s
Description: Enriching the Guest Experience with Blackbaud Altru

Transcript for "Enriching the Guest Experience with Blackbaud Altru": Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's presentation of enriching the guest experience with Blackbaud Altru. My name is Nick Velatus, and I am pleased to get us started here today. And I am joined by Trinner Crisp, a solution engineer here at Blackbaud who's gonna be taking us through the bulk of today's con content. It will be somewhat conversational, but, Trinner will largely be sharing and and demoing the ways, again, in which Blackbaud can help their Blackbaud Altru can help you enrich your guest experience. If you are new to Goldcast, this is our webinar platform. Hope you're hearing me okay right now. The audio should be coming directly through your speakers. It is one way communication, at least through audio, so no opportunity to speak back to us. However, if you do have questions or comments, you can use the q and a tab. We will be following along with that as we go, and have some time at the end, I'm sure, to get to some of your questions. And and if there's anything if we're short on time or we can't answer on the spot, we'll be sure to follow back up with you. So please, drop comments and questions into that q and a tab. There's also the docs tab. We don't have a lot of, click clickable content for you today because this, again, is mostly gonna be product demonstration. But there are some upcoming events that we wanted you to be aware of and and hopefully join us for. There is an Altru product update briefing next week, on Wednesday, so please join us for that. So we'll share, some of the new releases to Altru since we did this in last, November it was, as well as, some forward looking, updates to come down the pipe. So please join us for that product update briefing. If you can't make it on Wednesday, go ahead and register so you can get the on demand link and consume that at your convenience. Additionally, bbcon registration is now live, so definitely check that out. Visit that link to see some of the, goodness that comes to bbcon. We will be in Columbus, Ohio this year, and, we'll hope you'll consider joining us for that. We'll have a full content track, dedicated to all true and arts and cultural organizations, as well as some, main stage and and, other excitement opportunities to network with your peers as well. BBCon, very exciting. And other conferences as well, that we'll be at. We hope you'll visit us. So you can you can check out those links and and hope that you will. But for now, again, let's, start to talk about how Blackbaud alter the many ways it can help you enrich the guest experience. So, let's go ahead and get started. Trender, today we're gonna be focused primarily on, again, one thing, how can arts and cultural organizations enrich their guest experience both, when you're visiting online on your website as well as when you're arriving on-site and in person. So turning those experiences into, repeat visitation, more members, more donors, and all in all, more engagement with your organization. So, again, I mentioned we're gonna start with online. Oftentimes, a patron's first, contact or exposure to organization is when they come across your website. So let's go ahead and start there. So, Shriner, set the stage for us. What are visitors expecting, when they come upon an organization's website, be it a museum, an aquarium, a zoo, you know, maybe something they're considering visiting for the first time? Yeah. So patrons, really, they are just expecting a smooth and cohesive journey. So from your website to your inbox. But common challenge that we hear is that the online transactions just happen on these clunky third party forms that feel really disconnected or outdated. Right. And, you know, when that does feel disjointed or, you know, you feel like you're getting bounced, from the organization website to, you know, a third party platform to process a payment or something that, it, yeah, it just feels disjointed, and I think that also equates to some abandonment or lower conversion, becomes a distraction, and you would say, like, you know what? I'm not gonna buy this ticket today because I can do it later. I'm now I've been kicked out of the website, etcetera. So, how does Altru help us do it differently? Yeah. So disjointed online forms really break that visitor experience and, like you said, reduce conversion. So with these web forms, you're configuring it to look, and feel like the layout of your own web pages. So forms in the shopping cart just feel like this natural extension of your website. All of this setup is all drag and drop, so it's really user friendly, very easy. But you do have access to a style sheet and HTML for those who wanna add any custom coding or more advanced with their web design. But with this more cohesive and modern experience, you're just gonna see more completed transactions, and you're gonna be welcoming more guests through your door. Got it. Alright. So let's bring it to life. Let's say, you know, I'm a member of your organization, and I'm coming to the website to look at some daily admission tickets. So, historically, this might involve, some staff touch where whether it's, you know, I need to request a member ID or something like that, to get a discount code. I probably have to contact your staff and get some explanation of why discounts aren't showing up in my shopping cart, etcetera. So how does Altru kind of alleviate that aspect? Yeah. Let me share my screen so we can walk through this together. My screen is grayed out, so give me one second while I figure this out. Sure. And while you do that, I'm gonna pop this on again. I mentioned we'll be at, these upcoming conferences, so please visit our booth if you happen to be in attendance. We love, to get some FaceTime with you all. So, just take this opportunity as trainer gets loaded here to, to plug our presence at these conferences. We might be experiencing a bit of technical difficulty, So bear with Oh, I think that worked. Hang on. Let me do this. Okay. Is that working? us just a moment. Alright. Can you see that, Yep. Nick? Okay. Perfect. Sorry, y'all. Okay. So with these web forms, members, will just simply log in at the start of that purchase flow. So here, we've got all of our options on our landing page that serves as that entry point for our daily admission programs. When the patron decides what program they'd like to come to, they will just click this view details button here, and then be taken to this program screen. We've got a small summary of what our program is here in the upper right hand corner, a nice image to display for our program, and then those full program details. And then on the right here, we've got our ticket prices. You'll notice that this member price here that I have to log in to, reserve this specific member ticket. This login is going to allow Altru just to verify the patron's membership automatically so your members aren't having to remember their membership ID number. And it's really clear that signing in is gonna give them access to, reserve this member ticket here. So once I log in, I'm just gonna take two clicks here just to quickly sign in. And then once I'm signed in, Xtriong is going to recognize who I am and immediately makes, this member only ticket type and pricing available directly on the form. Got it. So for me as the member in this situation, it's recognizing me immediately and I don't have to, you know, reach out to a staff to, again, get some sort of confirmation code. It's just by logging in that is the validation there. Yep. Exactly. So without this, a lot of times your staff is getting pulled in just to confirm whether someone is a member or not, and that really slows things down, and it's frustrating everyone. But with Extraleink, the member just logs in, also verifies them automatically, and then, the right tickets show up right away. And it's just keeping staff out of the middle and makes the experience feel really easy for your guest. Yep. And as soon as you kind of eliminate the friction of getting involved, it obviously, encourages you to come back because it is such a seamless process. Alright. So we're logged in now. What, what what would be the next step here? Yeah. So now that I'm logged in, I can just quickly select how many tickets that I need and get those added to my cart. I do wanna call out here, though, as well that because these nonmembers can still see that there is a member price, this is a really easy way to reinforce the value of your memberships right at the point of purchase, and it's gonna help entice those nonmembers to purchase a membership when they're seeing that your members are getting all of these great benefits. Yes. Okay. So the benefits are visible to all, but then would only be selectable or accessible if you actually are a member. And, yeah, totally agree. It kind of, might give you a little bit of FOMO if you see that and be like, oh, why aren't I a member? Why am I not taking advantage of, these opportunities? So a good way to, kinda promote your membership tiers as well. Yep. Exactly. And in a lot of systems, I see this is just where promo codes come into play or organizations are having to use the honor system or someone has to step in and override the pricing. But here, nothing's extra to remember because the member is logged in. Extra Link already knows who they are, and it just shows the correct pricing automatically. So now we've got, quicker checkout. The pricing is consistent, and your staff doesn't have to explain or fix anything. So I'm gonna go ahead and get these tickets added to my cart. When I click add to cart, you guys are going to see a pop up. Within Extra Link, you're gonna be able to trigger a customizable pop up window. And this is where your organization can introduce upsell or cross sell opportunities. So that might be maybe an, an upcoming event, maybe a membership upgrade, or maybe a donation form if you're in the middle of a capital campaign. Whatever makes sense for your goals, you're gonna be able to easily promote those here and quickly switch things out when needed and not adding any additional friction to that checkout process for your guest. Yep. And then the staff also just doesn't need to remember to, prompt any of that. It all just kind of, runs itself. Right. So once those tickets are in the cart, XfinityLink can step in and just do a little bit more of that work for you. So this pop up is really just a chance to optimize that cart value by highlighting, you know, like I said, another event, a membership, or maybe a donation page, all without staff having to remember to suggest it. And it's a simple way to promote more of what you're already offering while keeping that checkout flow really smooth and simple. Okay. I'm gonna close out of this. So now that we've seen how logging in is unlocking these member tickets and pricing, I do wanna zoom out just a little bit, and I wanna look at the bigger picture and just walk us through, the membership portal here. And this is where Xtrilink really starts to enhance the overall member experience, and it's gonna give your staff some time back, which we all need in our day. So Of course. me go into here. Alright. So we've already seen that when a member logs in, member only tickets become available automatically. But beyond ticketing, this is where your members can really start to self serve, without needing to call or email your team. So from here, they're gonna be able to, reset their own password. They can also update their own contact information. So maybe someone's moved recently, maybe they have a better email or phone number for you all to contact them at. They can come in here and update that information, and it'll automatically flow into their constituent record on Altru. So it's really nice to have all this information synced directly so that you're not having to dig and find find it later or try to manually update it. Yeah. Okay. Nice that they can, again, self-service all that so you don't have your staff acting as, you know, account support or resetting passwords, etcetera. It's nice to have the self-service for the for the members. Yeah. Absolutely. And then also from here underneath this memberships tab, your members can now view their membership. They can renew it from here. They can upgrade, downgrade, and they can even manage who's included on that membership with them so that when it's time to renew your staff isn't having to track down these members, having to remind them, hey. It's time to renew. I can log in here as a member, see that information right away, and take action immediately. And, again, all of these updates happen in real time. So if I'm on here renewing my membership, upgrading my membership, all of that is being synced into Altru on my constituent record. Or maybe if your staff is making any changes on the back end, I will see all of that reflected here. Yeah. And And that's totally. Sorry. real real time. There's no import, export, or, like, overnight refresh, update involved. It's totally real time. Yep. Exactly. Which is really convenient. So and then one last thing just to call out here is the, digital membership card. So your members will be able to come to their online portal here, download their card, and add it either to their Apple or their Google Wallet. So whether they are writing at the front desk or pulling it up on their phone, that information is going to always be accurate, and we don't have to worry about reprinting cards or expired cards floating around. And just to note too that this card is also customizable. You can add your own logo, change the colors. Love that to make it look like your brand. Yeah. Okay. And then finally here, your members are gonna be able to see their full order history. So this is going to include their past ticket purchases, receipts, donations, and QR codes that can be scanned for entry. This is going to really help with reducing those calls asking you to resend them their tickets or, those last minute front desk lookups that are taking a lot of your staff's time, and then slowing down those entry lines. So when members don't have access to this kind of self-service, your staff ends up having to handle things like password resets, contact updates, membership questions, and ticket lookups all day long. But with the membership portal, your members get to take care of those things themselves, and everything stays in sync with Altru. So now your staff gets fewer interruptions during the day. There are faster answers for your members and experience that feels modern and easy instead of transactional. And it's all just stemming from that one login on the member's end. Yep. One login and everything else just falls into place. Alright. I'm gonna go back here. So once our tickets are in the cart, we have created checkout to be intentionally simple for your guest. So let me navigate to my cart here. I can verify all of my items in the cart, make sure that this is what I want and that I don't need anything else, and then proceed to the checkout. So because I'm logged in, my name and address are already filled in here. It's not going to ask me to reenter that information that we already have. Yeah. Which that can be a kind of fictitious part of the process is when then you're kind of moving and shaking, and all of a sudden it's like, I gotta go resubmit my address and all of that. Yeah. Exactly. But here, we just keep things moving. And then for that ticket delivery, they are going to be able to choose whether they want their tickets emailed or texted to them, whatever is easiest, especially for those last minute visits. Yeah. And that's pretty real time too. So in theory, I could be sitting in the parking lot and decide to order a ticket on my phone. And by the time I walk up to the front door, it's, scannable, and I'm ready to, hop right in. Yep. As soon as I complete my purchase online, that record is created in Altru, and we are ready to get them through the door so that they can enjoy their experience. Here, you're also gonna see some optional features like these roundup donations or these preconfigured amounts here. These are available when you want them, but, obviously, they're not in the way here. And then finally, you're gonna be able to promote your patrons to help cover any transaction fees. This message here that you see in this pop up window, the image, and the options are all fully customizable. So they're gonna have the option to cover, full, partial, or no fee amount at all. But enabling this pop up window is really just an easy way for your organization to save money. Those two dollar transaction fees definitely add up over time. Sure. But, again, this pop up window is completely optional. You don't have to have it enabled. Okay. So after the online transaction, Ultra is going to send, customized acknowledgment emails. So whether it's for a ticket purchase, membership, or donation, your guests get that immediate confirmation in that branded mobile friendly format. A lot of times, I hear manual confirmations are really time consuming and just inconsistent. So Altria is gonna help automate those, acknowledgement emails, excuse me, tied to the transaction and the patron record. So your guests are receiving that immediate confirmation, and then your team can scale without any extra effort, and then that data stays really consistent for that follow-up. Okay. We're going to just quickly complete this order here. Okay. So once this has completed processing, like I said, every online interaction, so tickets, memberships, donations are all gonna flow into the patron's constituent record. That means that you're not stitching together reports from different systems. You're seeing engagement in one place, which is gonna help you segment and follow-up with purpose. So I'm actually gonna pull up my constituent record just so that we can see where that lives and how it's automatically syncing within the back end of Altru. Alright. Here is the order that we just completed showing up at the top here underneath recent revenue. When I'm talking to organizations that don't have this all in one system, they really tell me that their fragmented data makes it really hard to understand support or behavior. But here, Altru's really connecting those online engagements to the constituent records as transactions are occurring. So now we've got those richer insights for personalized outreach for smarter campaigns, and just better, conversions from those first time guests to repeat visitors, members, and donors. Yeah. That's that's huge to, like you said, personalize that outreach based on, you know, the types of events they're attending or their, their membership levels, their their giving history just to, be strategic and and personalized in that outreach is huge. Alright. But let's let's bring this online portion home here before we talk a little bit about what the in person experience is like. But, so far, if you if an organization had one takeaway from, you know, the online experience, let's call it, what should that be? Yeah. So I think really just that Altitude's online sales tools aren't just convenient, but they're really helping you be strategic. They're helping you deliver just a modern branded and cohesive guest experience. It's helping reduce friction and member benefits and checkout, and it's capturing more revenue across those transactions. And because those interactions connect back to the constituent record, you're able to build lasting relationships, and more easily being able to turn those first time ticket buyers into repeat visitors and then hopefully into new members and then donors. Donors. Yep. And that's the exact outcome we're after is that seamless experience that, guests actually enjoy, encouraging them to, want to come back and be inspired to get more involved, whether it's through membership or donations, you know, being some sort of sustaining giving, is great. So thank you for that, Trina, and let's now pivot just a bit. We've been talking a lot about the online ticketing components, but let's discuss where the guest experience actually becomes real, and that's the front desk or your front door door where they're, actually admitting, into your exhibits and such. So many, many arts and cultural organizations, they kinda struggle with the fragmented systems you started to, mention, but especially at the desk where your staff is getting slowed down by, some clunky workflows. And, you know, once it starts to feel too transactional, you know, maybe they're missing those key opportunities to, recognize guests and and have those, meaningful conversations. So, let's talk about where Altru helps with that trainer. Yeah. So Altria is gonna bring your daily sales and consist constituents, excuse me, context together so that your front desk can move a little bit quicker and just be more personal. So I'm gonna show you what that looks like in our point of sale, which is daily sales here. Okay. So this is Altru's point of sale system, and it's designed to be fast and intuitive so that your front desk team can focus on what really matters most, which is delivering that seamless and personalized guest experience for your visitors. We see all the time that fragmented systems are really slowing down staff, and it's frustrating your guest. And Altru is really streamlining that ticketing, the retail, and donations into this one easy to use interface, which means you're gonna get faster check ins, happier guest, and more time for those meaningful, interactions. Okay. So from here, I am going to add a, constituent to our cart. Let me get Robert here. And when we add Robert to the cart, you're going to notice that, a notification pops up here. This is a customizable alert that's going to let your staff know that a major donor or a member has arrived so that they can acknowledge the relationship in the moment. A lot of the times, we're missing those key moments to recognize our high value guests. But with this, Altru, we get real time alerts for our donors and member arrivals. So now you're able to personalize service that is going to help strengthen those relationships and just encourage those, repeat giving. Yeah. And that's that's a big deal because those those moments do matter, and it's it's something that's easy to miss if you're super, you know, in the weeds of checking in people and, again, just kind of being a bit too transactional. Yeah. Exactly. And also just wanna call out here too that these notifications are customizable so they can pertain to your major donors. You can also have upsell opportunities here or just any special instructions that you want your front oh my gosh. Front desk staff to be aware of. Yeah. But behind that over, we are also gonna be able to see, this guest is a member. So your staff can instantly view Robert's membership program, his status, and his expiration date right in the flow of the sale. So I see that Robert is actually expiring today. So now your staff member, who's the front desk, they're gonna be able to confidently say to Robert, hey. Welcome back. You know, I see your membership is expiring today. Do you wanna go ahead and get that renewed so that your benefits aren't lapsing? Yeah. And that's kinda like proactive outreach. It it feels more personal and not just like a sales pitch. Yep. Exactly. And a lot of the times, those membership renewals are relying on passive reminders, but, also, really connecting that back of house data with your front of house service so that your staff can see membership details in the moment of interaction. And, with this visibility just comes, again, increased renewals, stronger retention, and your guests who, feel truly valued because we know who they are as they're coming into the, organization. Okay. So let's build out this transaction just a little bit. So Robert, he's expiring today. He loves our organization. He wants to go ahead and renew that membership. But he's also here for our daily admission programs. I'm gonna go ahead and add a daily admission ticket here. He visited our gift shop, and he found a really cool mug that he wants. So we can scan that barcode and get that added to the cart. And then we know he's a major donor because of that notification that popped up earlier. So I'm gonna go ahead and ask Robert if he wants to give a donation today. He says absolutely. I know he's a major donor and can probably give a little bit more than $5, so we'll ask him for $25. And if he says yes, we can very easily and quickly update update that amount from here. Because Robert is a member and Altru is aware that he's a member, it's also gonna automatically include any of those eligible discounts for Robert, in the cart automatically. So there's no manual pricing adjustments, no code lookups. We're not having to validate his membership in a separate system. It's all right here. Those disconnected systems really make, multi team transactions slow and error prone, but Altru here is processing these tickets, the merchandise, and donations all in one place with these automatic member benefits. So having everything in one ecosystem, we get these faster checkouts, increased donation capture, and just those, consistent member recognition moments. Okay. So once this order is complete, we'll just go ahead and check out here. I'll just going to update Robert's record in real time. So every interaction from purchase to donations, it's all captured for that future engagement for you all. Manual data, obviously, it's gonna lead to gaps in constituent history, but Altru is going to automatically, record transactions to the guest profile so that you get richer data for smarter outreach and just more personalized experiences. K. Yeah. So your front desk is, you know, much more than just a check-in point. It's like your sort of relationship building hub of, engagement. Exactly. And then with Ultra's daily sales, your staff just becomes more empowered with the right information at the right time to deliver that exceptional service, which we all wanna do for our guests. And we can recognize and retain members and just maximize every guest interaction. Yeah. Awesome. I, Yeah. I appreciate that. So, yeah, I think we are at time, and I think I've gotten to the questions that came in. So, we'll go ahead and let you go. I'll say thank you to you, Trender, for walking us through that, and thank you, to all of you for your time today. We hope, had had some valuable takeaways of, how Altru and Extra Link can help you, again, just, enrich that guest experience and and create the moments that matter. So, your staff is spending less time on the administrative transactional side of things and more time doing, you know, what they love and what they're great at, and that is, making your members and donors and patrons and visitors, feel special and seen and heard and valued, so you can continue to build those relationships to be, lifelong and and more sustaining and more fruitful for both both parties because they're getting value out of being members of your organization as well. So, again, thank you for all of that. I will briefly pause here. Just again, check us out at these upcoming conferences. If you wanna take a screen grab, we would love to see you and chat with you, as well as BBCON coming up, which is our, you know, main user conference, which, again, tons of value and opportunity to, collaborate with your arts and cultural peers and and learn more about what's going on both with Altru and the world of Blackbaud together. So, with that, we will let you go. We are right at the bottom of the hour. So I will say thank you one last time to, both you and Shriner, and we will see you all soon. Thanks again.