Need better connections with your Ag association membership? There’s an App for that!

Ottawa, ON – The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) has developed the Ag Smart-Association App (ASApp) to help agricultural associations save money, engage members and improve revenues through a powerful new phone app. After rigorous testing, ASApp was launched this fall via Apple and Google App stores.

The innovation that ASApp brings to the industry is the ability for an organization to reach its members on the screen of their choice. Smartphones are the most-used mobile business device and ASApp leverages push-notifications to alert members to the latest stories and news in real-time.

“Smartphone Apps, like ASApp bring the best of your website to your members’ mobile phones,” explains Andrew Hurrell, Business Development and Stakeholder Engagement, CAHRC. “It helps ag associations to engage their members, save money and generate revenue by providing self-managed mobile application services.”

If controlling costs while delivering better services to your members is important to your ag organization, a smartphone application is a great solution to consider. ASApp brings newsletters, journals, conferences and event programs right to the phones of association members – with all information easily updated by staff via the web interface.

Increased revenue streams are possible through ASApp by using it for membership renewals, advertising directories, and sponsor’s offers and benefits. Beyond the traditional communications capabilities, the smartphone app can engage your membership to help with advocacy by asking members to perform activities through the app. 

Finally, usage analytics and easy to administer member surveys help to provide important insights to associations about their membership.

Each association’s version of the app is customized for branding and functionality, allowing ASApp to adjust menus, content and features as desired. When offered by national or provincial organizations, ASApp is free to users and is always ON with real-time notifications. This creates a wide range of applications for member engagement allowing members to: sign-up and renew memberships with payment processing; register for events; participate and vote during events; access multilingual content; be included in association contact directories; access secure log-in areas; and engage in social media feeds, among other functions – as well as full access to CAHRC provided employer tools including the Ag Employer Toolkit and CAHRC’s national job board, AgriJob Match.

The app design is compatible with both Android and Apple smartphones and follows best practices in mobile user interaction design and suability. As with other mobile applications it is intuitive requiring no end-user training. For more information on CAHRC’s ASApp visit www.cahrc-ccrha.ca. The ASApp research was funded by the Government of Canada’s Sectoral Initiatives Program.