We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:
• Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
• New purchases will end September 15, 2023
• The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
• You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
• You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author
We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!
Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.
Update
We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.
Earlier this year, Invision Community launched a native gamification system called Achievements. We added significant improvements to Achievements in our new release, 4.6.8, out now! 🎉
Achievements allows community leaders to reward members with points, badges and ranks for their outstanding contributions. We listened to your feedback and implemented some very exciting changes.
In this post, you'll get a crash course on the new updates included in your Admin Control Panel (ACP) upon updating your community to 4.6.8. Once you're familiar with these concepts, you can take action to elevate your community.
New! Married group promotions with Achievements.
New! Added metrics to better understand how Achievements functions within your community.
New! Implemented additional rules to further empower your members.
New! Updated email notifications to let your members know when they've earned a badge.
New! Download member lists based on Achievements criteria.
Before we expand on the new features, here's a recap of Achievements to refresh your memory:
Related: Want to know more about Achievements? Read our original blog post.
Now that you’re up to speed, let’s take a look at the new metrics and rules.
Group promotions
Group promotions lay out various user journeys.
Based on actions a member takes in a community, for example commenting 100 times, having a high reputation score or having joined a community a year ago, the platform will automatically place them in a group (based on the rules you previously set up). This is useful when creating a hierarchy in your community. The more your members are engaged, the more access / privileges they receive.
Now, community leaders can automatically place members in specific groups based on what badges they've earned in the community.
Couple examples:
A moderator manually awards a member the 'Helpful Superstar' badge. In this scenario, that badge can only be earned if a moderator chooses to give it. Once someone earns that badge, they're automatically placed in the 'Helpful Superstars' group. This group may have the ability to create clubs (whereas the other groups can't).
A member earns the 'Engaged' badge. 'Engaged' badges are earned when a member has replied 100 times since joining. Once they've posted 100 replies, the system automatically places them in a new group with other contributing members.
Related: Learn more about Group Promotions
Metrics
Metrics reports are essential for understanding what's working in your community, and what needs improving.
Badges Earned: Track what badges were earned during a defined period of time. This is especially useful to track both member engagement as well as identify how often your community moderators are awarding badges manually.
Badges earned by member group: How many members in each group earned a badge. Track this when quantifying what groups are most engaged with your community. Understanding which group(s) earn the most badges helps you better tend to groups that might be less engaged. It might be a good idea to show them some extra attention.
Badges by member: Search a time-based list of all members with an earned badge total. Easily discover who your VIP members are and reward / thank them for being active contributors.
Related: Maximize community growth with our new reporting metrics
Rules
Set up rules based on various criteria. These rules will automatically take a specific action once the criteria has been met.
Member downloads a file: Members may earn a badge for downloading a specific file. This could be useful if your company wanted to share new policies or an announcement; track which members took the time to download the information and publicly recognize them for staying on top of things.
Member purchases a package or product: Members may also earn a badge for purchasing either a package or a specific product. For example, you could create a rule for members to earn a coveted product badge for opting to purchase a physical product (like a t-shirt). Only members who've purchased an item from your community would receive this type of recognition.
Outreach
Jump into your members' inboxes with tailor-made good news.
New Email notifications: New notification emails let your members know when they've received a coveted rank.
Segment
Download a list of members based on a number of Achievements criteria, including points, ranks and badges.
In theory, you can upload this list of members elsewhere to target this specific audience (like sending an exclusive email drip campaign in Mail Chimp).
Several examples include downloading a list of members who've:
Earned 500 or more points
Earned a specific badge
Reached a specific rank
Achievements is a robust feature to engage your VIP members and spark the fuse of inspiration for newcomers. There’s a lot of power at your fingertips.
Unsure where to start with implementing Achievements? Check out our original post and determine what behaviors you want to reward within your community. Sometimes just logging in is a good place to start. Reward them for that. 🙂
Ready to take Achievements to the next level? Check out the new Group Promotions and Achievements Metrics now available in 4.6.8.
Where are you in your journey with Achievements? Drop us a line in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!
