Streamlining Volunteer Management with Software Solutions | Megan Oliver from Rosterfy

Ernesto: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98 percent of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads online.
On your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more. Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work.
And get access to 50 percent more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual, check us on Pathmonk. com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Megan Oliver from Rosterfy marketing manager with them. How are you doing today, Megan? I am doing great.
How are you doing? I’m doing great. It’s good to have you on today’s episode. And I’m sure our listeners are curious what, what Rosterfy is all about. So let’s start with that. In your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Megan Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. So basically what we are is a volunteer management software. If your organization uses volunteers, you probably know that it is, a bit of a headache, especially if you’re only using spreadsheets to organize all those volunteers, get them into shifts, communicate with them, make sure that you’re reporting accurately about, everything that’s going on with your volunteer program.
So that’s the gap that we fill. We help out with all kinds of organizations, we’ve done the last seven Super Bowls. So little do people know a lot of times that the Super Bowl actually uses a lot of volunteers in terms of making sure that it gets off the ground. We’ve done the world cup.
We’ve done, all kinds of different sporting events. That’s how we started is with sporting events, but we’ve branched off much more nowadays to as well into, nonprofits and, local governments as well. Local governments, when they have any kind of volunteering programs, basically anything that runs off of volunteers, we’re here to help.

Ernesto: Definitely. That’s awesome to hear, where you guys have been at. And, so that way our listeners can get a good understanding then is what would you say is the key problem then that you solve? Is it for, your clients?

Megan Oliver: Yeah, I would say admin tasks, anybody, if you’ve ever worked as a volunteer manager or just in events, you know how much admin there is, whether it’s emails, whether it’s scheduling, whether it’s just getting all your ducks in a row, we, some of our clients have said that we have cut down their admin tasks up to 50%, and, they’re able to focus much more on, a lot of our clients, especially those with nonprofits.
Yeah. They’re out to, they’re out to save the world, basically they’re out to, to help their cause and they get bogged down in all of this admin, and we free them up and give them time to then put back into the work that they have instead of just being buried in admin.

Ernesto: That’s funny. That’s awesome. That’s important, right? Especially if instead of, doing admin, you can be doing other things that matter, especially when it’s volunteering some great, stuff that you guys are doing. So then, you did mention you guys are, you started off with sporting events, but is it your primary, vertical segment?
Do you guys focus on anything else? Who would you say is your primary segment right now?

Megan Oliver: Yeah, I would say it’s the three, the primary ones are, sporting, major sporting events. We’ve done them all over the world. We’re originally an Australian company, but we also have offices in, London as well as now here in Dallas.
We started off with sporting, but I would say our big three are sporting nonprofits and local city and county governments, I would say, are our big three for those are our big three clients that we helped.

Ernesto: That would be interesting. All right. That’s good to hear. And how would typically someone get, get to know you guys? How do they find out about you? What would you say is the top client acquisition channel that you guys currently have?

Megan Oliver: Yeah. It’s a classic, but Google, we find a lot of people literally just Googling volunteer management, help me with my volunteers. Help me figure this out. We also partner with several different volunteering things.
We’re a preferred partner of Blackbaud, a fundraising service. So a lot of our people will come in through there, where they’ll say, Hey, We think you’re at a stage now where you need to be getting out of the spreadsheets, you need to have a more robust system. So we have a lot of people coming through there.
We also do work with some of, we do have competitors. They have other software, And, sometimes the ones that they say, we’re better for a very small organization, but we think this one has, it has grown out of us. And, our capabilities don’t match their needs anymore.
And we definitely get a number of people from those. But I’d say, the classics either referral or, just straight up Googling us and trying to find, trying to find volunteer management services.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay. Awesome. Great. Great to hear that. And I am here on the website. So our listeners to get, check them out. You can check them out at rosterfy. com. What role does a website play for your client acquisition?

Megan Oliver: Oh, what role does our website play? I would say it’s pretty key. It’s, it gives out basically a really good list of everything that we do. Everything that, you know, not only we do, but what makes us unique because there’s others out on the.
On the, there’s others out on the market and I think that ours is really, good. It’s, I know that we tend to talk about strengths and weaknesses in a little bit on the podcast, but I think one of our strengths is we’re very good at outlining, what we do, why we’re different, getting people back.
We also have a ton. If anybody, is listening to this and is interested in, any kind of free resources, we have a ton of blog posts, case studies, white papers as well. Just about volunteering and about managing your volunteer program. So I think that helps a lot too, is building up that, customer trust and seeing, we are experts in this field.
We’ve been doing this for years. We, know what we’re talking about.

Ernesto: Okay. Awesome. Great, to hear that. And what, would you say, going into 2024, what are, is there any tools or methods that you guys are looking for in, to apply within marketing?

Megan Oliver: We’re very big on, being present at conferences. We want our people to be there. We love sponsoring, we love, having people there on the ground to talk to potential customers. I would say we’re also very interested in, Account, single account, marketing, just really going after some of our targets, going after, this is an organization that is at this scale with this, number of volunteers, and we really think that we could benefit them.
So going after them rather than just casting a wide net, trying to really go after some of these organizations that we think we would be a great fit for.

Ernesto: Yeah. Finally. All right. Awesome. Megan, let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about you as a leader, you being the marketing manager there for Rosterfy. What are some key tasks you focus on your day to day work there?

Megan Oliver: Yeah, I do a bit of everything. So basically what I am is I’m the marketing manager, but I’m the only marketing person in the U. S. team. We’re building out our U. S. team right now.
But right now we have in the U. S., we have a customer service person, who’s fabulous, but she’s not in the office. She’s, she works remotely. And then we have two salespeople and me. And that is all we have on the U. S. team. We’re building it out.
But it’s been really fun kind of having a hand in everything. Some days I’m writing articles for the site. Some days I am, checking to see, these have been our, these are the leads that are coming in right now. Some days I’m checking, some days I’m checking our social media. I’m almost always checking our social media. I have a history of social media marketing background.
So they would tend to be like, Megan, can you check and make sure this looks good? And I’m like, yes. Okay, sure. But I do a lot of editing work. It’s, been really great. I’d say, honestly, if there’s, if it’s going out, I’d say I have a hand in it.
The one thing that I haven’t really historically in my, few months here, had a hand in yet our newsletters, but I do know that’s going to be starting soon. So I’m actually really excited. Cause that’s something that I have experience in. I used to do it a previous role.
So I’m really excited to get to talk to our broader community as opposed to just, targeted marketing efforts.

Ernesto: No, very awesome. Great, to hear that. And let’s jump into our rapid fire question round section now. So you ready for that, Megan? Oh yeah.
All right. First off, I think it’s going to be pretty easy. I know you have experience in, in, in Barnes novels and reading. First off, what, is the last book that you read?

Megan Oliver: Okay, so this is more complicated because I’m always reading about five to seven books at once, but the last book that I finished, and it’s a very easy shout out because the movie just came out, is The Boys in the Boat, which is incredible.
It’s about, the 1936 Olympic rowing team. I am a huge Olympics fan. And it’s how they came together and, yeah. Very back then rowing was thought to be, it was very East versus West rivalry. And the East coast was very thought of like Harvard boys, upper class and then the West coast was very, middle class to even, it’s the thirties, to in the middle of the depression.
Very poor and how this scrappy group from the university of Washington, came up and became this Olympic gold medal winning. It’s so good if anybody wants a feel good story and just a really good Olympic book likes a good sports book. That’s fabulous. And the movie just came out. I have not seen the movie yet, but my mom saw it and she said it is a must watch, but we’ll see.

Ernesto: There you go. The boys in the boat. All right. Awesome. All right. Next up, Megan. What is one single thing that Rastafari is focused on at the moment the most?

Megan Oliver: Oh, gosh. I’d say growth. At least in my field, the thing that I deal with every single day is growing our U. S. customer base. We’re very established in Australia. We are, several years established in the U. K. now at this point, and while we have some U. S. clients, that we had managed through our other offices, really building out that it. of operations and building out that base of customers and volunteer organizations, to use Rosterfy.

Ernesto: Definitely. All right. Awesome. Now, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Megan Oliver: Oh my goodness. Okay. So I have been thinking about this one and now. It’s not just technological, things, but also I understand why this can’t exist for privacy reasons, but like in a dream world, like I would just, there’s so much demographic information you can’t get.
And I would love to, I’m like, who is looking at our site? Who is looking at our LinkedIn page? Who is the one who listened to this podcast? Who is the one who did this? And you can get limited, information, but if I could get a much better demographic information, what are they like, what are they interested in?
What, kinds, what makes them tick? I’d say that always, cause that’s a lot of guesswork in, in marketing and, it’s fun guesswork, but if I could make it a little less guesswork, I can’t think that’d be fun.

Ernesto: A little bit more accurate, right? That would be best. All right, now, if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Megan Oliver: UTM ing links. That is, bar none, that’s been the bane of my existence, especially as somebody who has a lot of experience with social media. Making, links with UTMs so that we can track them so that we can do, know, who goes back to our site, vital thing. UTMs are vital.
And, I, had a previous role. I had to be the UTM police and basically just tell everybody, I’m like, please, you can’t just put an empty link back to our website. I can’t track what happened on it.
But it is, especially when you’re scheduling many social posts or many, blog posts per day. Exhaustive.

Ernesto: Definitely. All right. Yeah. Okay. And lastly, what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Megan Oliver: I would say don’t be afraid of it. When I first started in marketing, I had no idea that I was going to start in marketing. I have an English degree. I thought I was going to go into publishing, like book publishing.
And so when I took my first marketing role, it was at a company that I was initially the, the editorial intern, because again, thought I was going into editing. And then as I worked with them, they were like, we think you would be really good in marketing.
And I did some social media work for them and I grew and I did some freelance work. And then eventually they brought me on full time as social media, and very quickly, just full time marketing.
And, but I was always hesitant about it. Not, hesitant, but I always thought, this wasn’t the plan, how did this come about? This was, going to be fine. And I figured out that I love it.
And, it is something that, I can use all of these skills that I thought I was going to use to go into publishing for marketing, communication and editing, certainly a ton of it.
I think the number of times a day that I’ve asked to edit a document is incalculable, so don’t be afraid of it, but also just don’t hold yourself back just because it wasn’t part of the plan.

Ernesto: Okay. Awesome. Some, great advice there from, Megan. Megan, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about Rosterfy?

Megan Oliver: If you have volunteers, if you have volunteers, please check out Rosterfy or just in general, please check out volunteer management software. We, our salespeople are the best and we’ve definitely talked to them, or they’ve definitely talked to clients too before where they were like, they were just a little bit, we’re, we do very, high level stuff and they were like, look, I think that what you need isn’t quite right for Rosterfy, but let us get you set up with a volunteer management software platform.
And I think just look into volunteer management, can I start this over?

Ernesto: Yeah, so I’ll go ahead and start from the top.

Megan Oliver: Yeah, I wish, yeah, it got a little rambly.

Ernesto: No, no, worries. All right. Megan, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about your company?

Megan Oliver: Volunteer management software is crucial and Rosterfy can help you with that. If you are still in spreadsheets or you are still have some kind of software that is super limited and doesn’t let you do what you want it to don’t let that stop you. Check out Rosterfy. We I swear our automations can help save you untold amounts

Ernesto: of time. Awesome guys. To our listeners, you can check them out at rosterfy. com bring, volunteer management to life. Megan, thanks a lot for being on with us today. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and looking forward to our next episode at PathMonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Megan.

Megan Oliver: Thank you.