Let's Talk About It: Advancing Society Communications to Reach the New Horizon

By Vineet Mishra, MD, FAAD, FAVLS

Communication is essential for any healthy relationship. For the AVLS, improving the conversation amongst members and leadership was imperative to accomplishing the objectives of the New Horizon Strategic Plan. To facilitate member connections, the AVLS enhanced the digital newsletters, created the myAVLS magazine, launched the MAC, and redesigned the website.

The Society’s primary means of informing members is its digital newsletters. Previously, VeinLine was sent twice a month as a conglomeration of all updates from the Society and the field of venous and lymphatic medicine.

As the Society grew and our updates grew more varied, many news items were getting lost in the mix. To combat this, in 2019, we decided to segment the newsletter into four weekly editions, Advocacy Insider, Research Review, Learning Matters, and Member Connection. Each newsletter reflected a tenet of the New Horizon Strategic Campaign.

With segmented newsletters, members can filter their news to topics significant to them. Additionally, we can share Society news and items from across the field of venous and lymphatic medicine relevant to each subject.

For instance, Member Connection can now highlight a Member of the Month, introducing members to each other in more depth. The Research Review can share the latest relevant articles published in the past month across the field of venous and lymphatic medicine.

Sometimes, however, the conversation needs to go deeper than email can provide. The myAVLS magazine, born out of the Daily Congress newspapers, offers space for long-form articles and an in-depth look at topics and projects the Society is tackling.

The long-form approach of the magazine offers context for the news blurbs sent by email throughout the year. Articles grant a glimpse into the minds of AVLS leadership, explaining their goal and hopes for the continued growth and success of the Society.

MyAVLS magazine began in 2019 with its first edition announcing the name change of the American College of Phlebology to the American Vein & Lymphatic Society. The magazine is published twice a year, with a spring edition distributed digitally and a fall edition distributed physically to Annual Congress attendees and digitally to all members.

While newsletters and a magazine provide various ways to engage with the Society, all good conversations have two sides. To facilitate member communication amongst members and the leadership, the AVLS launched the MAC, My AVLS Community. The MAC is an online discussion forum exclusively for AVLS members.

Previously, member networking and discussions were limited to in-person meetings. With an online forum, members can continue those conversations once they are back home and begin new dialogues at any time throughout the year.

The MAC launched in early 2020, right as the world headed into shelter-in-place. Unable to gather in person, the MAC created a space to ask questions and figure out how to handle all the changes from the pandemic. Since then, the MAC has continued to grow with new discussions covering topics from treatment options, best practices, research discussions, and practice management.

New technology and means of communication are exciting, but most individuals’ primary point of engagement with the AVLS is our website. When the Society changed its name in 2019, the website needed to be updated. However, we did not stop at just refreshing the branding but restructured the entire site and how different audiences engage.

The website needs to serve our members with quick and easy access to all our online content. To facilitate these interactions, we created www. myavls.org as a member dashboard complete with buttons for anything and everything a member may want to access, all available within one click.

The new homepage provided our members with navigational speed, but what about prospective members who may not know what they are looking for yet? These individuals still needed a more traditional website experience that would promote browsing. To that end, we created www.veinandlymph.org. This homepage is more SEO targeted and allows new visitors to explore who we are and what we offer.

By presenting two different faces of the Society with varying homepages, the AVLS was able to adjust the online experience by audience. Today both pages receive equal traffic, with the myavls.org homepage just outpacing the veinandlymph.org homepage.

Without healthy communication, the Society would have been limited in achieving the New Horizon Strategic Plan and establishing who we “ARE” in Advocacy, Research, and Education. Conversations are always two-directional, and we want to engage and hear from you about your preferred method of communication and where we should go next.