“We are all about diversity, equity, and inclusion here at Webflow and bringing on a company like Five to Nine stands behind our point of diversity as well,” Allegra added.
Allegra Gunn (team engagement specialist)
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Listed on Forbes’ America’s best Startup Employers (2022) list, Webflow is a no-code development platform that creates a more accessible space for anyone who wants to build a professional website without any need to know how to code. That’s why Webflow is more than just a website builder, with a mission to democratize web design and development.
This mission for creating a more inclusive space is also reflected in how Webflow approaches employee experience. With a devoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) council and Affinity Groups that provide funding, support, and space for marginalized identity groups, as well as the increasing number of employees, it became crucial to utilize a platform to foster a culture of belonging and connection.
In order to get rid of manual processes, tool fatigue and to measure the impact of their DEI initiatives, it was essential for Webflow to partner with an innovative, data-driven, and easy-to-use platform. In search of a solution, Five to Nine stood out as the best fit for Webflow by offering a streamlined event planning process, seamless integrations with the tools they were already using, and valuable insights via event analytics.
“We are all about diversity, equity, and inclusion here at Webflow and bringing on a company like Five to Nine stands behind our point of diversity as well,” Allegra added.
When Allegra Gunn, the lead team engagement specialist, first joined Webflow there was no established process to create event programming, no way to measure metrics and everything was done manually. From her previous roles within the event management space, Allegra understood how essential an event management tool was to measure impact and scale event programming.
That’s how Allegra decided to onboard a tool, “it would just make sense for us to have an event management platform since we are Webflow and we are here to make the Internet accessible for everyone. So if we're trying to have our customers have the best experience and provide them with great tools, then internally, we should have the same thing.”
Allegra and her team had 3 essential things they wanted from an event management platform:
“Having my initial call, I immediately fell in love with Five to Nine and I think all of those (3 items listed above) are important if you want to obtain a long-lasting relationship,” says Allegra. “I think the initial onboarding process was easier than I've ever been through, which was quite helpful.”
During her first interaction with the Five to Nine platform, many features stood out to Allegra, especially the ease of adding surveys and receiving data on the platform. With Webflow being a Slack-first company, Allegra was also excited to send Slack invitations with a simple click.
Before Five to Nine, “there were too many moving parts,” says Allegra. The employee engagement team would manually send a Google Calendar invite for each event and also send a separate message to Slack channels to announce the events.
“Before Five to Nine, we had no way of measuring success or measuring any types of metrics with our events or even attendee information,” says Allegra. In order to gather some data, they had to use a separate survey tool and pull attendee numbers from Zoom but it was a very cumbersome process that only provided fragmented information.
All these extra steps and manual work took away from the valuable time Allegra and her team had to create and lead a workplace centered on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“We needed to get advanced as well, as the world is changing,” says Allegra.
So they decided to partner with Five to Nine, as Allegra puts it, “I feel like Five to Nine has become a one-stop shop for us.”
“Five to Nine eliminated so many steps I’m going from program to program. Now, I’m able to go into Five to Nine and do all I need to do within 10 minutes,” says Allegra, emphasizing how easy it is to send invitations across different channels, access guest list information, and collect event engagement survey data.
Allegra also mentions the increased visibility of events, “I love how Five to Nine has the capability of providing the calendar view. So I'm able to see which events I do have upcoming.”
When it comes to showing the impact of event programs, Allegra says, “my favorite part is the survey. So I'm able to pull that information on a CSV file and present this to my boss." “Before, we would just measure success by just saying how many people attended and just pulling those attendee numbers from Zoom. So that's really been the change because we're able to pull any type of data from Five to Nine and present that,” says Allegra.
After starting to use Five to Nine, Allegra also got very positive feedback from her colleagues at Webflow, “they just loved how it was very easy to navigate and how they were able to see the number and even the net promoter score. They just loved everything about it!”
“Five to Nine really changed my experience of planning,” says Allegra.
With Five to Nine, Allegra now has the capacity to create more impactful event programs that meet the changing needs of employees instead of following the status quo. By utilizing the analytics provided by Five to Nine, she can make more data-driven decisions and advocate for what employees truly want. “NPS score is the first thing I look at,” Allegra says, which gives her a better understanding of how successful an event is based on attendee feedback.
"One of the biggest goals that I wanted to achieve was to do virtual happy hours and our team was like that's never been done before, so we probably won't get that greater numbers in that. However, once we did our virtual happy hour and we received the surveys back, so many people commented that we should do more events like this. So having that information and providing that to our team or providing it to our leadership shows that people do want more virtual happy hours or magic shows or whatever the case, because we see the results here."
"When we were talking about measuring success, we are able to do that with Five to Nine now,” says Allegra.
The partnership between Five to Nine and Webflow is continuously growing as we learn from each other with a passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion. "I do love that this was probably the first company that I trusted and onboarded with and I would highly recommend it to anyone," says Allegra. "I love it that I do have a person that I can always reach out to for any type of questions" she adds.
Sharing a similar mission is also essential for both Five to Nine and Webflow. As Allegra mentions, "Five to Nine makes everything convenient and easy and at Webflow we try to make the websites easy and convenient for everyone. And it's just an easier tool to use for someone who is not even familiar with planning events. They're able to get onto the platform and create an invite without any issues.”
“Five to Nine just makes life simpler when you're planning any type of event."
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