In the hallways and around meeting tables, I’ve heard a lot of colleagues admit that Great Ideas is fast becoming their “go to” ASAE conference. Overwhelmed by the size of the Annual Conference or just wanting to have a more intimate and creative meeting, many association professionals are choosing Great Ideas as their exclusive education and networking event. I can appreciate this shift in thinking; Great Ideas has always been one of my favorite conferences, and 2012 was no exception.
This year, I had a chance to present on the very idea of community – in this case, the frequent topic of online community. As Amanda Adolph, former Vice President at the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) and a long-time McKinley client described it, “building a social networking community is easy; creating a community can be challenging.” Amanda and I shared the story of how AGB created an online networking community that grew 20% in one month and talked about the three pivotal events that led to the community’s rapid expansion and success. You can see more by reading through our slides. Or please be in touch if you’d like to talk more about the AGB community.
~ Post by Shelley Sanner, Managing Consultant
In my previous post on membership communications, we looked at the challenges associations face in breaking through “the clutter” to get the attention of their members. While professionals are inundated with messages from every corner of their lives, successful associations have developed ways to increase the likelihood that their communications will be noticed. In my experience, it starts with a disciplined methodology.
- Set communications objectives/goals to help define the desired outcome of a specific communication or marketing campaign. This will inform decisions about defining the target audience(s), messaging, and tactics, and it will help establish clear expectations for an association’s efforts.
- Develop integrated marketing communications plans to translate objectives into
a “game plan” that allows you to be proactive in executing stand-alone communications or campaigns. Defining audiences, messages, channels, and timing helps increase the probability for success and ensures that different tactics can complement each other. It also establishes “owners” for the different marketing activities.
- Assign a “gatekeeper” to oversee the timing of distributing communications to members. This staff member or department can also review communications content from various program areas to provide the association guidance on reducing redundancy and increasing cross-promotion opportunities. Having this filter is particularly critical for managing email and social media and avoiding communication overload.
- Segment audiences and tailor messages to improve the likelihood that communications will resonate with the intended recipients. You want your members and non-members to associate communications from your association with being relevant and value-adding. There is a positive correlation between segmenting and tailoring messaging accordingly with open and click-through rates.
- Test and control groups provide the opportunity to measure the effectiveness of subject lines, content, links, timing of emails/postings, etc, in electronic and direct mail communications. Avoid the trap of doing the same thing over and over, even when you have had a successful campaign.
- Analysis and reporting is critical for measuring the success of communications goals. This will help determine what is /is not working and inform making adjustments to campaigns. Most associations’ databases and email systems have reporting capabilities that the IT team can tap into and capture data for campaigns. Website tools, such as Google analytics, are also available. It is critical to establish expectations with departments to capture, translate and report out on this data – or, assign this responsibility to a designated staff member to support all departments.
Keep in mind that including all of these elements versus picking and choosing is what makes a disciplined approach effective. What is your association doing that works? Tell us about your successes with communication and the approach that has worked for you.
~ Post by Tania Galarza, Managing Consultant
Research on email marketing trends note that more than half of an individual’s Inbox is comprised of alerts and notifications. What does this mean for associations? This is a reminder that we are competing with a variety of sources vying for our members’ attention. It also means that associations are challenged to make their communications stand out.
McKinley recently hosted a discussion with a small group of our clients to tackle the question, “How do you break through the growing communications clutter?” Of most concern to association execs is being top of mind for members when they are in need of a benefit, product or service that the association can deliver. Our discussion focused on the following obstacles that may prevent your communications from receiving members’ full attention:
- Competing priorities in the association – Demand from departments and volunteer leaders to promote their programs, services or initiatives through unique communications results in an internal competition for members’ attention. So many communications are being pushed out that there is a lack of understanding of the overall volume being sent to members by the association. As volume increases, communications are more likely to be ignored by recipients.
- Lack of a strategy –Without a strategy in place and an understanding of how audiences use social media channels, posts made to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn tend to have a marketing feel and be more of a “push” of information that doesn’t invite participation. This can turn off followers.
- Lack of goals and measurements – What does success look like? If communications goals and objectives are not clearly defined, it becomes difficult to adjust if efforts are not translating into results, such as member participation. We keep doing the same thing, but expecting a different outcome.
- Technology constraints – Without the right technology in place to support an effective member database, it is difficult to apply a strategic approach to targeted communications. The inability to capture and track profile and behavioral information specific to a member or prospect leaves you with “one-size-fits-all” communications.
Understanding and addressing the obstacles in the way of producing effective communications is a great first step to getting you closer to your members anticipating rather than disregarding your emails and posts. Stay tuned for a future post outlining a disciplined methodology for increasing communications effectiveness.
~ Post by Tania Galarza, Managing Consultant
