Show your association’s board how technology can boost your membership marketing

Having the right technology in place can streamline, and improve the overall effectiveness of, your membership marketing efforts.   

Here are two steps for helping your board of directors see the value of investing in all-in-one association management software. 

As an association professional, you know that membership marketing is vitally important to the ongoing success of your organization. And with a small staff, you probably also recognize the importance of having the right technology in place to streamline your membership marketing efforts.   

But you can’t move forward with the purchase of new membership management software without first convincing your board that it’s time to invest. 

Here are two steps for getting your board on board with a new association management software (AMS) purchase: 

Explain your goals and challenges.

Your board doesn’t always see your staff’s day-to-day challenges. So, remind them of your membership goals, and help them to understand some of the obstacles you face in reaching those goals.

For example, you might say: 

• It’s a struggle to recruit new members. Sending recruiting email messages is time consuming, taking up to X hours per email to segment our list and build, test, and send an email.
• Our member retention efforts are limited by our technology. We are unable to execute on innovative member engagement ideas, such as assigning an online member community “buddy” to new members to help welcome them to our organization and make them feel at home so they’ll stick around.
• Many of our day-to-day member management efforts are highly manual and time-consuming. We spend significant time on manual processes that we could be spending on developing programs that deliver member value, which in turn would lead to increased membership growth and retention.

Explain how an all-in-one AMS solution can help.

Once your board understands some of the challenges your team faces, let them know how technology can help. For example, here are some ways that YourMembership AMS by Community Brands can help your association recruit, engage, and retain members:

• Manage member and non-member lists. YourMembership gives you a central location to collect and track member (and non-member) data, including contact information and multi-tiered membership levels. It even lets you give members the ability to manage their own information through an online portal – giving them a modern online experience and saving your staff time.
• Create appealing, mobile-friendly online communications to attract new members. YourMembership AMS includes a content management system with mobile-responsive layouts and an easy-to-use editor tool so you can quickly build emails, membership forms, and web pages that will work and look great on mobile devices.
• Send targeted member recruitment and engagement emails. Email campaign management functionality in YourMembership AMS allows you to quickly and easily create email lists and send targeted email communications based on a variety of member properties. YourMembership also gives you an easy-to-use interface to build automated workflows that simplify and streamline day-to-day operations such as sending membership process-related emails.  
• Make it easier for members to join and renew. For example, using YourMembership, you can easily: 
  • Set up budget-friendly installment dues payment options for new and renewing members.
  • Offer non-members the convenience of paying for membership as part of the event registration process.
  • Provide the option to automatically renew membership, with the membership fee charged to the member’s credit card. 
• Set up an online member community to engage members. YourMembership includes the capabilities you need to easily set up an online member community. In your community, members can interact with each other and your organization, share ideas, and access valuable member benefits and content.
• Send member surveys to gain valuable member feedback. YourMembership has survey functionality built in, making it easy to build and send targeted surveys and get feedback, so you can continue to improve your recruitment and engagement efforts.
• Gain insights that help to make more data-driven decisions. Dashboards and advanced reporting in YourMembership give your staff visibility into member growth, retention rates, member engagement, and more. These insights can help you understand what’s working and what’s not as well as spot trends and uncover opportunities to improve your membership marketing.

As a membership-based organization, your association must have the right technology to support your goals, address challenges, and ultimately provide a member experience that attracts members and keeps them around for years to come.  

Learn more about how YourMembership AMS can help your organization recruit, engage, and retain members so that you can get your board on board with an investment in the technology you need to succeed: Explore YourMembership.  

Tirrah Switzer, Product Marketing Director, Community Brands