Introduction
Think your association’s small staff doesn’t have time to personalize the member experience? Think again. Personalization is critically important to improving member marketing and delivering the type of experience members want. And it’s easier to do than you might think.
You’ve likely heard or read the term “personalization” a lot the past few years in webinars, articles, and conference presentations. It’s a hot topic in the world of marketing and customer experience.
These days, your association can’t afford to ignore personalization. Your members – like all of us – have come to expect highly-personalized experiences. And even though your association’s staff may be small, you’re still competing for your members’ attention with companies that take personalization to new heights.
That might sound intimidating. But personalization can be easier than you might think. Let’s look at four simple ways to use personalization to improve your member marketing and create a great member experience.
Four easy ways to use personalization to improve member marketing
1. Collect and use member data.
Use your association management software (AMS) to collect and analyze data about your members’ career stages, interests, and behaviors. You can then put it to use for list segmentation to provide them with the personalized communications and benefits they’re seeking.
Providing prospective members with the content and benefits they care about is an effective way to keep a steady stream of new members coming in your door. For example, the 2023 Association Trends Study by Community Brands shows that job opportunities and help with career advancement is particularly important to members who are in the early stages of their careers – your next generation of members. Sending career-focused content to these potential members shows that you understand those young professionals’ needs and that your association has valuable resources and benefits to offer them.
2. Set up a preference center.
Providing a personalized experience for your members requires giving them an easy way to let you know how and when they want to hear from you. A preference center can help.
A preference center is an online portal that gives your members an easy way to control what communications they receive from your organization and how often they receive them. It also gives you another way to gather more of the data you need to improve member communications.
3. Track and measure your personalization efforts.
Be sure to track and measure click-through rates on your email communications to ensure you’re connecting with your members. Take tracking and measurement event further by using reports and dashboard functionality in your AMS for insights into your member data so that you can see the impact your personalization efforts are having on membership growth, member engagement, member retention, and more.
4. Make sure your member data is secure.
For personalization to work well, it’s important to have a single place to keep your members’ data safe. That means it’s time to move away from spreadsheets and housing member data in multiple systems. When your member data is located in many different places and staff members are sending spreadsheets back and forth, it’s difficult to collect and share data safely.
Moving your member data and management into an AMS system puts your member data in one, secure place. Be sure your AMS offers the following functionality to protect your member data and reduce risk:
- Transparency into security and performance status
- Best practices for data security, such as multi-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access and tokenization for credit card payments
- Data recovery to safeguard your data from data storage errors, catastrophic failures, and everything in between
- Compliance certifications to validate security
Make sure your members know that you have data privacy and security standards and precautions in place. Explain how the information you collect will be used for a better and more personalized experience, and your members in turn are more likely to trust you. That trust will then translate into more effective membership marketing, a better member experience, and ultimately, greater member loyalty.
