Speaking to Generic George or Marketing Mary?

I'm happy to see that our association market is starting to pick up the thread on using personas to grow and focus. Personas are a great tool for getting into the right mindset (#1 issue in associations that are holding them back from growing in my professional opinion) of modern marketing. They are also great at aligning departments to get over internal egos that are causing your communications to come off as greedy.

Greedy? Yes. (Good Girl Voice: "That seems harsh, Suzanne. Maybe you should soften it so that the association marketer doesn't cry". Practical Marketer Voice: "But association marketers agree with this--they are frustrated that the program heads and C -Suite don't get this so I should say it because someone needs to Do the Right Thing and force the dialogue). 

Greedy. Most association communications--especially email--come off as greedy in 2015.

I look at association's digital marketing portfolios all the time and the vast majority of the time, the communications are speaking to a persona I have dubbed Generic George. We don't seem to like or respect Generic George very much because we constantly are telling him what to do. Our emails scream commands even if we think we're using personalization to make it more personal (in fact, we're making a mockery of the idea of personalization). Our emails read like this:

• Hi George, You need to register now and save $500 because we need the money in the door upfront to cover our costs of the event because we're trying to make money
• Dear George, You need to renew now because we need your money and stat to continue our claim of having 15,000 members
• Hey George, You didn't register yet and we're getting pretty irritated that you haven't done what we said so we're going to now send more email as we get closer to the date
• George: You must be a total dumbass because we told you that you were to register and renew and you haven't done it. Do you not get it that our value is in our education and networking? Do you not see how valuable this communication is??? (George, please see the one article in email newsletter that pertains to our industry that we put in there to hide the fact that we're using email to sell to you).

The problem with most association email portfolios is that they are a bunch of sales promotions that don't even contain really pretty images, coupons or offers for manicures, last-minute Caribbean vacations or Thai food. Most association email translates as a generic, low budget take on Groupon.

And why is this? Well, it's because we are talking to Generic George who really doesn't have an identity, whom we really don't know and who we are terrified of offending (which given that we don't know George seems a little preposterous that we might offend him because we don't know how George ticks). We have somehow taken the legal concept of the Reasonable Person and applied it to our Generic George idea, but then forgot about the "Man" part and have reduced George to that of a Reasonable Child.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps Generic George is a child to your association and we are just parenting by providing the direction we think he should take that will be best and doing this via email. Now we are truly committing Crimes Against Email because we've taken a very intimate communication channel and are sending a generic passive aggressive, impersonal command to an individual and expecting that they respond willingly, warmly and happily.

(Snarky Internal Gen X Voice: And we wonder why we don't have member engagement! DOH!)

On top of this, now we say we need to grow because we need to bypass Gen X and go for the Mighty Millennials. Okay. So here's the question: this is going to be a rock solid plan as long as Millennials respond to a Generic George approach (Snarky Internal Gen X Voice reminds you that perhaps you should also target Gen X since we have been in workforce for 20 years and perhaps have the money to spend on membership...just sayin').

Let's look around for examples that today's audience likes to be treated like Generic George.

Here's the wall that you see when you walk into HubSpot. The personal Face Wall shows all of their employees and constantly cycles through to pull out one individual at a time and showcase them because as our host Repcor explained, "HubSpot's culture is critical and we want every employee to see him/herself on the Wall and see how important they are individually and to the company". As a matter of fact, HubSpot has a Director of Culture to ensure that they are keeping the balance between individual-to-entity and ensuring that everyone feels tied in & valued.

Not only would the Face Wall idea be a total hit at an association's annual conference, (Generic George practitioners would automatically shoot this idea down due to cost, what if we offend someone or don't include them, what if someone doesn't want their photo shown and on and on so that no one gets to do anything fun because of the one dumbass kid that nicked their finger while buckling their school safety patrol belt in 4th grade and caused everyone now to have nick-free plastic buckles to seemingly protect the 99% of non-dumbass kids who never had an issue with the original metal clasp. Sorry, Snarky Internal Gen X Voice got out again), but this is a great example of how email is supposed to make you feel when you open it. 

Email is personal. It's supposed to be a safe place where it's just the brand and the recipient. You should be able to hear the email talking to you in your head and if you're getting a Generic George email, you are hearing your association that you are paying to constantly chastise you and make you feel bad about yourself for all the things you're not doing.

No wonder email open rates are going down for most associations. You're not only treating me like a Generic George, but now I realize that you don't know me AND we're in a bad relationship where you're harassing me for what I'm not doing all the time.

Time for Plan B. We need a Hail Mary or at minimum, a Marketing Mary.

Marketing Mary is the persona that HubSpot uses and around which they've built their $1B business. Marketing Mary governs how they communicate, what they offer, how they deliver the offer and how they chart their future course. The staff--everyone on that Face Wall-knows and understands Mary. When they are writing, when they are designing, when they are speaking, they are thinking about Mary. They've created a living persona of what Mary drives, eats, buys, likes, dislikes and strives to accomplish. They work to be proactive--to take care of Mary and give things to Mary that make her life easier, better, safer, more exciting and above all, that make Mary feel great about Mary. Mary likes this. Mary wants to keep HubSpot around because they've become her ally. They have her back. They are not going to chastise Mary or focus on what Mary is not doing. Instead, they are going to continuously offer help and support and continuous optimism for improvement.

Giving? Yes.

The power of Marketing Mary is that it helps the whole association get into a mindset of giving and breaks the greedy mentality of "put my offer in this week's email because I need new registrants/buyers/members/volunteers" and moves the email dialogue to true contextual personalization of "here's content that is going to help you be a better you today". No pressure to use it or not use it, we're just here to coach and support you to greatness.

The email comes. Sigh! Marketing Mary doesn't delete it. She saves it to open when she has more time to savor the goodness like she does when she gets her Food & Wine magazine, or she opens and glances noting what she needs now or later. In either case, she trusts it. She trusts that the email you sent contains value for her time. You are no longer a paper offer in the Val-U-Pack mailer that gets tossed. You are now valued because she know Mary.