This time of year feels like one big Hallo-Giving-Mas-New-Year holiday; and by that we mean it will be a new year before we can finish our pumpkin spiced lattes. And because Christmas ornaments have been out at Target since August, we think it’s fair to start planning for 2018.

There’s still time to get your promotional email messaging out for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to Forbes, there was a 15.2% bump in online sales in 2016 versus 2015 and that trend is expected to continue. To go even further, 40% of sales occurred on a mobile device. What does this mean for associations? Associations should be looking closely at how each touchpoint on a mobile device and online overall is experienced across all digital properties during the buyer’s journey. Here are a few key trends to watch out for and how associations should respond so they don’t miss out on big opportunities.

With any good omni-channel marketing campaign there is the planning stage, execution stage, and evaluation stage. As we near the end of the year, executing on our plan for 2017, it is interesting to begin to evaluate how well we responded to key trends for 2017. From last year’s Forbes article on 2017 Trends, I have pulled out the topics most relevant for associations and wrote in questions to ask and reflect on as an organization. Starting well before winter should help to gain insight for planning and preparing for new trends to account for in 2018.

When thinking about email, there is a lot of talk about the right platform, with the right connector (or integration), and the project involved for migrating onto a new platform. That leaves little time and conversations for the design of the email template. For all the thought that goes into your brand look and feel or a new website, there seems to be a gap when it comes to designing for email. For the non-designer, wearer-of-many-hats, association professional, these tips are designed to quickly make you the expert when it comes to designing (or collaborating) on your next email template.

You may have heard that SEO (search engine optimization) is the new salesperson, but we could also make the case for why personalization is the new sales-person. While SEO is the practice of optimizing content for search engines to serve your site ideally on the front page of the search engine results page (SERPs), personalization goes one step farther while serving custom experiences to your potential leads and searchers.

This message should make you take notice: Instagram has surpassed 700M users as of June 2017 and is growing faster than ever before. The social site also boasts that of those 700M users, 60% are daily users. The stories alone draw over 200M active daily users. If your top initiative this year as an association is to draw the millennial crowd, Instagram is looking like a big party of young potential professionals wanting to share on a kinder site (more on that later).