Welcome to Norfolk!

For us digital marketers, the standout session on the first day of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Council of Engineering & Scientific Society Executives (CESSE) was a case study on marketing automation.

Google announced the release of Google Tag Manager at eMetrics in Boston back in 2012 to provide its own version of tag management software. Numerous companies have been providing this type of software for a fee. However, with the release of a free tag manager tool, you can tackle these concepts without cost to your association.

Now, let’s get acquainted with Google Tag Manager.

Before I worked at HighRoad, I thought of Canada as a big,friendly neighbor to the north. Full of wonderful cities, clean air and big skies with adorable people who have the uncanny ability to be incredibly nice while being tough as nails in a fight. My sons play a bunch of Canadian teams in their lacrosse lives and even there you can find a dad who is throwing out an even keel "C'mon ref, let 'em play. They're just boys. Keep it up, Scotty!" while his gargantuan son Scotty flattens the American kid with an illegal body check and puts one on net. Yes, I love Canada and always have. I'm the only kid I know from Washington, DC that convinced my parents to take me to Canada to look for colleges and then, later in life, ended up with a BFF from Montreal who finally taught me that the reason I'm cold in winter is that Washingtonians continue to wear cotton which is a laughable fabric to Canadians.

All association marketers want members to read, or at the very least skim, their emails. Here are five things you can focus on to make yours better.

• Know your audience. Get your stats. How many of your members are opening on mobile vs. desktop? Design accordingly.
• Have clear calls to action. If you want members to register, have a register button. If you want members to read a white paper, your link text should say "Read the white paper about disappearing bees!" Never make them try to hard to do what you want them to do!

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.

I live in DC and despite being a very powerful world capital with no end to diversity, I still have to fight the Political Correctness Good Girl Voices that tell me we can look something straight in the face and pretend we don't see it. In light of this week's NAACP Spokane story whereby the leader chose to be black, I have to ask: when are we comfortable enough to get real about diversity, race and being able to acknowledge reality? I think the interpretation and handling of diversity is of particular importance to associations as they need to quickly define (redefine?) the critical question:

What is Reality?

Is your organization being real about the state of your target growth populations? Are you looking at the impact of culture on future member's tastes and preferences? Are you understanding the level of diversity and how much impact the fusion of cultures has had on mainstream America?