How do you know if your association management strategies are working? How can you track the return on investment in marketing, content creation and IT infrastructure investment?

It all comes down to member engagement. Are you connecting with members and making them feel like they’re getting value for money?

Engagement is the ultimate metric of your efforts. It soars when your strategy is working; it plummets when you need to make changes.

The only problem is: how you actually go about assessing engagement?

You’ve put together the perfect marketing email for your association. You know it's going to land with a splash and set new records for click-throughs and conversions.

But what happens if the email never even gets to the recipient?

Delivery and deliverability are the two main factors in getting your email to its destination. Understanding how they work is key to a successful email campaign.

Why do people leave associations?

According to 37 percent of associations, the biggest problem is low engagement. Members simply fail to see the benefit of being part of the community, so they quit or just don’t bother to renew their membership. 

When an association installs new technology, they usually have two main goals: to acquire new members and to improve engagement and retention of existing members.

There's some debate about which platform is best for achieving these goals. Some people focus on upgrading their Association Management Software (AMS), while others favor adding to the kind of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that’s commonly used in commercial enterprise.

In association management, even seemingly small changes can have unexpected consequences.

For example, imagine your IT team upgrades a database so that your website runs faster. They make the change, test the website, and discover that everything has gone according to plan.

Imagine if you could run every decision your association makes by your members and prospective members before you take action?

You would increase engagement in every phase of membership. Your messages and events would never miss the mark. You would fill up your programs faster and reduce wasted time and money across your organization.

What if I told you that there was a way to close that gap between this dream and the reality of your team's resources and capacity?

This is where your association's marketing personas come in.

What Is AN ASSOCIATION Marketing Persona?

Marketing personas are semi-fictional representations of your association’s ideal members, based on a combination of market research and data about your existing members. Personas help you internalize the ideal members you’re trying to attract, understand your members (and prospective members) better, and relate to your members as real human beings.