We have released our 2016 State Of Digital Marketing In Associations report.  In this benchmark report non-profit organizations can see how they compare to other non-profits in their digital marketing efforts.  This is our third annual digital marketing report in a row, so in addition we also have trend data to share.  Learn how your organization compares to other non-profits as Demand Metric Chief Analyst Jerry Rackley and our own CMO Suzanne Carawan discuss the results of this groundbreaking report.  If you missed this Analyst Brief Webinar it's not too late.  It is always available On-Demand at HighRoad U.

If you haven't yet viewed the Report, please take a look!

I'm either proud or ashamed (on any given day it varies) to say that I've been in and out of the association world for about 20 years so I have a certain longitudinal perspective on trends and certainly, on digital technology adoption. I worked at National League for Nursing way back in 1996 while I was studying at Columbia in an admin role and the only reason we had a computer was for email.  Over the course of twenty years, I was here for the advent of websites moving from brochureware to content management systems and was on the front wave when social media and mobile hit.

I've worked on every type of software product that associations use and how to best apply these to business challenges. What that translates into is hundreds of completed projects and probably more that weren't completed because of shifting priorities, summer Fridays off and slashed budgets. Hundreds? Yes, I mean hundreds and that probably equates to thousands of meetings spent consulting with associations cross-departmentally to understand how their normal course of business can translate to digital, how digital can be used to promote, measure and increase their brand reach and how workflow processes change when digital is central to the process.

So here we are in 2016 and I'm fascinated to see that there is a new trend emerging that is busting up the predominant philosophy that has governed association management thinking for the last 20 years:

Stop the do-it-yourself (DIY) madness and outsource the work.

If you’re planning on joining us in person or virtually for our Marketing Automation Workshop tomorrow, here are a couple of things to consider while Adam and I share our insights:

As marketers our goal is to generate a steady stream of high quality leads which will in turn produce greater revenue.  The infographic below shows how marketing automation can help us achieve this.

Marketers are busy people.  It seems you can never get everything done on your to-do list.  There is a solution and that solution is marketing automation.  Marketing automation is software that helps you execute your tasks in a faster and more efficient way.  In addition, marketing automation allows you to personalize your marketing efforts in order to generate better quality leads.  But once you have the software how do you use it to best serve your needs and to deliver the results you're looking for?  We found this article at Hubspot "What Is Marketing Automation-A Beginner's Guide".  Written by Alyssa Rimmer, the article explains in greater detail what marketing automation is and how to effectively use it.

You want to keep track of the content you have on your website. It is important that you have a summary of each of the details regarding your online content strategy.  We created the Web Content Audit Tool to help you audit your content strategy and determine what needs to be created, modified, or updated. This tool enables you to enter the type of content, number of views, location, target audience, and more. This data will then be presented to you in an easy-to-read and share format. This is a great organizational tool that will help you understand and keep inventory of your current web content moving forward.