Top challenges this summer are in membership

One of the key challenges that I've heard all summer surrounds membership. The two-fold challenge of how do we grow? and how can we do a better job of limiting year 1 to year 2 attrition seems to be the key focus area for many associations right now. We are spending a ton of time working with organizations to re-think this two-fold challenge and apply social marketing principles and digital marketing techniques to arrive at unique solutions. 

the secret challenges no one wants to admit

For most membership organizations, there are actually more than two problems. There is a very big elephant-in-the-room set of challenges that few organizations are comfortable discussing. Namely: 

1) How well do we currently know the consumption patterns and user behavior of our current membership?

2) How well do we really understand generational splits and tastes & preferences, cultural references and lifestyles of our membership?

3) How well are we spending the time we have to strategize on membership campaigns to help us overcome our challenges?

In today's world, people are barraged by ads everywhere they turn.  In response to this, people have become very good at ignoring them.  This is a big problem for most traditional marketing efforts.  Content marketing can solve this problem by providing your audience something they want to see, in a way that will keep their interest.  The infographic below shows us how to develop a solid content marketing strategy that will increase engagement with your audience and ultimately boost ROI.

Our HighRoad Analyst Brief series presented in conjunction with Demand Metric continues this month with a discussion about Marketing Performance Management.  Marketing Performance Management or MPM is the management of marketing resources through the use of analytics.  By analyzing your marketing processes to see what's working and what isn't, you can improve your marketing effectiveness and increase ROI.  When marketers can prove the impact their efforts are having on increased ROI, marketing budgets increase as well as the respect for and value of your team.  Demand Metric recently conducted a study on the current state of MPM.  As this is a follow up study to their 2015 MPM study, we can now share trends found in the data.  Join us Tuesday, August 9th at 12pm ET, as Demand Metric Chief Analyst, Jerry Rackley, discusses these trends and what companies are doing to master Marketing Performance Management.

Over the last decade SEO has changed a lot.  These changes include how people perform searches, how search engines index and rank pages, and how marketers can influence search engines to send web traffic to their site.  In fact, SEO has changed so much that many marketers aren't sure what works and what doesn't.  There is a lot of misinformation out there pertaining to SEO and best practices.  At HighRoadU, we have put together this toolkit to debunk the 17 most common myths and misinformation about how SEO works along with solid tips from some experts on how to get it right.  So if you find yourself uncertain at times on what you should or shouldn't be doing to improve your website's SEO, this toolkit may be exactly what you need.

Transactional email is a personalized email that is system triggered in response to some type of online transaction by a subscriber with your organization.  Transactional emails are an excellent way for you to increase engagement with your subscribers by offering them personalized content and offers based upon their previous transaction.  Multiple surveys have shown that this type of email is far more effective in engagement,  result in greater brand loyalty, and deliver higher ROI. Unfortunately, according to Experian, only 40% of all marketers are sending transactional email.  If you are in the 60% of marketers who are not yet utilizing this type of email, Kevin George at Marketo, has written a great article that you should read.  In the article, Kevin lists some best practices when developing a transactional email campaign and six types of transactional emails you can send to your subscribers, based on their unique behavior.

Inbound marketing is a relatively new marketing strategy that is designed to attract prospective customers to your organization.  In contrast, with traditional marketing you must go out and find them.  Through the use of digital platforms including social media, SEO, blogs, videos, and all other forms of content, prospective customers find you.  In this digital age, it just makes sense to incorporate inbound marketing into your overall marketing strategies.  The infographic below explains in more detail what inbound marketing is and why you should be using it.