I have heard many times this year from either clients or prospects that they are looking for a CRM and so a Marketing Automation platform isn’t really needed. So I went searching for reasons why this isn’t true and why it is better if they are together.

Once upon a time social media was primarily used as a way to connect with friends and family.  While it is certainly still used for that purpose, it has also evolved into a platform that organizations now use as a business tool.  The number of networks that one can engage on is constantly increasing.  With all the choices now available, it can be overwhelming having to decide which social channels would be the best fit for your organization.  It probably would nor be an effective allocation of time or money to attempt to be active on all the social channels now available.  So how do you know which ones to choose?  Knowing your membership is key.  Chandra Chakravarthi at Aptify has written an article explaining the 3 questions to ask before deciding which social networks are right for your organization.

Last week at ASAE’s 2016 Annual Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah , we announced a new version of our popular HighRoad U online educational website has launched. HighRoad U is an authorized provider of continuing education credits for the American Society of Association Executives’ Certified Association Executive (CAE) program. 

Facebook remains the king of social media with over a billion daily active users worldwide.  It remains the world's biggest social network. So it should be utilized as a part of any marketing strategy.  Check out 8 new and creative ways to reach your audience using Facebook in the Infographic below.

TheAGA needed an easier, smarter way to manage member email sends, one that allowed for message customization, the use of different templates, provided meaningful metrics and integrated fully with its AMS. These enhancements would allow the AGA to serve its members better while eliminating the need to constantly upload address files and manually run reports just to get basic metrics, like open rates. 

AGA chose HighRoad as the agency to put together a marketing stack that would allow them to connect their association management database to their email marketing platform. Following implementation of their integration, AGA's deliverability soared and their staff labor time fell. As AGA freed up time from pulling and uploading lists, the VP Communications got to thinking about how they could do more with email. He turned to his staff to collaborate on thinking about new ways to deliver highly relevant content to members so that anything extraneous fell by the wayside--an important consideration when serving a membership of physicians and scientists.

“One of my first projects for the AGA had to do with personalization,” said Aaron White, senior director of digital communications strategy for the AGA. “We were looking for ways to specialize better, narrowcast more. We’ve been sending the weekly enewsletter for 10 years, every Thursday, to every member, and every member got all the same content. So if you’re a member, for example, from Germany, you really don’t care about CMS rules for Medicare reimbursement – but you got that article because everyone has the same newsletter.”