Association Marketing

Every year, associations and nonprofits clamor to reinvent their marketing, programming, and member experience strategies. And while the table always turns with new technologies and approaches, in 2023 and beyond, new audiences are also entering the mix. 

That's right. Gen Z is slowly working its way into the workplace and the buying market. In fact, according to World Economic Forum, by 2025, it's expected that Gen Z will be taking up 27% of this space.

There's no question that individual and societal experiences have shaped Gen Z. Significant events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and recent advocacy movements like Black Lives Matter, gun reform, and climate change have formulated the values of this new generation. 

Their social consciousness, thrifty, and tech-savvy priorities are attributes that associations need to take into account when building plans to drum up new membership, increase engagement, and even recruit their own new employees.

It's a given that the "one-size-fits-all" approach isn't applicable here. Organizations need tailored approaches and tools that deliver the right content in the right way to this high impact group. 

In a recent presentation at the Marketing Membership and Communications Convention (MMCC) hosted by the ASAE Center for Association Leadership, two of HighRoad's very own senior digital advisors, Nicole Crilley and Emily Nash, spoke on the topic of optimizing marketing campaigns for results. 

They presented to a captive audience of association marketers, program managers, and other professionals, looking to modernize the way they connect with their members and search for new ones. Here's a summary of their presentation. 

Marketing planning can be exciting. It's often the time where new ideas get thrown on the table, innovative and analytical thinking converge, and rough concepts get fully baked. 

What's not fun—seeing campaigns and approaches flop, particularly when so much thought, creativity, and goal intention went into them.