Association Marketing

A few weeks ago, Jay Schwedelson, CEO of GURU Media Hub, hosted a session at the ASAE MMC & Tech Conference in Washington, DC. While originally planned as an email marketing session, he instead packed in insights on social media, video content, AI, audience engagement, and community building. His high-energy style, rapid-fire delivery, and pop culture references made it incredibly engaging and memorable.

The biggest takeaway?

Most associations don't have a member journey problem. 

Over time, organizations add welcome emails, onboarding campaigns, event promotions, committee invitations, newsletters, renewal reminders, community notifications, surveys, and follow-up messages. Each communication is always created with good intentions. Each workflow solves a specific need. But it's rare when we step back to ask a simple question:

What does this experience feel like from the member's perspective?

The result is often a member journey that isn't intentionally designed, but that has just simply evolved. 

One of the obvious and most critical objectives of any association is to retain membership. Retention is a key performance indicator that impacts brand reputation, member satisfaction, and conclusively—financial statements.

The issue, however, is that generational and cultural landscapes are constantly evolving—yielding new consumer-buying behaviors, content-consumption preferences, and desired communication channels. 

As market demand is rewired, businesses are all seeing a natural need for remodeling, restructuring, and/or rebranding so that they're lock in step with audience expectations and needs.

Associations, and certainly memberships, are no different. Naturally, member-based organizations have to be extraordinarily proactive when it comes to identifying and dissuading member exits.

Email is arguably the most popular and effective marketing tool for organizations to run campaigns and produce funnel conversions.

For associations, non-profits, and member-based groups—whose cornerstone value comes in the form of communication, content, and community—this 1:1 member communication is a must-have for marketers. 

The ability for members and customers to control the content that they receive, specifically through email, is invaluable to their satisfaction and your bottom line.

Cue the Email Preference Center (EPC)—a centralized location where users manage their communication preferences and topical interests.