With 4 to 6 billion video views a day, Snapchat is shoring up to be the fastest growing social media network in the world.  A hot topic and popular session at ASAE's Marketing, Membership and Communication Conference, lead by Nicholas Mattar, Director of Marketing at the Detroit Regional Chamber discussed this very fact. Mattar walked attendees through a fun and interactive learning lab session on Snapchat, offering a tutorial for new users, and discussing best practices. By integrating Snapchat into your organizations larger social media strategy, Mattar articulates that you will be able to increase brand awareness while also showing tangible revenue on investment to stakeholders.

As mentioned in my previous blog, Why We Love Metrics (And You Should, Too!), I am back to talk more about metrics! In case you missed it, metrics can provide associations with a valuable measuring tool to gain member insight for future action and implementation. Metrics can measure progress, quality, efficiency, performances, and more. In order to group metrics and turn them into insights, a framework gives a baseline on how to do so. The framework goes as follows; awareness, participation, engagement, advocacy. This gives organizations the ability to track and nurture users and better understand how they are interacting, and therefore, how to respond in an appropriate manner.

Metrics are a key component of data-driven marketing as they provide a standard and consistent way to measure, understand, and track marketing data and results. They track key performances, progress, quality, efficacy, efficiency, and more. When measuring metrics it is important to establish a baseline in order to effectively analyze the information you are gathering. In order to measure effectiveness and growth, a baseline must be in place to do so. It is also important to measure consistently. Most associations measure monthly or quarterly, looking for insights, patterns, outliers, and more. Another key part of metrics is identifying a KPI, or a key performance indicator. KPI’s demonstrate growth and opportunity, as well as success. KPI’s can reflect goals, number of views, values of data, and more.

The common goal of an association’s marketing efforts is member engagement; however, the marketing approach that produces the most member engagement is the most difficult to execute. So, we uncovered some interesting insights through our annual Demand Metric marketing survey to learn more about event marketing and associations.