Naylor released their 2020 Association Communications Benchmark Report this week and here are a couple of my observations. (Forewarning: my observations are highly subjective to gauging member needs, member engagement, personalization of communications, and Voice of the Member.)
Oh, and lots of charts and graphs... my kind of report.
Here's the first thing that caught my eye:
There's no doubt that in small numbers, face to face interaction works. But, it's not practical for large associations... or even mid-sized associations. You can't possibly keep your finger on the pulse of every member and their needs over time.
So we're forced to segment our membership and immediately we lose relevance. As soon as you group a person with dozens, hundreds or thousands of other members, you've lost a grip on their particular needs.
Surveys are worse. We get 10% of our most active members to answer questions and we extrapolate that out to the other 90% to fill in the gaps. Now, we've taken a snapshot in time (usually every few years) and based everyones needs on the few that answered the survey. And, that's if you actually DO ANYTHING with the insight.
This is exactly the gap we're trying to fill at PropFuel. It's the gap here of how you can identify needs at scale, yet at the individual level, and on a regular basis.
Our proprietary process of "Ask, Capture and Act" is the key to Intelligent Engagement. Let me know if you want to talk more about this. I can show you how many of our clients are using this process to acquire new members, drive retention and regain lapsed members.
Here's the other thing that caught my eye:
I love that marketing automation and email marketing are growing in popularity. This shows me that member-based organizations are trying to get smarter in how they email. How do you create more relevance in your email interaction with members?
What most Marketing Automation and Email Marketing systems don't allow you to do easily is Ask a question, Capture the member's need, and Act on it immediately. With marketing automation we're sending content with the expectation that we already know what the member needs. Most of the time, it's a guessing game.
This is where Intelligent Engagement is working well. Start with a question which leads to capturing enough information to lead them to a highly relevant action.
Let me know if you want to discuss Intelligent Engagement further - dave@propfuel.com.
