Fully leverage marketing automation platforms to track engagement, predict attrition, and improve member experiences.
Audit and refine conversion tracking every six months to ensure accurate ROI measurement.
Personalize website content to meet the needs of different member types and improve conversions.
Regularly update and refine messaging to communicate your core benefits with maximum impact.
Key strategies to boost your association’s marketing impact
Associations play a crucial role in bringing together like-minded individuals, promoting collective interests, and advancing causes. But they often face unique challenges in maintaining member engagement, tracking advertising performance, optimizing their website for conversions, and effectively communicating their core benefits.
These four key strategies can help drive your association's success by maximizing engagement, ROI, and user experience.
1. Harness the power of marketing automation platforms
Marketing automation platforms are an indispensable tool for associations that often remain underutilized despite their immense potential. We've observed a growing trend among associations adopting sophisticated marketing automation systems like HubSpot, Pardot, and Marketo. Yet they utilize only a fraction of the features they’ve invested in—typically just 20 to 30%.
These platforms have evolved beyond basic email drip campaigns and rudimentary automation. When properly configured, they offer invaluable insights into member and non-member engagement by tracking digital interactions across your website, member communities, and other digital activities. This data can be harnessed to predict attrition, enhance engagement, and provide a better association experience.
In an era where everyone is tasked with doing more with fewer resources, the ability to demonstrate a clear return on investment for advertising efforts is paramount. Surprisingly, many associations neglect or inadequately implement conversion tracking, which can lead to misinformed decisions and poor advertising performance. Further, associations contend with complex tracking requirements, including renewals, new memberships, event registrations, and more. The intricacies involved make precise conversion tracking crucial.
We recommend revisiting your conversion tracking every six months to ensure it aligns with your goals. Performing test purchases and scrutinizing your current conversion goals can help ensure that they accurately reflect user actions. This proactive approach can save your association money and provide insights into the effectiveness of your strategies.
Associations typically serve a wide variety of member types, so your website must be able to support each member’s unique journey. Many content management systems (CMS) have built-in personalization features that often go underutilized. These features can significantly impact user experience and conversion rates.
Begin with modest changes, such as customizing the text on calls-to-action (CTAs) or adjusting testimonials based on a user's previous browsing behavior. This will help create a more engaging and tailored user experience. We recommend adopting the crawl, walk, run approach. Start with simpler adjustments and gradually introduce more advanced tactics to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
While the world evolves rapidly, the core benefits of your association often remain relatively constant. What also remains unchanged is the importance of effectively communicating these benefits to your audience. Conducting a messaging audit can help you pinpoint the most potent messages that resonate with members, non-members, and prospects.
Consider this: When was the last time you revamped your messaging to articulate the value of membership or updated your positioning as to why your continuing education stands out compared to discount alternatives?
A message audit can help you pinpoint the top-converting messages that resonate with your target audience. By understanding what appeals to them, you can tailor all your outreach communication for maximum impact.
