Membership

Short, Low-Cost Videos Show Members Benefits—and Value

Sometimes if you can see how to do something, it makes it much easier. The American Concrete Institute wanted to make sure its members understood their benefits and how to access them. Short, inexpensive, how-to videos were the answer.

Everyone has become a lot more proficient in the virtual world—whether they wanted to or not. Realizing that, the American Concrete Institute’s marketing team, in concert with its membership team, saw a way to connect new, prospective, and longtime members with ACI benefits using short, one- to two-minute whiteboard videos.

“As membership and marketing professionals, we think the longer the list of benefits the better,” said Kevin Mlutkowski, director of marketing at ACI. But the reality for members is that knowing what those benefits are and how to take advantage of them is not always as straightforward as it should be.

The ACI team wanted to make it as simple as possible. Their solution: They would walk members through what is sometimes a multistep process with short videos people can watch at their own pace. The whiteboard videos take members through the benefit options and show them how to navigate different sections of ACI’s website where benefits can be accessed.

“Our goal is to have members understand what’s available to them,” Mlutkowski said.

They also knew they wanted to do a better job with member onboarding, and so they built an automated email campaign of eight different messages and sent them to new members throughout the first 35 days of their membership. Many of those email messages had the whiteboard videos embedded in them to make it as easy as possible for new members to learn about ACI.

Important to the process was breaking out the estimated costs for different types of videos made it easier for them to budget effectively. The videos ACI produces range from commercial-quality promotional ones, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, to the short whiteboard videos, which start at around $1,000.

The construction industry is an essential business, Mlutkowski said, even in a pandemic, and members are reporting they are busier now than they have ever been. “There’s a huge demand for our content and resources,” he said, which ACI expects to continue into next year. So, in January, ACI will roll out new member benefits: All members will have access to all ACI webinars, plus all recorded and on-demand courses, at no cost. Members will also be able to access all technical digital research published through ACI’s symposiums for free.

The team is now finalizing a new whiteboard video that will walk members through those three new benefits and how they fit into existing programs, Mlutkowski said.

“We’re really providing members with the knowledge they need to succeed,” he said. “And the videos make it easier to communicate that value to members.”

What strategies are you using to help members make the most of their benefits? Please share in the comments or send me an email.

(GeorgeManga/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images Plus)

Lisa Boylan

By Lisa Boylan

Lisa Boylan is a senior editor of Associations Now. MORE

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