How Your Association Can Become an Active Participant in the Modern Economy

“The association landscape is always changing”. This statement permeates association conferences, articles, and webinars led by our peers and thought leaders. It is a true statement, but it is also inherently flawed. Much like we all have been breaking down silos in our workplaces across all industries, we must not silo the association industry by itself. We do not exist in a bubble, especially with how connected all of us are to each other and our world. Associations, for better (and for worse) are a part of the modern service economy. 

Amazon, Uber, Netflix, Postmates, Spotify, and others have disrupted markets and set new expectations for every customer interaction. Because associations are compared—fairly or not—to that standard, we can’t continue operating in our silo. So how do you stand out and compete for your members’ and customers’ attention?

Personalization Is More Than Just “Hi [NAME]”

Leveraging your members’ data to provide them more tailored service isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s a service industry standard. When your members log in to your website, what do they see? If it’s all the same thing, begin thinking about what personalization means to you as an association exec.

To me, it means my state and chapter leadership sees links to their resources without having to click anywhere else. That if you’ve taken a course in our LMS recently, we can email you when a similar new course is released. That if you have attended our annual conference this year, your CE transcript is on your homepage. Yes, your homepage. With every interaction, purchase, profile update, and registration, your members are telling you more about their needs and how to better meet them. Show that you’re listening through personalization.

Leveraging your members’ data to provide them more tailored service isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s a service industry standard.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Association membership has tended to be simplistic and similar across industries. You have one category where more than 80 percent of your members fall, you have a student category that often isn’t taken seriously, and you have emeritus and/or lifetime category. Meanwhile, in the rest of the service economy, newspapers have built multiple new subscription models to survive: freemium, digital subscriptions, partial print subscriptions, and the traditional yet waning full print. These scale up in price from “free for a little bit” to “full price for everything”.

Association membership models need to innovate their way out of the common “all or nothing” approach. How much does delivering your benefits cost? How much can you deliver digitally? What are your top reasons (besides cost) that members aren’t renewing? Consider these questions and their implications to determine if your association could use a more dynamic model to meet a more nuanced set of needs.

Who Aren’t Your Customers?

There’s always a focus on retention because everyone knows it’s easier (and cheaper) to keep a customer than to win a new one, but you shouldn’t stop exploring new markets. Pipelines for new customers don’t just appear; they must be built deliberately through research and hard work.

As you conduct your member needs assessment, actively incentivize and recruit former and “never” members to get insights on their needs. Patterns found there can shine a light on a new market—or a market with needs you are already meeting but just not reaching. You should also look to who the decision makers are for purchasing memberships and services. Not every association is marketing or communicating to those decision makers, who aren’t always the member themselves.

And don’t discount industry data; if your member demographics are dramatically different than the professional landscape, there’s an opportunity to be had. You may not have the resources to tackle every opportunity at once, but strategic awareness will help you focus your limited resources.

Today’s leading companies are serving millions of customers while also continually looking for new markets and ways to improve. Associations should be no different. Just because we aren’t managing multibillion-dollar organizations doesn’t mean we can’t be innovative and focused more granularly on value and experience for our members, while exploring ways to broaden our impact. Your members want to see their organization putting them front and center. Create opportunities for those “you-centric” moments without taking your eyes off the future. Today’s member and customer expects both.