In a few weeks I’ll be speaking at ASAE’s Marketing, Membership & Communications Conference. My session will be on leveraging your organization’s AMS to improve marketing and communications efforts.
One of the points I’m going to touch on is the need for associations to measure member engagement by tracking all the different channels that members can engage with the association (e.g., membership, committee service, speaking, etc.) and “weighting” those activities in order to identify your strongest (and weakest) members and customers. I’ll discuss how some associations are doing this and how more associations should be doing it.
So I was very pleased to learn this week (during demos with one of my clients) that at least two association management software vendors (ACGI and Avectra) have now “baked” this type of weighting directly into their respective AMS products. In similar manner, both are tracking all the transactions that occur within the database and then “scoring” those transactions based on weighting provided by the association.
This is very cool and VERY powerful functionality. Every smart marketer knows that your best customers are the ones you need to market to the most. And defining “best customer” is different for different associations. These kinds of scoring tools will go a long way toward identifying best customers and helping us to communicate and market more effectively.
Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.
Thanks for touching on such an timely topic.
Today, it’s so important to address two key sides to the complete association management system: delivering value to members (via social networking) and gaining enhanced operational efficiencies (AMS). And these two are more intricately linked than ever before. Social networking/online communities are most beneficial when they feed KPIs like member profile data, social networking activities, financial transaction histories, event attendance data, etc. directly and seamlessly into a centralize AMS database. This, in turn, allows users/admins to view the overall health of their private social networks, conduct email marketing to targeted member segments, run customized reports and more. We call it ‘social networking with a purpose!’ (PROMO WARNING!) YourMembership.com created a 1-minute video that addresses this very concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2Q19xctGw
Thanks again for highlighting the importance of social networking plus membership management solutions.
David, thanks for the comment. I believe an AMS can deliver value to members withOUT a social networking element, but having said that, including the social piece as part of the overall KPIs makes a lot of sense.
Social networking is very important in the engagement assessment and equation because it gives the smallest member in the most remote location the same chance to participate as those members who have the budgets to travel and seem involved because they are seen at meetings.
I find there are many members who are more active online in industry discussions and connecting with others than those at live meetings. Without social networking, you are really only providing the greatest value to those who can spend the money to attend meetings.
The power of social networking is it provides for 100% of your membership to participate and get involved.
No argument, Tom. But if an assn’s only option for engagement is face-to-face meetings, that assn needs to rethink their engagement channels. For example, writing for an assn should not require any travel or budget. And very often committee service can be done via teleconference. My point is that social networking isn’t the only way to address those “hard to reach” members.
Social media is now mandatory for AMS vendors who are selling into the 1-10 staff size. Avectra, Memberclicks, and Your Membership have offer both an AMS, CMS, and Social Media all in one.
Great blog Wes, Ken I agree with you regarding one vendor one and one datbase for 1-10 staff size. You might want to consider Timberlake and Computility to. They are an all in one solution as well.
Wild Apricot is a viable option for 1-6 staff. One database/ one vendor is what I recommend for this staff size. We were in an environment where one vendor was blaming another and we were happy to get out of that environment.The less than 10 staff is the most over served market in the association space so it takes time to select the right vendor. I guess that’s a good problem to have.