Over .85% Response with 100% pay-up!

I wanted to share with you the incredible results I’ve gotten on a recent membership campaign for one of my clients as it points out the importance of several factors in successfully promoting membership. This program was so successful that it generated a profit which is being used to offset additional research my client is performing.

My client is a medium-sized association targeting business professionals in the United States with dues in excess of $500/yr.

We targeted over 25,000 for the promotion for the initial mailing, with 20% identified as multi-buyers who received a second piece and three follow up emails.

Gross Response Rate:  Exceeded .85% or 250 new members.

What this program had going for it:

1.       Used expired members and response lists to target prospect market

2.       Identified those most likely to buy (multi-buyers)

3.       Utilized multiple channels to increase awareness and become top-of-mind

4.       Allowed for proration of dues (annual renewal date)

It took some work to plan and execute this program, but the results are worth it and my client’s satisfaction when we presented the results was phenomenal.

If you’d like to learn more about this program or how I can assist you in the marketing of your membership, please contact me.

Component Relations Section November 2013 Virtual Roundtable

"Components and the Race to Membership: 10 Tips to Develop and Effectively Use Components in Membership Marketing"

 Presenters:

Erik Schonher, Vice President, Marketing General Incorporated

Trevor S. Mitchell, CAE, Executive Director, Member Programs & Services, ARMA International

 "Components offer associations a multitude of opportunities to drive their missions and increase their revenues. From the development of content to driving membership, when properly designed and managed, components become essential channels through which associations develop and deliver their value."

Excerpted from "Components and the Race to Membership"

 Join our guest presenters, authors of the recently released white paper, "Components and the Race to Membership: 10 Tips to Develop and Effectively Use Components in Membership Marketing" as they discuss their conclusions, tips, and suggestions for partnering with components to develop, demonstrate, and deliver membership value.

"Whether components are organized/defined by location, industry, interest, or other delineators, they are a valuable untapped resource. Those that work with them, leverage their power, and unlock their potential are positioned for success."

Excerpted from "Components and the Race to Membership"

Bring your questions and comments to this enlightening and important conversation about components and membership marketing strategy and find your association's path to success.

To register, follow this link http://tinyurl.com/kdmby3u. or you can register via the ASAE Calendar at www.asaecenter.org

Date: Wednesday, November 20, 2013

 Time:  2 pm - 3 pm Eastern time/1 pm - 2 pm Central time

12 noon - 1 pm Mountain time/11 am - 12 noon Pacific time
-------------------------------------------
Cecilia Sepp
Vice President
Association Laboratory Inc.
Silver Spring MD
(301) 346-9656
-------------------------------------------

Selecting a New CRM - Some Good Advice

Given what I do as a membership marketing consultant with a background in Information Management, I'm often asked to give advice on selecting a CRM.  To that point, I read a great post on ASAE's Collaborate (Membership Section) by Paula Aviles, Membership Director for The Special Libraries Association (10/25/2013), which is worthy of repeating.

She prefaces it by writing that these are "Some lessons learned..."

TIME: It always takes longer than expected.
DEMO: Be watchful as it shows you what it can do, not how, so it may end up taking more time or staff hours then anticipated.
REPORTS: Most systems capture data. It's pulling it out "where things take a turn." Check the queries and reports and be sure that they are reporting the metrics YOU USE to communicate with your leadership.
HISTORY: What data points will it capture, maintain or discard/overwrite when updated?
TRAIN AND TEST: Make sure you allow for training and testing (all we need to do is look at what's happening with the health-care website to realize that testing BEFORE launching is essential).
LAUNCH DATE: Remember the first item mentioned - 'Time' so keep the launch date movable as long as you can. Yes, at some point you need to fish-or-cut-bait, but don't rush it.
This is for the MEMBERS: You're doing this for them.

This is what Paula advises and I think its pretty good. The only item I usually add is:

EASE OF ADAPTABILITY: Change is constant. What will our Association look like in 5 or 10 years and can this system handle the change? How many of us are paying the price with poorly constructed or operating websites because they can't interface properly with the CRM?

In summary, its about properly setting the expectations of leadership, staff and your membership.

Good luck and my sincerest appreciation to Paula for her great post and clarity of thought.

Erik Schonher is Vice President for Marketing General Incorporated. A sought after speaker and writer, he has over 30 years of successful experience in marketing to include associations, designing and implementing member acquisition and retention programs, research initiatives, promoting conferences and guiding leadership. To speak with Erik about your programs, you can call him at (703) 706-0358 or through his email erik@marketinggeneral.com .  

How do I enhance my renewal rate? Just ask your member.

There are many factors to take into consideration when soliciting members to renew their memberships. Some of these we simply can't control (ie: employement status, dues compensation, etc.). One that we can control is, which in my humble opinion is the most important, making sure that the member realizes benefits from their membership.

The key here is our knowing what benefit the member looking to realize through their membership and if they ever realize it? 

Some of this can be gleaned by analyzing the offer they responded to (source analysis) then through data-analysis look at what products or services the member purchased or participated in to see if there is a trail to follow. A good point to this kind of analysis is that you can then look to see if the member renewed in previous years. This kind of data-analytics is very powerful and can lead you to a more indepth understanding of your entire "business" (ie: RFM Analysis). 

In other cases we need to go to the members themselves, usually through a survey. But, we're not looking at just one survey but two. The first survey right when the member joins and the second six to five months prior to expire.

But what questions should I ask in the first survey? This is dependent upon what you plan to do with the data and what can your CRM effectively capture?

First and foremost, don't let this turn into a game of "dogpile" where various departments want to measure what is important to them. This needs to be very sleek and targeted so as not to "be a pain to fill out."

Next, what is the best methodology to accomplish this? That depends upon several factors including the number of new members, budgets, etc. Many associations use telemarketing or email. Like anything else in what we do, which offers the greatest bang for our buck.

While every association is different, I would focus on the 3 to 5 primiary benefits you present when promoting your association. I would then ask the member to provide "how" they plan to realize the benefit.  For example, if a benefit is "Networking," then give them a chance to respond by listing 3 or so features that promote networking: "Attend Annual Conference" "Attend Chapter Meetings" "Volunteer for Member Committee."

As you can see this will get pretty big pretty quickly.

In the second survey what we want to find out is if they've realized any benefit from their membership. To that end, second survey is similar to the first, asking why they joined and offering up the opportunity to explain what features they participated in. Of course, you'll also want to ask if the member "intends to renew." If yes or no, why?

In addition, you may also want to ask in the second survey "How important is this feature to you and how well did we deliver it to you?" This "gap analsyis" will help you determine the value of benefits you promote and how well you deliver them.

Now we analyze the first and second survey results to help us understand:

1. Why members join?
2. What features (if any) do they use?
3. Are we effectively delivering the benefits they are looking for?
4. Do they plan to renew?

Secondary benefits of this kind of program include:

1. Potentially identifying "high risk for renewal" members (which might allow you a chance to fix this)
2. Promotion of some underutilized features

   

New Membership Models

JUST PUBLISHED!

10 Tips to Develop and Effectively Use Components in Membership Marketing

Components offer associations a multitude of opportunities to drive their missions and increase their revenues. From the development of content to driving membership, when properly designed and managed, components become essential channels through which associations develop and deliver theirvalue.

But exactly what is a component? What are the elements associations need to consider in creating a

component? What is necessary in the management of a component? How can they be used to increase

membership?

Written by two respected leaders in the field of association and membership marketing, Erik Schonher, CeM MBA,VP Marketing General, and Trevor Mitchell, CAE, Executive Director Member Programs & Services ARMA International, the purpose of this white paper is to act as a primer and provide association executives with an appreciation of the growing importance of components in the development and delivery of membership value and how to take the initial steps necessary to develop and integrate a component strategy into an association’s overall membership marketing plan.

If you'd like a free copy of the whitepaper, or discuss how you can grow your components and increase their effectiveness in driving your membership, please contact me at 703.706.0358 or Erik@MarketingGeneral.com

New White Paper: 10 Tips to Develop and Effectively Use Components in Membership Marketing

JUST PUBLISHED!

10 Tips to Develop and Effectively Use Components in Membership Marketing

Components offer associations a multitude of opportunities to drive their missions and increase their revenues. From the development of content to driving membership, when properly designed and managed, components become essential channels through which associations develop and deliver theirvalue.

But exactly what is a component? What are the elements associations need to consider in creating a

component? What is necessary in the management of a component? How can they be used to increase

membership?

Written by two respected leaders in the field of association and membership marketing, Erik Schonher, CeM MBA,VP Marketing General, and Trevor Mitchell, CAE, Executive Director Member Programs & Services ARMA International, the purpose of this white paper is to act as a primer and provide association executives with an appreciation of the growing importance of components in the development and delivery of membership value and how to take the initial steps necessary to develop and integrate a component strategy into an association’s overall membership marketing plan.

 

If you'd like a free copy of the whitepaper, or discuss how you can grow your components and increase their effectiveness in driving your membership, please contact me at 703.706.0358 or Erik@MarketingGeneral.com

A Good Example of Writing to the Differences between a "Feature" and a "Benefit."

Thank you to everyone who participated in yesterday's webinar.

Right now I want to share with you a very clear definition of "Feature" vs. "Benefit" that was just sent to me by my good friend Page Stull here at MGI. Page has a very long history as an editor and association marketer so I value his insights greatly.

While I'm sure this may be "old hat" to many of you, I believe it never hurts to review. So, I'll leave you Page's trustworthy hands for the rest of this post:

Most of us understand the difference between benefits and features, but let’s take that concept to the next level so our copy can be even more effective.


First, let’s define the features/benefits relationship:

• Features are the things associations give their members.
•  Benefits are what members receive using the features.

Here is a feature-laden sentence:

 When you join the association, as a member you'll be eligible for continuing education courses for just $59 per credit.

Here is a benefit-focused rewrite:

 Our continuing education programs will increase your understanding and elevate your skills for just $59 per credit.

The rewrite assumes the reader values increased understanding and elevated skills, but perhaps we can do even better by adding the element of emotion.

People have aspirations in life—to be better off, to be a better person, to gain respect, avoid discomfort, to be satisfied, and so forth. So, we add an aspiration—say, a promotion.

Here is the rewrite:

 Our continuing education programs will increase your understanding and elevate your skills for just $59 per credit, building on your experience and perhaps taking your career to the next level—all for just $59 per credit.

When features become benefits of value we can appeal to our reader’s aspirations and stir emotions. And that’s far more powerful than a mere feature.

Tactical Planning for Developing Prospect Awareness

Developing “awareness” of your membership offer is the first step in any “sales cycle.” But what is awareness and how do we use it in the membership sales cycle?

First, “context” is a very important component of any stage in the sales cycle, and awareness is no different. We need people to listen when we talk. But the only time people listen is when it means something to them, usually when they have a problem or slight concern and are looking for a solution. Therefore, in promoting awareness, we must look for those opportunities when prospects will be open to listening to what we have to say.

A good way to learn when your prospects are open to listening is to ask your members when did they first learn about your association. After all, they too were prospects once.

The 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report indicated that the Top Five ways “…members initially discover (your) association” are:

Word-of-mouth recommendation....86%

Association website....80%

Email....66%

Promotion to/at your own conferences/conventions....54%

Local events/meetings....52%

To find this out, you can either “ask them” through qualitative and/or quantitative research, or analyze your database and look for correlations between members joining and other events (i.e.: attended a conference or even, purchased a product, etc.).

Once these are identified, we “reverse engineer” the channels with the goal of understanding how many members/buyers resulted from these efforts.

Word-of-mouth recommendation

• 200 prospective members were referred by current members
• Generated five new members for a close ratio of 2.5%.

Association website

• 1500 people visited the Cookbook page
• 15 followed the “Join up” link (1%)
• Generated one new member (6.7%)

With these metrics in hand, we develop tactical plans to drive awareness with an appreciation for the ultimate result of generating paid memberships.

Online Lead Generation Program

• Goal: 10,000 prospects (or 670 new members)
• Overview: Develop a landing page and bring online prospects to the site by offering FREE materials which they can download by providing their first & last name, postal address and email address. With delivery, offer the opportunity to join. Place all prospects who download the recipes but don’t join into a 7-step on line conversion program where they will receive an email referring to the original offer as well as present other benefits of membership. At the end of the program, all non-joining prospects will be placed into a quarterly promotion program and distributed to the appropriate county for follow up.
• Target Market: People looking for discounted tools
• Promotion Channels: Expired members; Google PPC (key words TBD)
• Offer: 150 Free Coupons
• Time Period: July 1 to October 31.

The key to any promotion or tactical program is being able to measure its effectiveness in accomplishing your overall goal. Understanding why prospects seek you out and what it takes to help them decide to buy is key to your business.

Good luck.

The Importance of Brand in your Email Marketing: 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report shows email to be a primary promotion tool to increase awareness and drive member acquisition/renewals/reinstatements. So, Above or Below the Fold? Where do you place your logo?

The 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report clearly shows the use of emails as a TOP 3 channel to promote association awareness, promote membership, fuel member engagement, and drive member renewal and reinstatement (see the data presented below).


Experience and research shows that the offer should be presented "above the fold" so it is one of, or THE FIRST, thing the recipient reads (do any of you remember "The Johnson Box" from direct mail?). However, given how small an amount of "real estate" it is, if push comes to shove, should you also place your logo or provide a brand element in the space as well?

The unwritten rule that I have always followed regarding this question is to include both branding/logo and a CTA/the offer above the fold/in the preview pane.

It is valuable real estate and you are quite limited with your space but it is important to incorporate both elements in this area.

Brand provides the reader with justification to read the email answering the simple, but very important, internal question the recipient asks themselves, "Should I really even bother with this email?"

Hopefully, your brand strategy successfully associates your association with the services and quality that the recipient wants - needs - and they say to themselves "YES, I've gotta read this now!" as the one time recipient and now engaged reader proceeds to devour the content of your email.

One of our e-Production leaders was asked recently by a colleague if emails are like mailed postal pieces – in that it is OK to create a different appearance for each campaign and allow for there to be some initial mystery as to who sent the email…that by doing this with emails could somehow increase engagement.

She indicated that in her experience, this is not the case with emails though – "recipients should be very aware of who the email sender is when the email is initially viewed. There are so many factors that contribute to an email’s success – a major factor is trust the email recipient has that the email they received is valid – from a source opted in to and recognize. The branding/logo included in this section reinforces the from line of the email and contributes to allowing for this trust."

I concur. In today's content-enriched market, individual's are looking for ways to perform "Attention Triage" so, similar to when you are first introduced to someone, you 10-seconds to prove that you are worthy of their attention and ENGAGEMENT.

If you have any questions concerning your brand or your e-marketing strategy, please feel free call me.

I look forward to your comments and observations.

MOST EFFECTIVE RECRUITMENT CHANNELS
                                     2013 (n=685)   2012 (n=685)
Word-of-Mouth                      58%               54%
Association Website             33%               34%
Email                                   31%               37%
METHODS FOR CREATING AND MAINTAINING ASSOC. AWARENESS                                     2013 (n=691) 2012 (n=683)

Association Website            33%               34%
Email                                  31%               37%
Word-of-Mouth                      58%               54%

*2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report

Potential IMO Revenue Model - Presented for your consideration

The 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report will be released in June at the Marketing and Membership Conference here in DC.

I recently used the results of the study to help a client develop a revenue model for her association. To do this I cross-tabbed two questions: Operating Budget by Revenue Streams. Here's the result:


POTENTIAL MODEL OF REVENUE DISTRIBUTION BY PRODUCT CHANNEL for IMO.

Rev. Stream/Prod                 Under $1MM           $1MM to $4.9MM         Over $5MM

Dues                                           43%                             35%                            31%
Conf/Web (Events)                      29%                             27%                            26%
Cert/Bks/Affinity                          14%                             23%                            27%


It's interesting to see the changes in revenue impact as the Operating Budget increases, and this makes perfect sense. Every association or business must be responsive to the market and have product which is readily available to sell. Small IMOs may not have built up the inventory of products so they heavily rely on dues. As they grow, their market base increases, their revenue increases and they have more support in the development of product that can be sold through multiple channels.

While conferences seem to remain stable in their revenue contribution, what's of great interest is the increased participation of certification/books/affinity programs which is primarily driven by certification (see below).

So, if you're an association with an Operating Budget of $5MM+, and you're demanding Dues to provide over 31% of your revenue, are you properly allocating your resources to maximize your renvenue potential? Also, are you positionining yourself for future growth, OR, are you really driving your associaiton the other way?

In case you don't agree with the way I've grouped the categories, I've provided the crosstabs below so you can perform your own analysis.

I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts on this. Do you think its viable? Does it reflect your association? Let me know.


Operating Budget         Less than $1Million          $1 to $5 Million          More than $5 Million

Dues                                       51  43%                      40 35%                       35 31%

Conferences                            23  19%                      22 19%                       21 18%

Certification                               5    4%                      10   9%                       12 11%

Webinars/seminars…                12 10%                        9   8%                         9   8%

Books/products                          6   5%                      14  12%                      13  11%

Affinity programs                        7   6%                         2   2%                         6   5%

All Other…                              14 12%                        16 14%                       18 16%

                                              118 100%                    113 100%                   114 100%

* Data used for this analysis was pulled from the MGI 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report

Results indicate that Membership Associations Who Performed Member Research in 2012 Had Higher Acquisition and Renewal Rates.

Results from the 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report continue to get more interesting everyday!

This year we learned that 65% of membership associations that introduced member research in 2012 saw an increase in new members. 59% saw an increase in membership and 45% realized an increase in renewals.

If your leadership needs it, these results provide a strong rationale to perform member research. The trick is to design the survey in such a way as to allow interpretation that lead activities that are immediately actionable and measurable.

If you have any questions concerning this information please feel free to contact me at 703.706.0358.

Increasing Member Engagement and Acquisition remain top goals for Membership Departments according to the 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report.

Results from the soon-to-be-released 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report indicate that an equal percentage of responding associations (74%) indicate that “increasing member engagement” and
“increasing both membership acquisition and retention” are the top two membership goals.

Trade associations are significantly more likely than individual membership associations to set a goal to
increase member engagement (83% vs. 71%).  I'll be speaking at the upcoming Alexandria Brown Bag providing a "Sneak Peak" at the 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report results. I hope to see you there.

Margin of Error - Here's a quick rule of thumb to the question: "What's the best sample size?"

An often asked question is "How many responses do I need to get on my survey to make sure that it is valid?"

Jeff Tranguch, Research Analyst with MGI, prepared a very quick email to one of my clients on precisely this today. A really bright guy, I wanted to share it with you because of its simplicity and brevity.

Here it is in his words...

"As you can see, the number drops as you approach 1000 responses. They will have some direction with about 500 or so responses (obviously they would have better direction with 1,000 or so responses).  

All of the numbers below are calculated at a 95% confidence interval which basically means that if we were to conduct this study 100 times, the same results, plus or minus the margin of error would occur 95 out of 100 times."

Number of Responses	Margin of Error
100	+/-9.8%
250	+/-6.2%
500	+/-4.4%
750	+/-3.6%
1000	+/-3.1%
1500	+/-2.5%

If you have any questions, please feel free to call or email me.

Quick Tip - CAN-SPAM

As reported in the 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, to be released in May, e-mail is one of the Top Three tools used to drive awareness and engagement of members and prospects. To that point, I wanted to share some insight which just came across my desk from our e-Biz group on the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

First...What is Spam? The word "Spam" as applied to Email means "Unsolicited Bulk Email".

“Unsolicited” means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable

permission for the message to be sent.

“Bulk” means that the message is sent to a list of people, as part of a larger collection

of messages, all having substantively identical content.

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

What is CAN-SPAM and what are its main requirements?

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is an acronym which stands for: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003.

The act, which became law on January 1, 2004, was the United State's first attempt at a national regulation for the sending of commercial email.

The CAN-SPAM Act establishes requirements for all commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. The law applies to both B2B and B2C emails.
If you’re sending commercial email, you will want to be very familiar with CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

• Never use deceptive headers, from-names, reply-tos, or subject lines.

• You must always provide an unsubscribe link.

• Remove recipients from your list within ten business days.

• The unsubscribe link must work for at least 30 days after sending.

• You must include your physical mailing address.

And here's the kicker...If you violate the law, you could be fined $11,000 for each offense.

Obviously I'm not a lawyer. So when in doubt, lawyer up and get proper advice.

Thanks for reading.  If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

It's only been 12 months...

I'M BAAAAAAACK!!

After taking a year off I'm back and want to tell you about a new blog I'm cowriting with my MGI Research associates, Dr. Adina Wasserman and Jeff Tranguch.

Welcome to The Association Research Blog ( http://associationresearch.blogspot.com/ ) and as the name cannotes, this blog is dedicated to exploring new research ideas, discussing established research procedures and how other association professionals are using the research.

I urge you all to take a look as we have already started posting "sneak peeks" of the 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report.

Enjoy and its great to be back!!