LinkedIn Screams Ahead as a Prospect Source for One Client

For a couple of years now I've been using online lead generation programs to effectively generate awareness for our clients, developing a prospect pool for membership and product sales when it was difficult to find these individuals through traditional means, and converting them to memberships.

Program Summary: If you are not aware of these programs, or have not attended one of my sessions on them, basically we create an offer (usually a FREE White Paper), use online media to promote or "push" the offer (Google PPC, LinkedIn, banner ads, etc.), and collect contact information (email address, name, postal address, etc.) when fulfilling the offer. Once captured, the now "prospect" is enrolled in a 3 to 5 step online conversion program that consists of emails and a final direct mail piece. If the prospect does not join, thier contact information is placed into the association's promotion file.

Here are the results after just one-week from such a program:

Campaigns                             Ad Clicks            Form Fills              Conversion Rate


White Paper DISPLAY             836                        12                          1.44%
White Paper SEARCH              123                         6                           4.88%
White Paper LinkedIn                234                      111                        47.44%

Total                                      1,199                      129                        10.81%

Needless to say, LinkedIn has performed remarkably well. In fact, when looking at the same information in terms of media spend, while the media spend for display and search was between $50 adn $95/prospect, it was only $6.60/prospect for LinkedIn.

Our client is extremely happy with these results to date.

Are you using online lead generation to help drive awareness of your association and help build your prospect file? If you are, please tell us how it's working for you?

Experts in Membership Marketing is published by Erik Schonher, Vice President, Marketing General Incorporated. If you have any questions concerning the content of this blog or MGI, please feel free to contact me directly
at (703) 706-0358. 

Are Your Member Communications Relevant?

In discussions centered around the Membership Lifecycle, a key ingredient from the perspective of the member is 'relevance.' I know that this is a "blinding flash of the obvious" as an old friend from my Tyson Foods days would say, but I'm always astounded by how quickly marketers forget about it in their promotions.

If we follow the Membership Lifecycle, starting at "Awareness," the only reason we become aware or acknowledge an association or a product is that, at that point in time, it became relevant to us - in either a good OR bad way. We continue to grow that awareness by continually proving the relevance of the membership or product to the individual.

At some point, we "ask for the sale" but not until we usually demonstrate one final point of relevance to the now member/customer. They "Join."

We then ask them to "Engage" with the association by filling out surveys, buying more product, attending conferences or participating in delivery of some value that the association provides to its membership (committees, articles, etc.). Again, relevancy is key to continued engagement. If the Annual Softball outing is not relevant to me, why would I participate?

At "Renewal," we ask the member/customer to continue our relationship. But, if we're not relevant to the member, why would he/she? Therefore, many of the most successful renewal programs continually remind the member of why they are relevant to them.

Now to my point...

If we agree on the importance of relevancy in our on-going, ever increasing, communications with our members/customers, why do we continue to offer up one-size-fits-all tactics? While many don't have the technology necessary to subset their data based upon buying behavior, age, sex, length of membership...or the like...that doesn't mean that they can't do some level of personalization using simple overlays (that don't cost an arm-and-a-leg), or by source, or other ways. It simply takes a little imagination and some time.

If doing this will increase your renewal rate a few points, isn't that 'relevant' to you?

"Networking" v.s. "Self-Promotion" through your Social Networking Sites?

I just read an interesting article from the ForbesWomenCommunity on Facebook which talked about the difference between 'networking' and 'self-promotion.' In the example presented, if you were to meet someone at an event, they sounded intelligent, dressed nicely, etc., why would you run screaming away from them within the next 5 minutes?

The answer is that they only talked about themselves. We've all been caught in those conversations.

So with that said, the question now is are you doing the samething with your social networking sites? To some degree we need to, but there is a fine line. In our drive for ROI, lets not forget that the primary use of these sites is to create a relationship, driven by supporting the needs of our members, non-members and industry stake holders - and yes to ultimately convince them that they should join, purchase a product/service or financial support the organization. But that's the end game...the long haul. And we must be patient.

As we've seen over and over again, especially looking at 1st year member conversions versus ongoing renewal rates, we need to first create awareness, then create trust by thinking first of our "site participants" then about ourselves. If we push to hard or to fast, we create suspicion and loose credibility.