To meet today’s member expectations, personalization is a must-do.
The consumer (and member) demand for personalization has reached new heights. Here are three ways to deliver a more personalized experience for your members.
It’s not too surprising that the Association of National Advertisers voted “personalization” the marketing word of the year for 2019. It’s a hot topic in the world of marketing and customer experience. And for good reason.
Consumer expectations have reached new heights. In today’s world, we’ve all come to expect highly personalized experiences like those from leading companies like Amazon and Netflix. We want to not only be recognized by name in communications from organizations, but also receive recommendations and offers based on our specific interests and preferences.
Your members are no exception to these high consumer expectations. In the Community Brands Digital Evolution Study, 65 percent of members say they are interested in personalization, with 79 percent saying it’s very or somewhat important that their organization provide targeted, valuable content.
The same study shows that 52 percent of those working at professional membership organizations say they are interested in personalization, yet only 18 percent say they personalize the content members see. These findings point to an opportunity for associations to catch up with member expectations.
Here are three ways to deliver a more personalized experience for your members:
1.Collect and use data – regularly.
Leverage your association management system (AMS) and other tools to gather useful data on a regular basis and send targeted messages at the right time to deliver a better, more personalized member experience. For example, use your AMS to collect and analyze data about your members’ career stages, interests, and behaviors to provide them with the personalized information and benefits they’re seeking. Based on your members’ interests and preferences, you can do things like recommend new industry reports or new services offered by your organization that will help them in their specific career stage.
TECH TIP: NetForum AMS not only allows you to collect and manage member and donor data in one system, it also includes engagement scoring and moves management functionality to automate and personalize communications to targeted groups of people based on their scoring patterns.
2.Respect data privacy and be transparent.
The Digital Evolution Study shows that 71 percent of members of professional associations say they worry about data privacy and security. However, this concern doesn’t prevent most of them from sharing information if they feel it’s secure and/or for their benefit.
Moving your member data and management into the right AMS system puts your member data in one, secure place. Be sure your AMS offers the following functionality to protect your member data and reduce risk:
- Transparency into security and performance status
- Best practices for data security, such as multi-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access and tokenization for credit card payments
- Data recovery to safeguard your data from data storage errors, catastrophic failures, and everything in between
- Compliance certifications to validate security
Also, make sure your members know you have data privacy and security standards and precautions in place. Explain how the information you collect will be used for a better and more personalized experience, and your members in turn are more likely to trust you. That trust will then translate into a better member experience and, ultimately, greater member loyalty.
3.Provide a connected experience.
Take personalization to the next level by connecting your AMS with your online career center and learning management system (LMS). Here are just a few examples of the member experience you can provide by integrating these systems:
- Learners seamlessly navigate from your website to your e-learning catalog to your member page. Any updates to user data automatically sync across your systems.
- Create a shopping experience through e-commerce integration that allows members to purchase your association’s learning products from your association’s e-commerce store or LMS storefront. A full view of your members’ purchase history lives in your AMS.
- Send automated emails that acknowledge what steps learners have completed, and then recommend next steps toward certification or credentialing.
- Members and non-members can opt in to receive intelligent job recommendations based on their AMS member profile data, such as job title and location, so they can passively search for new career opportunities.
TECH TIP: NetForum AMS is part of the integrated software suite for associations by Community Brands that includes solutions for membership management, learning management, and career center. They work even better together to help you support the a complete, personalized, and connected member experience.
Take the next step
Learn more about the importance of personalization for associations and how to get started using it to deliver a great member experience. Join the webinar, Personalization 101: Turning Member Expectations into Reality.
