Your association’s data isn’t just for data miners. The data you have stored in your AMS software—information you’ve gathered from members about their interests, their jobs, and their lives—can make a world of difference in how you generate attention with the members you have and how you steadily increase membership.
Once you see big data as an opportunity for your organization, you’ll be able to mine years of member data to discover the message members have been telling you all along, but you couldn’t see clearly until now. Here’s how:
A full understanding of big data comes from:
- Understanding what you can do with member data
- Getting reliable data about members and partners
- Using big data effectively
- Being aware of what data can and can’t do
What You Can Do With Member Data
Targeting the right people will make your offer more attractive to the targeted member and you can predict higher uptake rates since the content is relevant. We can also expect higher rates of success and engagement with the offer (lower bounce rates and mid-offer drop offs), making the investment in running the program more cost-effective over time. One example association that’s doing this well is the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia, which effectively targets its members with a yearly mentoring program.
You can also use your data to predict member behavior. Say you’ve been collecting data for some time now and you’re starting to see patterns in what the data is telling you: December is always a slow month for new membership, invoices are mostly re-issued in June or October coinciding with tax season, national conference tickets have the highest sales three weeks out from the conference date, and donors always engage with fundraising information after two separate email communications.
Armed with this knowledge, how will your association seize the opportunity to better manage periods of slow growth or take advantage of periods of high volume and predictable demand? Check out what the YMCA of Austin is doing to track member data across several years to find trends in new membership sales and renewal.
We’ll cover the other important elements of leveraging big data in subsequent blogs. In the meantime, download this eBook to discover the advantages of big data, how to use it effectively, and what it will and won’t do for your association.
