Here’s something you might not think about (but should!): Your association management software (AMS) is generating a ton of data. Are you using that data to help you make better decisions and deliver more value to your members? Do you know what data to look for and where to find it?
Even if you’re analyzing your member data regularly, there’s a good chance you could be doing more by uncovering great member trends and insights that you can take action on. Depending on your membership management software and settings, every page view, click, and form submission can be very telling about your member base.
In this blog post, we’ll examine five useful data points that you might not realize your members are generating for you.
Let’s get going:
Engagement
Member engagement is possibly the most important measurement of an association’s activity. It can drive widespread initiatives across your organization – from cause advocacy and event attendance to revenue creation, just to name a few.
Yet despite its importance, member engagement is a tricky concept to pinpoint. What constitutes an “engaged” and a “disengaged” member? Do different actions represent different levels of engagement?
While there are no clear-cut answers to these questions that fit every organization, there are some things you can look for to point you in the right direction. For example:
Email open/click rates – For most associations, email is the primary communications vehicle. If your emails are not getting read, or worse, people are opting out, you need to look at why that’s happening.
For example, maybe you’re sending too frequently or not frequently enough. Or maybe your subject lines could use a little creativity. And, if users aren’t clicking on the information contained within the email, maybe your content should be more relevant and engaging.
Incremental revenue – Are your members buying your upsell items? If so, this is a sign of a healthy membership. It signals that what you’re doing is relevant enough to your audience for them to spend their discretionary income on your organization. If nothing is selling, it might mean that your membership is merely viewed as a mandate, and it might be time to offer more compelling products and services.
Interests
The interests of your members are a kind of subset of engagement.
Let’s consider email open rates again: Take that same data source and segment by the types of emails you sent. Do emails about, say, events, have significantly higher or lower open rates than emails with industry news?
This is a good indication of the type of things your members are interested in. If you see a significant difference, you might want to consider opting members out of certain email sequences and topics so they get only what they want.
Another great place to look for insight into your members’ interests is your blog. What are the most popular posts in terms of page views? Are those the same as the posts with the most comments? If you find that certain topics are more popular, perhaps create a blog series or spin-off a different angle of the same topic.
Needs
You can also use data to better meet (and exceed!) the needs of your members.
As data geeks, we at Aptify firmly believe that you should never have to wait around for an unhappy member to tell you that they need something. No, the data should show that weeks before there is an issue. But for the data to give you that heads up, you need to be:
- collecting the right data
- reviewing the data
- taking action based on the data
Let’s use as an example the real-world scenario of member onboarding: When a new member signs up, what’s the first action taken? If the onboarding process isn’t clear, you might see a lot of people gravitating toward your FAQ or support pages. If this is the case, it means you need to do a better job spelling out the next steps.
Or, if you find that most new members don’t complete their profile, you might want to look at where they tend to drop off. For example, let’s say you notice a lot of people stop filling out their profile when they get to the “home address” write-in field. Do you really need that piece of info? Is it worth not have a complete profile? Or, perhaps it’s not the type of info you’re asking for, but possibly the number of things you’re asking for.
You can extend this example to everything from membership renewals to post-event communications. Just remember: Mine the right data to solve the needs of your members before they become problems.
Growth
One of the main reasons to track data points is growth. The idea is to look for information that can be gleaned to measure the potential for growing the relationship with a member.
In addition to engagement (discussed in detail earlier), you can also grow the relationship with your members through advocacy. For example, are there any causes that almost everyone in your base shares?
By looking at what types of content they engage with, you might be able to spot opportunities for shared ideals, and then use your existing relationships to spur your base into action.
There’s also the chance that you can grow a successful relationship with your members into a profitable one. This is where membership management software can really help in terms of data – helping you visualize engagement data compared with financial data to give you a better idea of what activities are related to financial growth.
For example, if you notice that members who have attended an in-person event spend 40 percent more on average with your organization than those who have never attended an event, you’ll probably want to do everything in your power to get more event attendance.
Referrals
Speaking of growth, you know one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to grow your membership base? By having your organization referred by a current member, other colleagues, people in their network, or other organizations.
And, which cohort of your membership base refers the most new leads? If you don’t have this information at your fingertips, you’re not tracking one of your strongest opportunities for new membership. Depending on your software, this can be accomplished easily through special tracking links, or even more sophisticated referral programs.
