Have your new member enrollment rates dropped recently? Are your marketing campaigns lacking the luster they once held? While you may think you have to constantly reinvent the wheel so that your messages and marketing campaigns don’t grow stale, it’s just not true. There are several ways your membership software can help. Here are some quick and easy ways to revamp your marketing efforts so you can sail through the new year with strong numbers and a healthy bottom line.
1. Give Your Website a Facelift
Website designs go in and out of style, just like office furnishings. If yours was developed a few years ago, it may lack the modern look that online readers have come to expect. Furthermore, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile, it has likely sunk in the Google rankings considerably since the introduction of Mobilegeddon. A website redesign really doesn’t take that long if you partner with an experienced developer. And your AMS software should be able to mirror your new design in your online store, giving members a seamless experience once they click on that CTA.
2. Revise Your Email Marketing Campaigns
With today’s email marketing automation tools, it’s so easy for an association to slip into autopilot with your emails. But these tools aren’t designed to replace creativity and brilliance in marketing. These tools just make it easier to distribute the emails to the right people at the right time. You still have to invest time and effort into developing strong email campaigns and messages that people actually want to open and read. Take the time to talk to your members, build out your personas, and then tailor your emails to your different segments.
3. Step Up Your Social Media Game
Like email, if your membership software makes it too easy to post to social and monitor activity on your account, you may not be investing the effort you should into engaging people. Develop intriguing, thought-provoking posts, and lighten it up occasionally with something humorous.
Don’t forget to reach out on special occasions, like holidays and days memorializing an important historical event relative to your industry. All posts should include an eye-catching image or photograph—never underestimate the gratuitous puppy shot—and should be clickable to lead potential new members to a landing page where you can collect their lead info.
4. Look for New Markets for Your Association Memberships
Aways be on the lookout for potential reservoirs of new members. Reach out to colleges and universities that offer majors in your industry. Use social data to find other demographic groups that have strong similarities to your members.
You might find a great source in unlikely places. For example, you may discover that many of the people who follow you on social networks also follow Golf Digest or Cooking Light or a group dedicated to smart environmental farming practices. Those correlations can lead you straight to new pools of potential members to tap into.
5. Breathe New Life Into Your Online Community Forums
Are your online community forums active and engaging? Or was the last entry something your association membership posted about your office hours for the 2015 holiday season? Fill your community forums with engaging posts on current, relevant industry topics. Make it a place where all industry professionals and leaders can come for open, honest discussions, debates, distribution of newsworthy topics, and dissection of the latest trends in the industry.
6. Don’t Let Up on Stroking Your Membership Base
While your association is focused on drawing in new members, don’t let up on providing your existing members with all of the offerings they’ve come to expect from you. Your new members should serve to boost your rosters, not simply to replace those you’ve lost. Track their engagement using member engagement scoring tools and use that data to keep them involved.
