As 2016 draws to an end, organizations are shifting their focus to the upcoming year. What we want to know is, what are your association’s biggest priorities for 2017?
Are you focused on retaining your members and keeping them engaged and informed? Are you looking to grow your association and want to make bringing in new members a priority? Are your internal processes a mess and you need to implement a better association management system? Whatever your association’s priorities are for the upcoming year, we want to hear about them!
We asked some of the biggest influencers in the association world where they see association management going in the coming year. Here’s what they had to say:
“The move to online learning (in addition to face-to-face) will continue to accelerate. Associations need a strategy for this—along with a robust learning management system to support professional development for members.”
— Mary Byers, CAE, co-author of Race to Relevance: Five Radical Changes for Associations and Road to Relevance: 5 Strategies for Competitive Associations
“Associations will finally discover that ‘sales’ is not a dirty word. Selling is required to keep your association alive, even if it’s limited only to selling membership (and let’s face it, most associations sell many more things than just membership).”
— Wes Tronchlil, most published author on data management in the association market
— Elizabeth Engel, CEO and Chief Strategist at Spark Consulting LLC
“Associations will finally discover that ‘sales’ is not a dirty word. Selling is required to keep your association alive, even if it’s limited only to selling membership (and let’s face it, most associations sell many more things than just membership).”
“My answer is more a wish than a projection, but I would like to see associations move away from a simplistic use of data to ‘segment’ and ‘target’ members and other audiences based on very broad and often inaccurate categories and begin treating them as real people with whom we have real relationships.”
