Have you ever wondered what it would be like to read minds? On the one hand, we might not want to know what is floating around in people’s heads, but from an association marketer’s perspective, it’s an intriguing thought that could offer tremendous benefits in helping reach current and prospective members more easily. We live in an era where one would think it would be incredibly easy to send content that matters to those we want to reach, but often times organizations tend to overlook the best way to identify which content is useful and what isn’t.
The New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJCPA) was looking to deliver more relevant content to its member base through its two newsletters, the CPE Connection and NJCPA Pulse. In the past, they were simply delivering these monthly newsletters to all their members, although sometimes the content wasn’t necessarily pertaining to their interests. There was no personalization. Instead, NJCPA staff wanted to send their members content that was based on their particular interests and what would aide them in their careers. Here are a few tactics they used in order to provide more relevant and useful content to increase member engagement.
1) Deliver targeted content based on member demographic data
As an association marketer, you want to deliver an awesome membership experience to each and every member. But in order to do that, you need to understand what matters to each individually. While actions might speak louder than words, who people say they are also remains an important aspect of personalizing their content. NJCPA wanted to create content that was better suited for its membership than simply giving them content they may or may not actually read or consider valuable.
So how did they go about tailoring their content? By focusing their attention on their member data and looking at the demographics. They examined key demographics such as their industry segment, whether they were a CPA candidate or a non-member CPA just to name a few. That way, they were able to personalize the content based on their interests, but also where they were in their professional life.
Personalization is a powerful way to communicate with your members and tailor your association to their particular needs. This type of strategy allows you to segment your members based on their demographics and then create targeted content for them.
2) Focus on creating value for members, not laboring over mechanics
Creating newsletters is no easy task. Often times, when you’re designing a newsletter, you can fall into a rabbit hole of trying to get the perfect template on hand that you can use each time you send a newsletter. And before you know it, it’s already noon, your stomach is growling telling you it’s time for lunch, but you still haven’t made much progress on the newsletter template. Has that happened to you? Well, lucky for NJCPA, they didn’t have to worry about the design aspect so much and that allowed them to focus on the content side.
To learn more about how NJCPA created personalized newsletters and how they plan to take it a step further by encouraging behavioral change, check out the case study.
