Being an association member should never feel like buying a t-shirt or cup of coffee. Great associations are able to really listen to their members and use that feedback to build their communities. This kind of ear-to-the-ground model transform education, events, and even person-to-person outreach.
So why aren't we using this feedback to make sure each member has their own success story?
The easy answer is that it’s just too hard. Every member is coming from a different place and looking to reach different goals with their membership in your organization. They have different levels of activity, different interactions with your marketing and educational offerings, and the best you can do is try to focus on generalized behaviors and hope that what you’re doing works.
But there is an alternative.
With the right kind of data and analysis—powered by AI-driven predictive models—you can actually listen more to the unique needs of your members and help them develop personalized trajectories that will leave them fulfilled and keep their membership renewing year after year.
The term “predictive analytics” sounds intimidating, but it’s actually something you already use to your advantage every day. Every time you go to Gmail to send an email, the AI-driven predictive analytics machine is working on your behalf. With every word, a few things are happening behind the scenes:
As you can imagine, that’s a massive amount of data to review in a millisecond.
But because it has so much data to pull from, it can give you very likely predictive text when you pause long enough to indicate that you’ve run out of words to say.
If this kind of power can help you do something as simple as send an email that sounds intelligent, you can imagine that the same power behind your member data would allow you to give them a higher level of member success than ever before.
One of the ideas that we’re really excited about right now is growth-based member journeys. Basically, we take historical data about your successful members (those who have reached certain milestones in their careers, those who engage fully in the community, etc.) and reverse-engineer their journey to provide a clear pathway of how a new member can be successful.
Depending on what kind of data you have, you will be able to develop a program of events, courses, and marketing materials that have the highest potential for providing value in the long-term. This doesn’t just give you a recurring stream of revenue, but also gives your members exactly what they came to the association to find—opportunities for growth and advancement.
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Unfortunately, this kind of data-driven pathway is not a one-size-fits-all venture. Associations typically tell us that they don’t have the time and budget for more than a “spray-and-pray” model of marketing and service offerings. But while these initiatives may work for 51% of members, they often leave the other 49% disillusioned and unlikely to renew their membership.
The right kind of data analysis allows you to segment your membership into cohorts to really understand their motivations and the best outcomes for their particular member success story. And, while it’s a good first step to segment your members by age or location, these aren’t the kinds of segments we really mean (although they’re better than nothing). The most valuable types of segments include things like:
These behavioral cohorts are much more effective at showing you which stage of the member success journey they are in and whether or not they are currently finding value. Then, just like Google can predict what words you’ll type into a search bar, the predictive model can predict what next steps will help them find the most value in your association.
It is possible to provide a better level of member success than you are currently providing. All it takes is good listening through better data and a professional eye to develop the personalized journeys that will benefit your members most.
If you are interested in how Tasio works with associations to create these customized member success plans, please connect with us here. We are always happy to help an association develop a long-term strategy for happier members and exponential membership growth.
Thomas Altman
