Category: marketing

Membership 101: Ladder of Engagement

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 5 Comments on Membership 101: Ladder of Engagement
Beth Kanter's chart of the ladder of engagement

As I discussed in the last post in this series, membership is all about relationship building.
The mechanism you use to build that relationship is the ladder of engagement.

Simply put, just like you wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, so you need to create and deepen your relationship with your prospects (and members) over time before asking them for further commitments.

The first communication someone gets from your association shouldn’t be an invitation to join – they don’t know you yet, and they have no idea if they’re interested in committing a significant amount of money to a full year of relationship.

Membership *is* a relationship, and both parties (the association and the prospective or new member) need to gradually increase cost, commitment, effort, and knowledge. You do that by constructing ladders of engagement, based on engagement paths, that gradually deepen involvement on both sides, until individuals get to the point that they’re comfortable making a larger commitment to you, and you know enough about them to ensure that commitment will be meaningful for them and meet their needs.

There are four main steps in the ladder of engagement:

  1. Capture – this is when you get leads in the door in the first place, virtually always by giving them something free but valuable to them that requires a very low level of commitment.
  2. Nurture – this is when a lead turns into a prospect, which happens as you learn more about her and begin offering her programs, products, and services that can help her achieve key goals and solve problems, moving gradually from free to low cost to higher cost.
  3. Convert – this is when you invite the prospect to join, in a way that’s tailored to his interests and needs, which you know because you’ve been learning more about him as you build the relationship through the nurture process.
  4. Partner – this is when that new member becomes a long-term, loyal, committed, involved member through the ongoing process of getting to know her better and offering programs, products, services, and opportunities for involvement that are increasingly tailored to her most important goals and most pressing challenges.

In practice, this might work something like:

  • Someone registers for a free user account for your career center to look at jobs and post her resume.
  • That person goes into your prospect database, coded as a prospect and with a “career center” origination code.
  • A week or two later, the prospect gets an email offering some free editorial content related to professional development, which she clicks on and downloads. That email MUST have a call to action, and you MUST be able to track whether or not the prospect took it.
  • A few weeks later, the prospect gets another email offering something else free – perhaps a free archived webinar, which she then views (same thing with the call to action and tracking).
  • Next, she’s offered something she needs to pay for, perhaps a paid report or webinar on career development, which she chooses to buy (same thing with the call to action and tracking).
  • Then you offer her membership, with the offer focused on all the additional professional development-related content she’ll have access to if she joins.

Notice that the prospect is only being asked to join (marry you) after you’ve established that she’s actually interested, and she gets a membership offer that’s targeted to what *she’s* interested in, not something generic that’s mostly focused on what the association thinks is valuable.

Ideally, you will create MANY ladders of engagement based around all sorts of segments – source of lead, career stage, professional interests and needs, geographical location, past purchases, demographics, etc. You collect some of this data actively – you ask for it. Some of it you collect passively by observing and recording what people do and grouping them by demonstrated behaviors.

But in all of them, you start with something that’s of interest but is free and requires little  commitment to get, often just providing one’s contact information. If your lead does that, offer him something that asks a little more of him. It can be money, but it doesn’t have to be – maybe you just ask for some demographic information about him, or ask about his interest areas. You continue to do that for a few cycles, THEN ask her to marry you, once you both know it’s right.

The fantastic, really simple graphic of the ladder of engagement above is from Beth Kanter. On an unrelated note, you should read her blog and follow her on Twitter if you don’t already.

Membership 101: Lead Generation

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Membership 101: Lead Generation
Vulcans making first contact

Where does the membership relationship start?

It begins with lead generation.

People who might want to become members of your association have to find out that you exist.

Lead generation is first contact (and please tell me that somebody gets the reference in the photo accompanying this post so that I’m not the only nerd out here all by myself).

You are going to have to connect with a bunch of different people in order to find the ones who are the right match. Not everyone is a good candidate for membership.

It’s a lot like dating. To be more precise, online dating.

You need to throw a LOT of winks out there to produce several good online chats to produce a handful of great phone conversations to produce a few amazing dates to find someone you might want to spend a few months – or the rest of your life – with.

If you think of membership merely as a transaction, X dollars for Y services, then yes, you’ll probably have a lot of Mr. Rights. But those relationships will be shallow, without much commitment on either side, and thus easy to walk away from if the situation changes, for instance, if his employer stops paying his dues. “Eh, it was nice to have when it didn’t require anything of me, but now that I have to invest something, forget it.” Churn is the membership association equivalent of a booty call.

I’m urging you to think of membership as a real, deep, two-way, equal relationship. Just because someone is in or aligned with your profession or industry does not automatically mean she’s a good prospect for that type of membership relationship.

She might not be ready for or capable of that level of commitment. He might be looking for solutions to problems that you can’t reasonably provide. She might not really be into you, leading to a relationship that requires more investment of resources to maintain than it’s worth. He might have goals that contradict your mission.

Hold out for Mr. or Ms. Right. You do not want to be a booty call.

How do you do that? That will be the topic of the next post.

Image found here.

What Is Your “Customer Journey”?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Reading a recent article in the Harvard Business Review on the topic of “customer journeys” got me thinking about their role in the association space.

What is a “customer journey”?

The example HBR used was of a solar company. Their initial outreach to one of the authors was a custom mail piece with a personalized URL that led him to a Google Earth image of his own house with solar panels mocked up on the roof. Clicking on that led to a webpage with estimates of potential energy savings, which then led to a one-on-one interaction with a sales rep to answer questions about leasing versus buying and installation. The company then sent references who were neighbors of the author, and a single-click lease tailored to his needs. The author was able to track progress of permitting and installation online, and is now able to manage the ongoing needs of his solar system as well.

That’s a customer journey – and, frankly, a pretty slick one.

decision journey loop from Harvard Business Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HBR identified four keys to effective customer journeys

  1. Automation: streamlining processes through technology
  2. Proactive personalization: continuous learning to deeply understand your customers so you can appropriately prepare for – and pitch – the next step you want them to take
  3. Contextual interaction: understanding where your customer is so you can lead them to the next step
  4. Journey innovation: continuing to test, learn, and iterate to create new value for the customer and, as a result, for your organization

The point is to move from offering a bunch of products to providing a seamless, end-to-end solution that helps your customer (member) achieve something important to her.

In other words, leading engagement from the outside-in (yes, as in the white paper I co-authored last spring with Anna Caraveli).

Too often, associations focus on our products: we offer an annual conference, a magazine, some books, a webinar series, an awards program, committee volunteering, industry benchmarking and statistics, etc. And we’re organized to provide those products: there’s a membership team, a meetings team, a publications group, the professional development office, data analysts, etc.

Where’s the customer journey? Where’s the solution to a critical problem? Where are the member outcomes?

Absent. 

What if we, instead, focused on learning about what our members are trying to accomplish and putting together a customer journey to get them there?

Obviously, in order to figure out what members are trying to accomplish, you have to ask them, and in more in-depth ways than a member satisfaction survey with a bunch of Likert-scale questions. But if you think about it, I’ll bet you could come up with some places to start your research. Your members might want to:

  • Find a first job
  • Get a promotion
  • Build their professional (or personal) network
  • Get outside-the-office experiences (leadership, writing, public speaking) to enhance their long-term career prospects
  • Support or defeat particular legislation
  • Help others in the profession/industry
  • Do a better job marketing their business
  • Find clients
  • Etc….

Organizing to provide a solution to the problem of “I have a degree, but I need help finding my first job” rather than “to run our online career center” is a radical shift that demands different types of skills from differently constituted staff teams.

But the goal is to become a “Level Four” firm, “more attached to producing solutions to customers’ problems than it is to the products and services it offers.” Or, as HBR put it, “Key to these expanded journeys is often their integration with other service providers. Because this increases the value of the journey, carefully handing customers off to another firm can actually enhance the journey’s stickiness…” and with it, member loyalty and enthusiasm and association profitability.

Decision Journey image from the original HBR article cited, “Competing on Customer Journeys“

What’s Your Marketing Resolution for 2016?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on What’s Your Marketing Resolution for 2016?

I’m totally stealing this idea from smartie Beth Brodovsky, who emailed me this same question recently for her Driving Participation podcast series.

My resolution for association marketers would be for us to stop talking about segmentation and personalization and start doing it.

We know it’s important, but we’re full of excuses for why we don’t do it (and no, by personalization, I don’t mean sending an email to “Dear Elizabeth” as opposed to “Dear Colleague”): we don’t have the data, our systems won’t support it, it takes too much time, our members respond to our “spray & pray” tactics so we don’t need to worry about it, we don’t know how…

It’s 2016! No more excuses! Figure out how to collect and use the necessary data to allow you to find out what your members and other audiences care about, need, and want to know, and then serve that – and ONLY that – to them.

What would your 2016 marketing resolution be? Tell me in the comments!

Turning Good Ideas Into Action

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Ansoff Matrix Template

Looking to increase your association’s revenue?

Growth can come about either through acquiring new customers/members or increasing sales to existing customers/members. And you can sell either existing programs, products, and services or new programs, products, and services.

In short, Ansoff’s matrix.

The thing is, associations often struggle with this. Why?

I would argue it’s because of a lack of clarity, a lack of commitment, and/or a lack of execution.

Image credit: Edraw

Four Keys to Writing Good Marketing Copy

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Four Keys to Writing Good Marketing Copy

How do you write good marketing copy?

In a nutshell:

  •  Think about your audience. Who are they? What do you know about them? Use that information to craft a personalized message.
  • Talk like a real person, and write like you speak. Shorter and simpler is better than longer and more complex. Don’t be excessively formal, don’t use jargon, and don’t use undefined acronyms.
  • Focus on benefits not features. Present your offer from your audience’s perspective, not the association’s.
  • What’s your call to action? If the answer is, “I don’t have one,” don’t send the message.

 

 

Seven Keys to Great Testimonials

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

One of the best ways to promote your association and its programs, products, and services is to let your members, customers, audiences, and other stakeholders do it for you.

In other words, to use testimonials.

ASAE’s June 2010 Communications Section newsletter listed 7 key questions to ask to generate compelling testimonials:

  1. Why did you choose to participate with <your program>?
  2. What are your 3 favorite things about your participation and why?
  3. What’s the most valuable aspect of your participation and why?
  4. Please tell us about any specific success you’ve experienced because of your participation.
  5. How has your participation benefited your organization?
  6. Is there anything we could do to improve your experience?
  7. May we use your comments, with attribution? [VERY IMPORTANT]

So where do you find people who might be willing to answer these questions?

  • Your feedback forms, like post-conference and post-webinar evaluation forms. Make sure you have at least one open-ended question with a comment box (rather than all Likert scales), as people will often leave comments you can use almost verbatim once you have permission.
  • Your unsolicited praise. Did somebody say something nice about your programs, services, or customer service, either verbally or in writing? Ask them if you can use it.
  • Your loyal fans – and you probably already know who they are. When you’re looking to generate fresh testimonials, they should be the first people you ask.

 

Five Tips for Overcoming Your Fear of Sales

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

One of the toughest things in marketing is crossing over into sales. While our end goal is to get people to buy what we’re selling, no one wants to be the sleazy used car dealer.

So how do you get one (sales) without the other (obnoxious dude everyone avoids at parties)?

  1. Understand that selling is really about matching problems to solutions. (Which also means that if your solutions don’t match their problems, you need to be willing to walk away.)
  2. Realize that selling = making connections.
  3. Ask questions and listen to the answers. (Exhibit booth pet peeve #1: the exhibitor is doing all the talking. NOOOOOOO!)
  4. Invite people to participate in offerings that will help them succeed. (Again, you’re not trying to push product – you’re looking for fit. You only want want customers who are going to be happy, which means you’re willing to let the marginal ones go.)
  5. Be yourself. (Unless you’re that guy. Don’t be that guy.)

 

More Tips to Improve Your Open Rate

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Tips to help your blast emails shine, Part 2:

  •  Personalize it – It’s 2014. We all have the ability to send emails to “Dear Elizabeth” rather than “Dear Colleague” so be sure to call people by name.
  • Be a real person – Write like you would talk to someone, not like the first draft of a Business Communications 101 project.
  • Avoid jargon and acronyms – This is hard in associations, but do your best and be sure to define any acronyms you do use.
  • Short paragraphs – People scan emails, so you need to write in a scanable way, which means short sentences and paragraphs. Even better? Bullet points!
  • Keep it short overall – This is not a scholarly treatise – or the last time you’ll ever speak to your reader. Keep your emails as short as possible while still conveying your message. Edit, edit, edit!
  • Call to action – What do you want your readers to do? If the answer is “nothing,” you probably don’t need to send the email in the first place. Always have a call to action, and if it includes a link (and it should), make sure you include the link more than once in your message.
  • TEST! Don’t just send it out – send a test run to a small group first to make sure everything’s showing up the way you think it should. Problems happen, and it’s WAY better to catch them in an email that went to five of your fellow staff members than when the message has gone to hundreds – or thousands – of your members.
  • Test it to more than just yourself, and more than just internal association email accounts (i.e., include a Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. account in your test group). It’s really hard to spot your own mistakes, and you want to make sure that your email is going to look OK and get through even for people who aren’t using Outlook.

Get Part 1 here.

How Do I Know What to Charge?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

One of the hardest things to do in creating a product or service is to set the price – too high, no one will buy because it’s too expensive; too low, no one will buy because they think what you’re offering isn’t valuable.

So how do you determine your pricing strategy?

  1. Determine whether this is something that can be a “loss leader” or whether it needs to break even or turn a profit. That will help you determine your floor price.
  2. Think through the amount of resources that go into creating and maintaining what you’re offering – make sure you account for both *direct* (aka, actual money) and *indirect* (aka, things like staff time) costs. This also helps set the floor price.
  3. Look at what your sister organizations/competitors/collaborators are charging for similar products. That will help you figure out what the market is expecting and will bear. It will also help you figure out demand.
  4. Forecast whether or not you’re going to want or need to offer any sort of discounts (i.e., for bulk orders or member versus non-member pricing). If so, the price for the first one needs to be high enough that you can discount later on.
  5. Determine your marketing goal.
  6. Make your best estimation based on all the above!
  7. Test it! Get your product out there and see what happens.
  8. But remember – it’s much easier to drop a price that was initially a little high (or offer discounts) than it is to raise a price that’s too low, without some sort of major relaunch of whatever the product is with some ostensible reason it should now cost more.

For more information on pricing strategies, see: