THE COMPLETE 2018TECHNOLOGY GUIDE: AMC EDITION

Contents

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Introduction

Email Marketing: Tools & Tricks

Embracing Social Media

Marketing Tools You Should Be Using

Harnessing Your Data

Conclusion

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Demographics are changing, as Baby Boomers retire and

Millennials take up the torch as the largest percentage of workers.

Beyond just the age difference, these up-and-comers are also more

culturally and racially diverse, which makes for an even more

unique generational makeup. And, not only are the demographics

changing, but people’s traits, preferences, and tendencies are

changing due to the technology advances.

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It’s undeniable – we live in a completely different world compared to 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, though valuable, these traits make the young workforce even harder for professional associations to reach.

How do your associations remain relevant in light of these shifts?

And, how do you convey that relevance to a skeptical group that has high expectations of every product they purchase or group they join?

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Let’s explore these changes more in-depth, and consider some potential ways that you can help your associations remain a powerhouse for the workers of today through technology, while still keeping a hold on their core values.

Email Marketing: Tools & Tricks

Email marketing is one of the best tools for high ROI, the metric that shows how much the return on your email marketing investments are, and generate new member leads.

But, common mistakes made in email marketing can interfere significantly with both your ROI and overall membership generation.Implementing strong email marketing strategies and utilizing the right technology and tools is essential for enticing more potential members to ultimately grow (and retain) your membership.

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Why Is Email So Important?

32% Average open rate for an email sent by an association (Hubspot)

Flexibility: MailChimp - Free for up to 2,000 subscribers - Integrates with many third party applications - Serious lack of automation, making most work manual

Best Design: Emma - Offers a package designed specifically for non-profits - Customer service available to perfect email designs - More expensive than other platforms

Automation: ActiveCampaign - Automate emails and keep track of purchases - Simple segmentation for different types of members - Easy to build emails - Time consuming to set up

Value: Constant Contact - Create surveys and easily integrate with Google Analytics - Integrates with social media - Lack of customization

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Email Tools: Exploring Your Options

Email campaigns are important marketing tools for associations.

But, are your email efforts making the desired impact? Tracking

your email marketing with Google Analytics can help.

Why should you track your email campaigns? Well, analytics tell

you a lot about your association’s email efforts (and, I mean a lot).

Email analytics provide insights into your email marketing like click

through rates, open rates, email shares/forwards, and more.

This marketing tool offers comprehensive data on a number of

points: bounce rate, time spent on each page, pages per session,

new sessions, conversions, and much more.

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Email Tools: Using Google Analytics

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Email Tools: Setting up Google Analytics

1. Set up campaign tracking with campaign titles

2. Setting up UTM parameters

3. Organize with advanced segmentation

4. Continually measure with real-time reports

Add campaign titles to your emails in the “reports” tab of Google Analytics. Campaign titles automatically link to the emails sent to your members. Google Analytics then tracks web traffic from email efforts as its own separate traffic.

UTM parameters are small, manually created segments of a URL that provide Google Analytics with more information about that specific link. Use UTM parameters to organize your email campaign tracks. You can save your associations time and effort sorting through analytics this way.

An advanced segment allows your association to track specific types of email campaigns. To set up an advanced segment, visit the advanced segment section above the reports section. Then, choose the “Create New Segment” option. Finally, set the medium to “Email.”

Locate your real time reports in the ‘Real-Time’ tab in the left menu. Then, select ‘Traffic Sources’ and after that ‘Email.’ Your report will tell you as it occurs: How many people are visiting your websites currently just from emails, which email campaign they’ve come from, and what percentage of traffic comes from which campaign.

Embracing Social Media

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Social Media: Why is it Important?

Social media plays a huge role in how members communicate and

interact, and thus it needs to shape how your AMC interacts with both

associations and members.

Your new target expects you to be able to deliver a level of

connectedness beyond what they can already achieve on their own.

This places a heavy burden on you as an AMC, considering just

how far an individual’s personal network can extend these days.

Online adults who currently use

two or more social media channel sites

Americans who have interacted with companies on at least one social channel

The increase among social media use on

mobile devices just in 2016

30% 48% 52%

Social Media: Facebook

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Events: Having a Facebook event makes registering for your events and conferences social. People who are invited on the social media platform can invite others, so more event traffic can be funneled to your events.

Advertising: Facebook advertising is an effective tool in recruiting new members. Posting an ad with a call to action about joining one of your associations (maybe including some of your best member benefits) that links to your associations’ website could go a long way and with a relatively small price tag.

Groups: Facebook Groups allows your associations to create private channels on Facebook just for current members. Here you can release information solely for members’ eyes— another member benefit!

Percentage of U.S. adults (not just Internet users, but the entire population) who use Facebook (Pew Research)

Create pages on Facebook for your associations to disseminate information and allow members and non-members to interact with posts. It gives you an opportunity to share updates relevant to your associations and their respective industries.

68%

Social Media: Twitter

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Hashtags: Take advantage of hashtags (#) by placing them in front of a word or phrase in in your posts— it creates a link which can be searched and tracked throughout the site. Hashtags can help your associations reach your target audiences with your tweets.

Chats: Twitter chats happen in real time and are typically moderated and focused around a specific topic. Participating in a Twitter chat can establish your associations’ name in your field and help strengthen your online presence.

Polls: By conducting polls on Twitter, you can gauge members’ preferences quickly and easily. Next time one of your associations is having trouble choosing an event name, get your Twitter followers’ opinion! It’s also a great way to engage non-members.

On Twitter, you “tweet” out posts of 140 characters or less that can include photos or videos. You will accumulate followers and tweets are seen in a chronological stream on user’s Twitter home pages.

Increase in engagement when location is included in a tweet (Social Pilot)79%

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Groups: With this feature, you can create groups with members to share content directly with them. This is helpful in contacting people who all live in one area or work for the same company. You can also join groups relevant to your industry, to spread awareness of your associations, as well as stay informed.

Video sharing: LinkedIn now allows users to upload videos through the app. This video feature also shares information about the viewers of the video. This data could include where they work and what their job positions are. Associations can use this information to learn about their audience and decided how to target groups better.

Social Media: LinkedIn

2 new professional accounts are created every second (Social Pilot)

Your associations can use LinkedIn to seek out new members and promote association events. LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms, as it tends to take on a more professional tone. But, this can be beneficial for finding new, potential members online.

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Stories: With Snapchat, you can post a “story” from your profile. Use these “stories” to promote activities for members as well as what’s happening within your associations. This is a effective and easy way to keep your followers informed, while still feeling personal.

Geotags: A geotag is a filter, often of a logo or location, that can be placed over a Snapchat if the user is in a specific geographic region. Your associations can make one for events or conferences— it’s as simple as drawing a parameter around the event building! This allows attendees to send Snapchats and add stories that include your geotag.

Social Media: Snapchat

Snapchat allows users to send and receive photos and videos that disappear after a certain period of time. Build a solid, credible foundation at your associations by creating a Snapchat persona that is informative and fun.

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Live Stream: Instagram has an interactive live stream feature which would be most beneficial during your associations’ events. These types of social media efforts show your members that even if they can’t make the event, they can still be informed and involved.

Locations: Instagram allows its users to tag their location in their photo. People can search by location and then see all of the posts from that specific area. Tagging your location is a great way to become more visible on Instagram and thus increase your followers. If you have an office or are hosting a special event, encourage people to tag the location in their photos.

Social Media: Instagram

Instagram users who log into the platform on a daily basis (Pew Research)

Instagram is a unique platform where users share photos, videos, and stories to their followers. Promoting events, explaining membership benefits, and posting updates are great ways to use Instagram to engage your audience. This platform lets you be creative in an immediate, high-impact way.

51%

Your social media presence is an integral part of your organization as a whole. People no longer want to know just what you offer— they want to know what you stand for and who you are, and social media can be key for this.

No matter which outlet you use, remember that it’s not all about getting followers. You need to keep your followers interested and give them reasons to engage with you.

The goal is to generate real, viable leads – which cannot be achieved without consistent engagement and effort.

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Tech Tools You Should Be Using

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Tech Tools: Video

YouTube, a video sharing platform, is one of the fastest growing channels on the Internet. Using YouTube gives your company an effective way to reach viewers with rich video content.

Search engine optimization: YouTube is owned by Google and is the second largest search engine in the world. By putting material on YouTube you are boosting your opportunity of being optimized on Google and being seen by more potential members.

Promotional videos : On YouTube, it would be beneficial to create a short video about your associations and the benefits members enjoy by joining. Promote it further by sharing this video on your associations’ website, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Membership testimonials: You can use YouTube to interview association members about why they joined and what they enjoy most about being a member. This allows people better insight into what being a member at any of your associations is all about.

Wistia

Do any of your associations post informational videos to educate members or promote events? Wistia may be the marketing tool for you. This video platform allows you to customize your media and use it for everything from lead generation to general promotion.

You can track total plays, viewer engagement, integration with other platforms, and viewer history tracking. It allows you to not just promote, but to follow every aspect of your video promotion, so that you can gauge your campaign effectiveness and continue to shape your future videos.

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Tech Tools: Video

Live Video

Another trend picking up speed in the social media world in 2017 is live video. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram introducing a live video feature within the past 2 years, businesses are getting on board and creating live video content for their audiences.

Live streaming allows your associations’ audience to tune in without physically being at an event or conference. Members may not be able to attend every event your associations host. Inviting members to an event live stream can keep members in the loop and gain new membership referrals.

Brand Management: Mention

Of course, all the digital campaigns in the world can be undone by something as seemingly negligible as a poor review or negative comment on social media.

But, marketing tools like Mention allow you to keep track of every time your brand is mentioned across a variety of channels (hence the name). Using a digital dashboard, Mention shows you where your brand is getting the most chatter and what perceptions are out there. Additionally, this tool will even help you keep tabs on what your competitors are doing so you can stay one step ahead.

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Tech Tools: Optimization

SEO: Keywordtool.io

SEO is a critical part of your digital marketing strategy. After all, at over 6.5 billion searches performed each day, your website needs to be as visible as possible, and optimization is what gets you there. Keywordtool.io uses Google Autocomplete to show you hundreds of keywords options that are relevant to your content – from top rankers to more niche, longtail keywords.

It’s quick and easy to use, plus incredibly accurate, so you can continue to put good SEO practices to work and improve your rankings across associations.

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UX optimization: Crazy Egg

Another way to optimize your site and see how users are interacting with each page is by using heat mapping. This method allows you to actually see where users click, and you can filter the heat map to show you new vs. returning visitors. You can even get more granular and see exactly how long each person was on the page before they made their click. Crazy Egg allows you to enhance your associations’ websites down to the minutiae so that when you redirect with ads or other digital marketing campaigns, your audience has a positive experience and will be inclined to return in the future.

Tech Tools: Optimization

Online advertising: Google Adwords

Organic searches are important, but paid ads play a crucial supporting role that is often overlooked. Google Adwords is yet another freemium tool that helps you create and implement your own paid search, display, video, and retargeting ads.

Using this tool, you’re only charged when someone clicks through to one of your websites (or calls your advertised number, if you have this feature set up). You can also test your ads, set them up for local or global, and track performance. It’s one of the most often-used PPC tools, simply because of its universality and ease of use.

An online job board platform where you host job postings for your members to browse is a giant leg-up for any of your associations, as you show that you have access to career opportunities that your members won’t find anywhere else.

If you’re not sure where to begin with starting a job board for your members, Web Scribble offers intuitive software that can help you create and manage your own board, so you don’t have to put your job listings into the hands of a third party. This allows you to maximize your revenue and streamline expenses so you can focus on a better experience for members and employers alike.

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Tech Tools: Job Board

If your associations has access to employment opportunities that

are pre-vetted, highly tailored to the industry, you offer an

incredibly unique value to all your different members.

10x The average amount associations’

website traffic increases by adding a

job board powered by Web Scribble

Harnessing Your Data

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Data is constantly driving further innovations in technology, healthcare, and education – just to name a few of many industries. Through gathering and analyzing data, we see remarkable patterns that can help us optimize performance and predict outcomes with a high degree of accuracy.

Marketing, too, is more data-oriented than ever, as it aids in honing in on a target audience and in seeing what strategies are working and which ones aren’t.

For your association management company, data can be an enormous boost in helping to find potential members that will be a good fit for your organizations, while simultaneously decreasing your marketing spend – giving you a better return on your marketing investment. Here we’ll cover some of the basics of data analysis and how it can be used to benefit your association and your members.

We’ve reached a point in history where we’re surrounded by information. And, what’s more, we now know how to harness this information to our advantage.

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Harnessing Data: Analysis

DataCracker

This data analysis tool specializes in survey data. Your AMC no doubt runs surveys across multiple associations and must deal with large data sets that aren’t always clean. It has the ability to load data from popular survey tools such as SurveyMonkey. This tool will help you understand your data better and ultimately understand your associations and members better.

RapidMiner

If you want to get really detailed with your data analysis, you can go for a tool like RapidMiner (again, a freemium type of package). This type of tool analyzes data for you, then uses this information to create predictive models. For professional associations, this can be especially useful for helping you to really dig into who your target is and how it’s evolving. For the team that doesn’t have the data background to perform their own data analysis and modeling, this type of tool can be a huge advantage.

Google Fusion Tables

This tool offers your AMC one of the easiest ways to turn data into a map or chart. With Fusion Tables, you will be able to analyze your data by geography to better understand member locations. Even better, this service is easy enough for beginners to use.

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When you’re trying to create better leads, you need to have an idea

of what a good lead is. Undoubtedly you’ve had people join your

associations that were what you’d call “ideal” members: they paid

their dues on time, they kept their membership for a number of years,

they participated in events. Anyone would agree that these are the

kinds of members you want in an association.

Now, if you look back on all these “ideal” members and start

examining their various features and demographics, you may be able

to see trends and similarities.

Harnessing Data: Predictive Modeling

From these trends, you can derive what’s called predictive

models: data-informed models that give you an idea of the

type of person that’s a good fit for your organizations.

You may have heard marketers call these customer personas

– basically just more personalized forms of predictive models

that are meant to portray your customer spectrum.

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Harnessing Data: Predictive Modeling

Phase 1: Gathering data Assuming you use some sort of CRM to manage communication with members, you have quite a bit of data on your members already. You know where they live, their ages, when they joined, how long they remain in your association, their career paths, the roles they play in their companies, and so forth. You’re probably already using this data to track and monitor your members already.

This data will all be useful for creating predictive models, as we’ll see in the next point. But the important thing to remember is, there is a direct correlation between how accurate your model is, and how much data you use to create the model. Once you’ve tracked sufficient data, you’re ready to put together predictive models to help you hone in on your target audience.

Percentage of associations that agree data is available in one centralized location (Association Analytics)8%

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Harnessing Data: Predictive Modeling

Now comes the interesting part – creating models from your data. You’ll either use software or a data service to create your models for you. They’ll use a specific algorithmto map out certain data sets over a period of time, and in doing so will pick up on trends – however subtle they may seem to be, they’re still significant.

For instance, your outcomes may show that you get a higher percentage of members from a certain region. There may be a number of reasons why this is the case (there may be fewer in-person networking opportunities in that region, there may be a school that puts out a large number of graduates in your industry, etc.). But for now, all you really need to notice is the trend.

You can keep going ad infinitum, assessing various demographic traits to show you where and whom to target with your marketing messages. This is your predictive model: the result of past data trends that informs you of your best future outcomes.

Phase 2: Assembling Models

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Harnessing Data: Predictive Modeling

Phase 3: Crafting personas

When you created your predictive models, those models should have been formed using data on your past members’ retention rates. Where did you find members that renewed the most? What was their age group? What was their position in their company?

The characteristics of past members with the highest lifetime value (LTV) will help you craft customer personas. They’re a type of predictive model that focuses specifically on telling you what type of person will deliver the highest retention rate, and thus the most overall value for your associations.

Now, most likely you will need to form several customer personas, each representing a different demographic or segment within your different membership populations. But, this wide variety of personas gives you a diverse and yet very accurate picture of the types of people that are best suited for your organizations. Another thing your customer personas will tell you is what your past high-LTV members enjoyed most about your organizations.

Whatever it was, this data tells you what the strongest aspects of your organizations are, so you can give more of them to your members, and thus increase your retention rate across the board.

Create Your Own Change

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One positive change that has occurred with the increased connection of technology is the subsequent increase in competition. This may not seem like a positive, but for your associations, it can be – if you seize the opportunity.

Increasing competition within career fields means that you’re in a unique position to target potential members with your benefits.

If you can offer services that make it easier for your members to advance, find new job opportunities, and make more valuable connections within their industry, then you create demand that only you can fill – and that is the ideal place for your association to be.

Don’t just follow the trends. Seize them and take them one step further to position yourself as a highly valuable and necessary part of every member’s career and personal development.

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