The Power of Personalized Engagement for Your Association

Communicating membership benefits and consistently engaging members remains a constant challenge for associations. 

However, personalized, relevant communications and engagement opportunities can help your organization overcome this obstacle. Technology provides tools to unlock insights into members’ behaviors and preferences, send targeted communications that align with those preferences, and develop personalized engagement opportunities.

‍As a result, members will see how your association’s offerings further their individual goals and professional development, enhancing their perceived value of the membership.

In this guide, we’ll explore the top strategies for using your tech stack to launch customized communications and promote your offerings.

The Benefits of Personalization

While personalizing your offerings and communications does require initial data analysis and strategizing, the benefits will pay dividends in the form of:

• A better understanding of your members: Personalization requires a deep understanding of your members’ needs, preferences, goals, demographic details, and more. This research gives a more comprehensive understanding of who your members are, informing other areas of your operations (e.g., your communication strategy or the topics featured at your next conference).
• Increased engagement: Members want to engage more with content, events, and communications relevant to their needs and interests. Greater engagement also boosts member satisfaction, making them more likely to refer friends or colleagues to your organization and grow your membership base.
• Higher member retention rates: Members are more likely to renew their membership when they feel their needs are being met. In addition to customizing your offerings, aim to provide personalized experiences from the first touchpoint to the renewal period. For example, create a renewal letter template and incorporate personal details like the member’s accomplishments from the last year.
• Improved trust and credibility in your field: Like providing educational courses with verified credentials or hosting industry-leading conferences, a personalized approach will enhance your association’s reputation. This approach shows that your association is committed to understanding members’ needs and adapting to trends and your industry’s changing landscape.

Personalization can also enhance resource allocation, reducing wasted funding and staff time on unsuccessful offerings. Use your knowledge of members’ preferences to examine which offerings receive the most engagement. Divert more resources to support or expand those offerings.

3 Best Practices for Personalized Engagement

Personalization can quickly become overwhelming, even for small to mid-sized associations. Writing personalized messages or developing resources and events tailored for each member is impossible. You’ll need to pair the following tips and best practices with capable technology to achieve personalization at scale through data-driven insights, automation, segmentation, and more.

Build your strategies on a solid foundation.

Personalization is founded in data. Carefully choose a robust, comprehensive, and secure constituent relationships management (CRM) system to centralize and organize your member data. Your CRM should:

• Be flexible and scalable. Look for a CRM that offers the capabilities you need, allows you to tailor the solution to your needs, and integrates with other solutions you may need in the future. For example, Fíonta’s guide to Nonprofit Cloud explains that this Salesforce solution is effective because it offers comprehensive features and capabilities and integrates with other Salesforce Industry Clouds and apps.
• Prioritize data security. CRMs store sensitive data about your members. Protect their privacy and maintain trust in your association by choosing a solution with stringent security measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA), access controls, verifiable credentials and encryption.
• Promote data hygiene. Data hygiene ensures your database remains up-to-date and free of errors, duplicate entries, and formatting inconsistencies. After all, the insights you derive from this information will only be as accurate as the database itself. Some CRMs automatically cleanse data, but you can also leverage third-party tools.
• Offer detailed analysis capabilities. Raw data is rarely very illuminating. Look for a CRM with customizable dashboards, filters, and visualizations that can make the data more digestible. Ensure you can segment members by shared characteristics to make targeting messages easier—some solutions can even do this automatically.

Additionally, consider surveying your current members to determine the best ways to add value to your offerings. This could reveal new insights and feedback not reflected in your data, helping you align your offerings and benefits with what members actually want.

Promote various engagement opportunities.

Once you deeply understand your members’ preferences, needs, and interests, promote or create compelling engagement opportunities that correspond with those traits. Often, this means providing diverse engagement opportunities that stand out from what other organizations have to offer, such as:

• Structured learning programs that help members upgrade their skills, knowledge, and credentials to earn promotions, raises, and other achievements.
• Exclusive networking events that are personalized based on experience level, geographic location, or industry niche.
• Interest-based webinars and online workshops focused on specific topics, industry trends, or technical skills. For example, an HR association might hold a webinar about how to write compelling job descriptions.
• Member-generated content opportunities in which members can create and share content that aligns with their expertise, experience, or interests. 

Consider offering a variety of leadership opportunities as well. Extend these opportunities to newer members to involve those at all stages of their careers. For instance, while more senior members might hold board positions, new members could lead small committees or short-term initiatives.

Consider dynamic content.

Dynamic content is digital content that changes based on data about the user viewing it. This means the content can be personalized in real time based on user preferences and interactions with your association. 

Some examples of dynamic content include:

• Personalized email campaigns that change based on set criteria, such as the recipient’s geographic location.
• Customized member dashboards that display customized recommendations based on past activity. 
• Dynamic resource recommendations that promote articles, educational courses, or toolkits depending on the members’ interests or past interactions. 
• Targeted event invitations that are customized based on which events and sessions members attended in the past.

Implementing the right technology and configuring dynamic content can be complex, especially if you have a large membership base. In this case, consider working with a tech consultant. These experts will help you execute your vision by managing the technical aspects of configuring dynamic content.

As you promote your offerings, keep digital accessibility in mind. Make communications and engagement opportunities inclusive and accessible for everyone, allowing all your members to participate in events and explore your resources. Go beyond complying with basic regulations and, instead, make accessibility an integral part of your association’s operations.

About the Author

Karin Tracy, VP of Marketing

Karin Tracy, VP of Marketing at Fíonta, is a seasoned designer and marketer with a passion for serving nonprofit organizations and being a small part of bettering the world. She is a certified Pardot Consultant and Marketing Cloud Email Specialist, a fan of automation and reporting, a lover of animals, and devourer of popcorn.

At Fíonta, Karin drives marketing efforts for all internal and external projects. Her direct service work is focused primarily on marketing strategy and automation for Fíonta’s MCAE (Pardot) clients.