The Subjects Most Often on Association Professionals’ Minds
As our annual Association Communication Benchmarking Report gets underway, we started checking in with our readers to see which topics and issues are most on their minds. In addition to our comprehensive surveys, we talk to readers and mine our newsletter and website analytics for clues. Non-dues revenue, career development, membership development and future/sustainability issues seem to be what’s keeping many of us up at night these days.
Below are the email subject lines that resonated most with our readers, viewers and followers during the past 12 months:
Association Adviser Top 10 Subject Lines
| Rank | Topic |
| 1 | Association Event Do’s and Don’ts |
|---|---|
| 2 | Speaking Out About Employee Recruitment, Membership |
| Retention and Non-Dues Revenue | |
| 3 | Advice for Increasing NDR |
| 4 | Game Plan 2014: Seeing Around the Corners |
| 5 | Associations Not Getting, Not Asking Members, Advertisers What they Want |
| 6 | Is Your Association at a Crossroads? Data and Mobile are Key to Future Success |
| 7 | Power of Non-Dues Revenue |
| 8 | Association Careers, Compensation, Communication |
| 9 | ASAE’s John Graham Reflects on Association Success |
| 10 | Are Your Conferences Still Delivering? |
Source: Association Adviser eNews and Naylor, LLC 2014
* Index based on 100=average subject line response rate
“The staff and board feel we communicate our value prop, and yet our members don’t always feel that,” lamented Carol Meerschaert, director of marketing and communications for the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association in Fairfield, N.J. “In response, we’ve engaged a branding agency to research, clarify and solidify our value prop for individual members and our corporate partners,” she said.
Bob Zagami, show director of the New England RV Dealers Association, agreed: “Associations must change and change quickly. Otherwise, they will simply become irrelevant to their communities, and they will be replaced by others who have mastered inbound marketing techniques and how to communicate quickly and effectively to the constituents.”
