16 Systems to Supercharge Your Member Digital Experience
Your AMS may be the cornerstone of your tech stack, but limiting your strategy and development to your AMS will put you at a disadvantage in the quickly-evolving tech ecosystem. There’s more to explore – and there are big and small systems you can add to make a quick improvement to your member digital experience.
Our new white paper, The New Association Tech Ecosystem: Powering Member Experiences with Integration and Specialization, explores these themes, from the evolving AMS philosophy to finding the right fit in the association tech stack model. And just as important, it illustrates the expanding specialized solution marketplace to take your tech stack to the next level, beyond the AMS.
Here are 16 systems that associations need to consider as part of their tech stack for the digital future:
Analytics
Analytics is no longer a nice to have in today’s world of Netflix and Amazon. Your customers expect a personalized experience that can only be realized from both real-time and trending analysis. And whether you use a data warehouse or not, an analytics tool within your ecosystem will allow you to focus on key areas based on data and not anecdotes.
Donor Management
Every association needs a powerful fundraiser system that can effectively augment your revenue to do the good work your association is empowered to do.
Integration
How do you bring your systems together without effective integration? Today, improving integrations to connect your systems makes the plug-and-play option even easier by using a middleware hub (sometimes called an integration platform as a service, or IPaaS). Integration companies are leveraging their association knowledge by focusing on bringing association-specific connections. The time to integrate is now.
Payment Processing
Data security is always essential, but no more so than with credit cards and payment processing. Be sure you have an up-to-date system that is in compliance.
Online Advertising
In the never-ending online world, the ability to target your advertising is easier than ever. And with dollars stretched thin, this becomes an effective area to incorporate into your digital presence.
Marketing Automation
Work smarter, not harder. Four words that sum up marketing automation. Why send 100 emails when one targeted one will work? Why wait to welcome your new member and keep them engaged beyond your first hello? Marketing automation is common in the corporate world and with association-first solutions, it should be common in the association world too.
Influencer Management
Influencers aren’t just for the kids anymore. You may not be modeling the latest fashion, but you have valuable content to share and tapping into the influencer model will broaden your reach.
Video
The pivot to all things remote last year is not short term. The ease at which your members have been able to consume your content will change how your members interact with you well beyond the end of the pandemic. And while your members may have been forgiving of technical glitches at the beginning, the expectations for professional video is here to stay.
Content Management System
A good content management system can change how you present yourself to your members. And can change how your members see you. Whether through function or form, your CMS projects your values to the world and it’s a critical part of your tech stack.
Search
“If you build it, they will come” might work for a Field of Dreams but it doesn’t work for your content. Your valuable content doesn’t provide value unless your members can find it. Don’t let your search functionality be an afterthought.
Advocacy
We see every day how advocacy makes a difference. Whether fighting for more funding for legal services or bringing awareness of an underreported illness, how you position yourself and how you communicate your cause to your members is vital to effective advocacy.
Community
If you already have a community, you’ve likely seen the increase in demand to network and learn from colleagues during this remote year. If you haven’t focused on communities yet, it’s never too late to take advantage of this robust member benefit.
Mobile Community
Your members don’t just sit at their desk when engaging with your content. So your content shouldn’t be limited to the desktop. Beyond responsive design, there are mobile communities that can extend your reach to your members.
Career Center
With more people on the hunt for jobs, are you providing a service to your members for targeted job postings? Do your industry leaders look to you as a resource to find good talent? A career center sets you apart as a returning resource as careers continue to evolve.
Learning Management System
From webinars to on-demand learning, your members look to you for content to advance their career and meet continuing education requirements. Does your LMS meet these needs in today’s changing world? And are you leveraging the data from the system to personalize this experience?
Event Management System
How we manage our events is changing. The in-person events will come back, but the hybrid and remote options are here to stay. Do your tools give you that flexibility? Whether in registration or management of the event, your events are now more complex. Your tool should make that complexity easy.
Each of these areas have association-first vendors who can integrate with and enhance your AMS. Please see the Association Specialized Solution Marketplace for providers to meet each of these functions.
Download Richochet Advice’s newest whitepaper, The New Association Tech Ecosystem: Powering Member Experiences with Integration and Specialization, to learn more about the substantial technology changes associations must make to provide digital memberships in a pandemic world. Explore the evolving AMS philosophy and the expanding specialized solution marketplace to take your tech stack to the next level.
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