It’s time to deliver the experience members have come to expect.
Your association might want to provide a personalized member experience, but are you actually doing it? Here are four ways to get started.
Chances are that your association wants to provide a personalized member experience. It’s understandable considering recent research findings like these:
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- The Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report shows that 41 to 50 percent (depending on generation) say they generally ignore communications from companies unless they are personalized.
- In the Community Brands Digital Evolution Study, 65 percent of members said they are interested in personalization, with 79 percent saying it is very or somewhat important that their organization provide targeted, valuable content.
- The Digital Evolution Study also shows that 52 percent of those working at professional membership organizations (“Pros”) say they are interested in personalization.
But here’s a question for you: Are you really incorporating personalization into your member marketing and communications plans? According to the Digital Evolution Study, only 18 percent of Pros say they personalize the content members see.
These findings point to an opportunity for associations to catch up with member expectations. It’s time to move personalization beyond a buzzword and into reality.
Here are four ways to start providing a more personalized member experience:
1. Collect and use member data.
Today’s members expect organizations to collect information to personalize their experience. Leverage your association management system (AMS) and other tools to gather useful data and send targeted messages at the right time to deliver a better, more personalized member experience.
For example, use your AMS to collect and analyze data about your members’ career stages, interests, and behaviors to provide them with the personalized benefits they’re seeking. Based on your members’ interests and preferences, you can do things like recommend new industry reports or new services offered by your organization that will help them in their specific career stage.
Another example: Use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help members find answers through personalized content, predicting the answers that members are looking for, and providing that information proactively.
TECH TIP: Built on the Salesforce CRM platform, Nimble AMS offers multiple ways to personalize the member experience through targeted online community content, recommendations for job opportunities, personalized event registration paths, and more. You can also leverage member data and artificial intelligence capabilities available through Salesforce Einstein to make predictions and deliver recommended content.
2. Make personalization easier.
It might seem too time-consuming to personalize communications and content. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Use content templates that automatically pull member data and other details straight from your AMS system into your content to streamline the personalization process. With this approach, you can spend less time building one-off communications and content, and more time focused on delivering a great member experience.
TECH TIP: Nimble Create allows you to easily build on-brand templates that deliver relevant, personalized content straight from your Nimble AMS system. Nimble Create is included with Nimble AMS, offering associations an advanced, on-platform template creation tool that allows you to send emails with your brand style and personalized message for Membership Renewals, Event Reminders, Donation Thank-You messages, Surveys, Abandoned Cart notifications and more. Using Nimble Create you can also make personalized web pages on the member portal formatted to provide members the ability to view and easily edit their membership information.
3. Secure your members’ data.
The Digital Evolution Study indicates that 71 percent of members of professional associations say they worry about data privacy and security. But this concern doesn’t prevent most of them from sharing information if they feel it’s secure and/or for their benefit.
Move your member data and management into an AMS system to ensure your member data is in one, secure place. Be sure your AMS vendor offers the following functionality to protect your member data and reduce risk:
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- Transparency into security and performance status
- Best practices for data security to prevent unauthorized access
- Comprehensive user permissions to restrict access to only those who should have it
- Data recovery to safeguard your data from data storage errors, catastrophic failures, and everything in between
- Compliance certifications to validate security
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TECH TIP: Learn how Nimble AMS protects your member data. Read the toolkit, Protect Your Member Data, Reduce Risk, and Ensure System Performance: 7 things every modern association should look for in an AMS system
4. Let your members know their data is secure.
Make sure your members know you have data security precautions in place. Explain how the information you collect will be used for a better and more personalized experience, and your members in turn are more likely to trust you. That trust will then translate into a better member experience and, ultimately, greater member loyalty.
Take the next step
Learn more about the importance of personalization for associations and how to get started using it to deliver a great member experience. Join us for our upcoming webinar, Personalization 101: Turning Member Expectations into Reality
