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Archive for June, 2010
Unexpected Results on Social Networking and Association Renewal – Is Social Networking Really a Bad Thing?
The 2010 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report has been published with a surprising result! As stated on P.9, “Results also indicated that associations using Facebook, Twitter and/or their private association social networking are significantly more like to have renewal rates under 80%.”
While some may argue that this may be a “sampling error,” or some other statistical anomaly, might it also be a possible warning?
One of the overall ‘take aways’ for me from this study is the importance of ‘personal touch’ in the marketing program for both member and trade associations. In almost every instance, those associations that employed some level of “personal touch” like phone calls or personal visits, had either a higher acquisition rate, a higher renewal rate or both.
With this said, is it really surprising that associations using social networking have a lower renewal rate?
I’d be interested in hearing what you all have to say on this.
Four Reasons Why Thriving Membership Organizations Stop Growing.
This is by no means and exhaustive list, but I have come up with a list of what seem like the four major reasons why a healthy organization can come to a dead end in membership growth. Feel free to add your thoughts on additional reasons.
Here they are.
Market Saturation: There is no such thing as perpetual growth. At some point every organization will hit a point of getting all the prospects who want to join.
Disenchanted Members:Whether it is poor customer service, a lack of new compelling content, or a weak fulfillment operation, unhappy members can stop growth fast.
Competition: Millions of smart people are daily trying to come up with a better products and services. If someone else can give better information, faster service, and lower prices, then an organization can be outflanked.
Inadequate Marketing: You can have market potential, happy members, and the best product, but if you do not get the message to the right people, then growth will stop.
Interestingly, although each of these situations can halt growth, I think that there are potential solutions that can help an organization “jump the curve” and extend growth. The solution starts with acknowledging there is a problem and then focusing on the root causes not the symptoms presented by the problem. Perhaps we can look at some of these options in a future post.
MMC – A Success!
First day back from the ASAE MMC and I want to send cudos to the ASAE team that ran this program. I think it was one of the best MMCs ever. The sessions were good and the attendees were very much “into it.”
MGI also launched the 2010 Membership Benchmarking Survey results at a reception we sponsored. If you attended, I hope you all enjoyed it. If you have any questions concerning the study or would like a free copy, please feel free to contact me.
I also spoke with Vinay Kumar on how you can use the Membership Lifecycle to help you diagnose problems within your membership program. It was well attended with over 30 people who had a lot to say and share. It was a great session and I want to thank everyone who attended and participated.
Four Pillars of Online Marketing.
I read two interesting articles this morning. The first was by Wayne Friedman who reported that online ads will exceed $100 Billion (yes, 11 zeros — $100,000,000,000) by 2015 and North America alone will be 45% of that ($45 Billion) and that Latin America will “…continue to be the fastest-growing region…” The biggest specific markets, I think to no ones surprise, will be China and Russia. Most of this will be billed through paid search.
The second article, written by Thad Kahlow and posted on Marketing Daily, pointed out the four most important investment considerations when developing your online campaign. In summary,
Launch a Robust Search Engine Marketing Campaign
Start with paid search. Find a sophisticated PPC team (three or more) or an agency (with multi-discipline expertise) that will look at your data and — with a high level of confidence and certainty — be able to promise you more … lots more.
If you are managing a campaign in-house right now with only a single dedicated resource, chances are there are inefficiencies, which can be fixed quickly to yield immediate cost savings. Ever hear of exact mirror matching? While PPC is generating search results and ROI, build an internal search team and invest time and human resources toward gaining organic rankings.
SEO is the single largest potential for gain — I mean CMO-attention-grabbing ROI. It’s no longer snake oil and, when done well, it can put up huge numbers: rankings (branding), traffic (market share), conversions (sales). The winners in the online space — the real winners — will win first with SEO.
Improve the User’s Website Experience & Conversions
Give your users what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. Do that well and you will improve your brand equity as well as measure increased business results. Focus on the users first and business goals second … sit back and count the cash. Well, it’s not that easy, but when done well, it feeds a cycle of online success.
According to Nielsen, spending 10% of your development budget on usability should improve your conversion rate by 83%. In most cases, it’s far cheaper to use 15% of your development budget than to more than double your advertising budget.
Get in the Social Media Game
Start small, be realistic, and understand your first goal should be to listen. Yes, listen. Not market, not push a new message, not convert — listen. Only after you have listened to your audience (current and potential clients) can you properly engage and begin a real conversation.
Once you build credibility and open a true dialogue, you can begin to reap the benefits of social media — motivating others, your “mavens” to do it for you. Yes, eventually after you have climbed the mighty hill of social media, you can sit back and guide the boulder downhill. Let your mavens and evangelists do the work for you.
Measure
Measure it. Measure it. Measure it. Find out what works, find out what doesn’t, and make business decisions based on real data. Don’t guess, don’t hope, don’t anything … measure it and improve marketing and results.
Much of this we’ve read before and hopefully many are doing. What I think is really important is when you put both articles into context, how important it is for us all to make a concerted effort to bring cohesive membership awareness, acquisition, engagement, renewal and reinstatement tactics to our membership development efforts. If online is where the ad revenue is going, then that is a HUGE indicator of where people are going. And either we can be in front of that, taking advantage of the ‘low hanging fruit,’ or way behind scrambling for crumbs.
MGI Tipster Volume 9, Issue 6
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