The marketing team play an important role in your Association, promoting the services you offer, events you host, the advocacy work you do and helping to drive membership growth. There is a lot they need to cover and communicate to stakeholders – having an Association Management System (AMS) can significantly increase efficiencies and reduce the burden on this function in your organisation.
An AMS like Membes can free up time for the marketing team to focus on more strategic areas like planning new campaigns to deliver maximum impact for your Association. In turn, your members and stakeholders will clearly be able to see the value you provide as increased communications occur across multiple channels, reinforcing the message.
Below are some of the ways an AMS can be a valuable tool for enhancing your marketing efforts.
Data is like gold for marketers – it provides them with valuable information to understand members’ and stakeholders’ current needs. With an AMS, marketers can easily segment the data to communicate unique messages that are relevant to each group.
For example, if you’re running a membership campaign, they can segment your database to send email communications to the different types of membership and include specific messaged for this audience – e.g. for newly qualified professionals the focus can be “continue upskilling by renewing your membership” or they could target people whose membership has lapsed for 1-2 years with a “we miss you” message.
AMS’ can support with managing your events from end-to-end and provide the ability to customise certain aspects to help you deliver better results. For example as part of the event registration form you can include a custom field asking, “How did you hear about this event?” – this will help you understand where your strongest leads come from.
Automatic reminders can be set up to keep registrants engaged and excited for the upcoming event and of course email newsletters can be segmented so the event is promoted to the right audience.
Membership recruitment is a key priority for all Associations this includes retaining current members but also attracting new members. Marketing has an important role to play in both retention and attraction by promoting all the services offered, the advocacy work, events and value your Association offers members.
An AMS will allow your marketing team to develop a member journey from prospects through to long-term members and set up automated communications to keep them engaged at each stage of the process. This will create an individual experience for each person and allow them to feel valued by the Association.
Marketers will be empowered with information and tools to better communicate with members and stakeholders when using an AMS. This will benefit the entire organisation as the management of data, event planning and communications are more streamlined and targeted which will produce greater results.
By using an AMS, you can improve your Association's reputation, attract new members, and increase engagement among existing members.
If you would like to find out how other Association’s use their AMS to boost their marketing efforts – join the Membes Community for free and start a discussion!