Your association offers big value for members. To attract and engage with even more members, it’s important to really let that value shine through multiple channels.
We’re not just talking about multiple communications channels here (although that’s important, too!). We’re talking about using various approaches for your association marketing, including:
- Understanding what your members value most
- Reaching out to members in a variety of ways that attract and engage them
- Giving members new opportunities to grow professionally
Here are some high-impact ways to attract and engage members with a multi-channel approach:
1. Understand your audiences better.
Effective member marketing and engagement starts with understanding your audiences. It’s important to understand who you’re communicating with so that you use the right content, tone, length, offers, and channels.
Start by looking at the data you have in your association management software (AMS). Use the reporting and data analytics tools in your AMS to understand member interests, behaviors, career stages, and trends. This will help to give you deeper insights into what communications and information are most relevant for your members’ needs.
Another way to know your audiences better is to develop personas. Personas are fictional, generalized characters that represent your audience’s various needs, goals, and challenges. They can help you think of your members as groups of people with similar characteristics so you can design content for and market to them in ways that grab their attention.
Use what you know about your members to create these fictional characters representing each type of member (and prospective member) you’re communicating with. Have a persona in mind (just as you would think of a friend as you write a letter to him or her) as you develop offerings, content, and communications for the group each persona represents.
2. Use personalized approaches to deliver greater member value.
Association trends research by Community Brands suggests that members value targeted content from their association. Findings also show that members consistently place high value on job opportunities and help with advancing their careers. At the same time, members value various types of content to different degrees in different stages of their careers.
So, how can you provide a more personalized experience to attract and engage members? An effective approach is to make sure you have the right technologies in place to deliver a personalized experience – giving members the resources they need at each career stage.
For example, using job board software built for associations, you can build a robust online career center that provides job opportunities and career development resources that help members as their careers evolve. Using association job board software like YM Careers, you can deliver job alerts, personalized job searches, job recommendations, and relevant career resources – allowing you to deliver benefits your members seek in a more personalized way.
3. Think “tech integrations”.
A multi-channel approach to attracting and engaging members includes not only which technologies you use, but also how you use them together to reach members. For example, use your technologies together to optimize your job board for visibility and limited access to non-members – in effect, using the job board to drive membership.
One way you can achieve this is by integrating your job board with your association management software (AMS). For example, YM Careers online job board software integrates with Aptify, NetForum, Nimble, and YourMembership AMS solutions by Community Brands. With this type of integration, non-members who visit your job board and sign up as job seekers via job alerts or account registration can be automatically delivered to your AMS as a list of new member prospects for your use in member marketing and acquisition efforts.
Another tech integration approach: Connect your online career center with your learning management system (LMS). For example, YM Careers integrates with Crowd Wisdom, the award-winning LMS from Community Brands. With this integration, members and non-members visiting your job board can receive recommendations for continuing education courses from your association’s learning offerings, helping you to engage members even further.
4. Offer career support in other ways.
As your members look to grow their careers, you can go beyond your association’s online career center to support them with career resources while attracting new members. For example, host virtual or in-person networking happy hours so that members and invited non-members can connect with others in their profession in an informal environment.
Another idea: Host a career fair that’s open to all professionals in your industry (not just members) – make sure to promote it via email marketing. Extending your reach in this way can help you to attract non-members to join your association while providing value to members.
