davidpoulos.com

Category: Non-profit

Can A Computer Know Your Customers Better Than You Do?

The rise of the machines, and the fear associated with it among humankind has increasingly crept into popular culture, in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Whether smart machinery or artificial intelligence (AI) is a good thing or a bad thing, especially as portrayed in film and fiction, often depends more upon the intent of the creator and the law of unforeseen consequences than the nature of the intelligence itself.

On a daily basis, the average retailer gathers enough transactional and personal data to feed a growing intelligence network that could be smart enough to function on its own in less than a year of constant-cycle learning. That’s a tremendous amount of data! It takes humans 15 years to amass that level of cognition and ability, on average. Sometimes this “knowledge” is used for good, and because there are limits placed on its use, either by the technology itself or by the circumstances of its use, all is well. The nightmare starts when those strictures and parameters are eliminated, and the machine can “learn” from all sources continually and can act and react accordingly.

The most widely used and easily recognized execution of this is the modern shopping algorithm. An algorithm is simply a comparative database that allows information to have tags attached to it, and when there are several tags in common between two items, one is deemed “related” to the other. This is a simple but very powerful idea. Humans are designed and hardwired to seek out patterns, both visually and in context, but computers are much better suited for this task as they have perfect recall, and aren’t influenced by loss of memory or emotion.

Smart machines that use an algorithm can appear very “smart” to their human users. Amazon.com was one of the first, and most famous, users of a comparative algorithm, when applied to book titles on their bookseller website. Customers would make purchases, the computer would keep track of these purchases, and build a data profile from the tags attached to each item purchased. The tags would then be used to compare these purchases to other books also available on the site, and “recommendations” would be made by the algorithm, based on the number of tags in common. Pretty slick, and with the right verbiage attached to the recommendations, it looks almost like there is a human making the picks and the recommendations.

TIVO television DVRs use this technology to make decisions about what TV programs you like and make recommendations and create recording timers accordingly. Not an infallible system, but it can be remarkably accurate, and it gets better the more decisions it makes and the more data it amasses. Now, extend that capability to association or non-profit membership groups, and as a marketer, think about your annual conference, seminar, or continuing education program. Where does that extension take you?

Why not use an algorithm to help attendees pick conference sessions? Will it improve member engagement? Will it increase overall enrollment? Will it help balance out room set up and class sizes? Can it be used to build tracks or new program offerings in the future that are successful? My research tells me that this type of personalized approach would be well-received by the vast majority of individual association members in a wide variety of industries. The commercial marketplace has gotten them comfortable with the technology, and they understand that the ”Machine” isn’t making life-or-death decisions, merely suggestions based on history, commonality and goals already stated. Generally if it saves attendees time, allows them to navigate a wide spread of data quickly, make some choices effectively and the results are reasonable, I think most event attendees would welcome such a system with open arms.

This type of innovation offers benefits for the organizer as well. Instantaneous feedback of popularity of each session based on purchases, the ability to add additional sessions in the same vein, or to cancel sessions that don’t attract an audience, means your conference department appears to have a solid handle on the needs of the members and can react to them quickly and effectively, with less waste. In short, the data embedded in the algorithm, and the resulting choices it returns, allows for smarter, faster, more efficient product and program development, with less risk, and greater reward.

One or two membership groups have put the power of the algorithm to use with good result. I hope the industry as a whole embraces this use of technology to improve their educational offerings, and for those organizations with more of an a la carte benefit offering, that this same technology can be applied to member benefits as well, providing a highly personalized experience for each member, quickly easily and intelligently. I say, “Let The Machines Rise!”

March 13, 2016
Center On Customer Experience To Sell Out Events

We’ve long advised companies who want to be market leaders to adopt a customer-centric stance in their internal and marketing attitude. That advice has been well received, but often reluctantly implemented, due to the complexity and length of time involved in properly instituting a sea change in their organizations. While we admit, thoughtful and well-considered moves of this magnitude do not happen overnight, they can be implemented incrementally, and start showing results sooner than a cold start.

The place to start is by working backwards. Think about your customer or client, at the moment they are just finished interacting with you – they’ve received their product, paid the invoice, shaken hands after the exit interview, whatever trigger ends an interaction cycle with your firm. Now, ponder for a second what happened, how was that customer feeling at that last few minutes of interaction? Were they thrilled to receive their product and can’t wait to use it, were they a little disappointed because it took longer than expected to arrive, or didn’t live up to the expectations you set for them, did they care at all, or did they just put it aside until a more convenient time?

If you’re a service provider, what feeling or sentiment preceded that last handshake or interaction (not counting the invoice, we’ll get to that in a moment)? Was it buoyant that they got what they needed from you, were they excited about the next time they worked with you, relieved they had gotten a good outcome without getting scalped, happy to be out of your clutches? Behind that smile and that handshake is a wide range of emotions and feelings that those clients or customers will carry with them for quite a while, and the next contact they have with you, including any further marketing or follow-up efforts, will trigger a somewhat milder version of that emotion, guiding their next response to you.

The place to start is by working backwards. Think about your customer or client, at the moment they are just finished interacting with you

First impressions are critical, but last impressions are often lasting and difficult to change. Now that you have some idea of where to start in examining your customer experience, backtrack through your engagement with that customer in your mind, go through the steps that lead up to that final feeling. Work it over logistically, reverse-chronologically, and see if there are any snags, bumps in the road, places where communication status dipped, where the customer might have felt anything negative, like abandonment, uncertainty, fear of the unknown, or experienced something negatively unexpected. Those are your trouble spots, and in the journey of customer experience, those are the places where you can negatively affect your customer relationship and their likelihood to return to you the next time they need something you offer.

First impressions are critical, but last impressions are often lasting and difficult to change.

Even marketing can REALLY benefit from this process. Work through the attendee experience minute by minute. Review your program from the time the attendee hears about the event, what triggers them to register, what do they experience once they’ve registered, how often do they hear from you, what kinds of information do they receive from you, or what do they go searching for in your materials or online? How do they go about booking travel if any is required, do they look for a deal or the flight and hotel that most readily meets their limited schedule, or a combination of both? Do they stay in the host hotel to be “close to the action” or somewhere off-site to maintain privacy and corporate security?

What do they encounter upon arrival? How did they get there? What do they see first? Are they run down endless hallways before they encounter anyone officially connected with the event, or are they greeted by someone clearly in-the-know that they can ask questions of right away? Is there a place to “unburden” themselves, divesting their arms of coats, bags, luggage, umbrellas, etc, before they get a badge? Is everything conveniently located, and labeled in large, unambiguous letters with pictograms for international attendees?

Admittedly, some of these areas may be beyond your control – you can’t guarantee a positive experience from the airlines, or that the hotel concierge will treat them politely, or that their favorite shampoo will be in the hotel bathroom . . .

Work through the whole meeting, trying to empathize with the attendee from the time they see your first e-mail announcement until the time they get back to their place of origin, and include your post event survey if that goes out beyond the 24-hour post event mark. Now you have a basis for evaluating your customer experience from an attendee-centric point of view. Using that as a baseline, try and separate the logistical, intellectual experience from the emotional one. Tease out those feelings as the flow from one to another and try to envision an overall emotional response to the event, and connect the emotional changes to each major logistical challenge they face. You now have a roadmap to isolating the negative emotional contexts in your meeting and either mitigating them or eliminating them, to provide your attendee a positive customer experience end to end.

Now that you’ve done the ground work, how do you use that knowledge in your marketing efforts to attract more attendees the next time? Pull out the outreach materials you used to promote and raise awareness of that meeting, the elements that drove attendance. Do they highlight all the customer experiences and benefits you experienced mentally? Do they convey the emotional punch, the triggers to emotions you felt when you entered the meeting? Do they walk the attendee through what they will experience, show the benefits of those experiences, make it easy, painless and simple for them to experience them? Do they set accurate expectations for the attendee that you can always live up to in real life? If the answer to any of these is “no,” then those are the areas that need some work in your programming, planning and marketing efforts, to align the real experience with the “paper” version your espousing in your marketing efforts.

Admittedly, some of these areas may be beyond your control – you can’t guarantee a positive experience from the airlines, or that the hotel concierge will treat them politely, or that their favorite shampoo will be in the hotel bathroom – but once they enter your meeting venue, they are your responsibility, and taking that seriously can mean the difference between a one-time attendee and a lifetime cheerleader for your events. Pay special attention to the way they feel when they leave. Did they learn something valuable, did they meet someone important to their professional growth, did they learn something about a new subject or a different culture? What feeling are you leaving them with, what will they remember when they complete that online “satisfaction” survey? Hopefully the emotion won’t just be satisfaction, but something stronger and more positive – the one you planned to leave.

March 3, 2016
So, I’ve Got All This Data . . . Now What?

Marketing industry media, and more recently mainstream media have latched on to the term “Big Data” as the next big thing due to the huge impact all the computer communications and digital signal data can have via tracking internet traffic. It has reached the point that you can’t open a blog, a magazine or newspaper without seeing it mentioned in a headline, often in conjunction with subject only thinly related to marketing. Some are related to privacy and identity data, which is a legitimate concern when all your personal information is digital and flying around through the air every time you take a phone call or text your friends. But the use of transactional and biographical and search data to custom craft messages and actively serve digital ads online has been around for the last five years, or more depending on how you qualify the description, (remember AOL, and their MyAOL product that showed you ads from places you’d visited in the last week? 1998!)

But unfortunately, big data is here to stay, not just the next big, shiny thing on the marketers tactical menu. Our personal, transactional, and biographical data, (medical, too, if you dig nefariously) is available for the taking, asking, renting, or hacking, and can and will be used against you in a court of law . . . Everything you text, tweet, post, share, like, friend, check-in and play is held on a server somewhere, virtually forever, and if mankind invented a way to store and secure it, man can find a way to get at it for other purposes. Certainly adds food for thought as you’re browsing those facebook posts that lead who-knows-where, killing time on the phone waiting to pick up your kids or in the doctor’s waiting room.

Used properly, ethically, and strategically, the use of big data to mine and prospect for customers should be nearly invisible, and indeed will create welcome and well-timed information that is relevant to you and that you will actually use and enjoy. It’s when corporate marketers use these sophisticated tools with less-than-complete understanding, and don’t want to put the safeguards in place, to put in the effort and human intelligence to remove the obvious mismatches any such algorithm will inevitably create. That’s when the problems start and people get in trouble.

If your company has a a sizable database, a well-trafficked website, and a social media and web presence of any size, you have or can gather a vast treasure trove of data on your visitors, casual and otherwise. The question then becomes not “How do I get this data,” but “Now what do I do with it.” The real task here is to use groups, sets, trends and responses in that data to build an outreach or nurturing program that will provide your customers and prospects with a positive, relevant, valued experience. Such a program will allow you to engage them in a positive way that puts your brand in the best light and make them feel comfortable and engendered to your products and services, to the point where they buy them over and over again.

Call it trust, call it security, call it safe harbor, to whatever degree your customers feel they need to feel comfortable buying from you, you need to show them that you will provide it, including how you use their data – mistrust of data use leads to mistrust of transactional security, which leads to avoidance, in a strange death-spiral of aversion that makes it hard to retrieve a customer who’s been caught in this web of misappropriation of your personal information. You play that card 100,000 times a month, and see how many customers you have left . . .

One of the best safeguards against this, for the marketer, is to start slowly, put the relevant safeguards in place, play them up, in fact, compared to your competitors – you want to own it, especially in the beginning of your big data journey. You want to highlight your security in a way that shows you care about and for your customers. People will endure unimaginable, tedious routines and log-in scripts to avoid having their data end up somewhere unintended – anyone who’s flown on an airplane in the last decade instinctively knows this.

Build up your data use slowly, carefully, cautiously, so that it makes sense to achieve the outcome you want – happy, engaged customers in growing numbers, recommending your products and services to their “friends” and families, because they are secure in the knowledge that buying from you won’t lead to any surprises later. Trust is a fragile thing, handle it with care . . .

If you like this train of thought and want to jump on board, or if you think I’m full of it, let me know, I’d like to hear from you in the comment box below.

August 21, 2015
Free Product Development Assistance – Just Ask Your Customers

We’ve long been a proponent of the use of primary customer research to guide and inform marketing activity, because it makes so much sense to simply ask your customers or members how they would like to receive communications from you, in what form that communication should be, and what the focus of those communications should be. “Give the people what they want” is something of a mantra around here, and it has been very effective for our clients, driving solid member growth, higher retention rates for non-profits, and smarter customer interaction, higher engagement levels and higher customer loyalty levels for commercial businesses.

Taking that a step further should yield even better results – don’t just ask customers how to market to them, ask them how they want the product or service to look, feel, be delivered and how it should function! Bringing your customer input into the business stream at the product development level can offer stellar results, and not doing it can deliver disastrous consequences.

Imagine pouring your blood, sweat, and tears, not to mention scads of time and money, into developing a product based solely on secondary market research – other products on the market, SWOT analysis, competitive scan, staff intelligence gathering and R&D imagination, then getting all the way to the sales pipeline and discovering that no one really likes or wants the product as it is. Heartbreaking, sure, but also damaging to the brand, the company, the bottom line, and the credibility of the company for potentially years to come.

But, ask some key questions ahead of time, toss in a focus group or two, build some inexpensive prototypes (for products of a certain size and price point) by 3D printing or other inexpensive method, and see how actual users react, how they interact, how they approach using the product, and you can build a fully-viable product, well-suited to it’s intended target market. You get it right the first time, spend less on marketing costs, and can scale up with confidence, knowing that the product has a viable, receptive market.

Yes, we know this doesn’t work for every product or service. We can’t very well have experimental pharmaceuticals out there floating around in a focus group and having the participants dropping like flies because they determined their own dose, and having the astronauts test the rocket on their own prior to building it can be expensive, and a little dangerous. But for many products, and a significant number of service businesses, a little primary research and customer input before the launch will save a huge number of missteps and headaches, and make the launch a bolder, more confident, less anxiety-racked event.

Based on some of the products I’ve seen out in the marketplace recently, the phrase “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over” seems to resonate with inventors and product originators more often than ever, and in the rush to market, many seem to have ignored the mistakes of others in the past regarding assessing the needs, wants and preferences of the marketplace. With broad-spectrum consumer research an inexpensive option due to newly developed technology, there’s no excuse not to do it right the first time, and have nailed down your customer’s needs before the product ever hits the shelves.

Do you agree? Let me know in a comment if you’ve discovered any new products or services you’ve seen where you thought “Who were they thinking would buy this?”

August 13, 2015
NEW STUDY RELEASED: SHOWS NON-PROFIT BRANDS HAVE MORE POWER THAN THEY THINK

Granite Partners’ Study Shows Brand Power Underestimated, Suggests that Relevance Key to Engagement

Sparks, MD – Non-profit member-driven organizations may have more brand power than they are aware of, and can potentially use that power to leverage the launch of new products and benefits to members, according to a new study released today in a white paper by Granite Partners, LLC, a Maryland-based marketing consulting firm.

In a small study conducted among over 60 non-profit membership organizations, professional trade associations and professional societies, brand awareness, brand value and power among their constituencies was studied with respect to member engagement, with some surprising results. Such organizations have been struggling in recent years on the whole with finding and keeping members, and having a difficult time opening new member sectors or keeping them alive.

This study, while too small to paint the industry with a broad brush, suggests that when these organizations fully engage their members, their brand has the viability and trust needed to successfully offer new products or benefits to their current members, and enough relevance to recruit and keep new members as well.

“Based on our work with these groups over thirty years, we found that we had consistently asked them the same questions over time, and in looking at the answers, we noticed some significant differences between how these non-profits gauged their own brand awareness and power, and how their constituents and members gauged that same power. These organizations have been underestimating their own importance to members, and the level of trust they’ve built up over the years in their brand. Many of them can be leveraging that difference to recruit and retain new members, open new segments, “ notes David Poulos, principal of the firm and author of the study.

The White Paper outlining the study results, “Customer Engagement: The Science of Getting From “I See it” to “I Want It”” was released today, and is available digitally upon request. To receive a copy of this informative paper, send a request to: dpoulos@granite-part.com .

David Poulos, has over thirty years of marketing experience, ranging from private enterprise, state and federal government, non-profit and charitable organizations. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing Communications from Northeastern University, Boston, MA, and has effectively served as Director of Membership Marketing for the National Grain and Feed Association, as Director of Marketing Communication for the National Printing Equipment Manufacturers Association (NPES), Director of Marketing for the National Court Reporters Association, and as a consultant to a host of other non-profit clients including: American Institute of Aeronautics and Aviation, Community Associations Institute, Electronic Retailing Association, Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, National Assn. Retail Pharmacists, National Association of Wholesale Druggists, National Geographic Society, National Grain and Feed Association, National Information Corp., and the National Society of Professional Engineers.

Mr. Poulos has published over 20 articles on a variety of marketing topics in nationally published magazines and websites, is the author of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes,” has published over four year’s worth of weekly blog articles on non-profit and commercial marketing, management and customer service best practice, has been quoted as an expert in articles appearing on Fox News Small Business and MSN Main Street Business websites, was featured in the Global Edition of Who’s Who of Marketing Executives, and is a former board member and President of the Sales and Marketing Executives international, and is a member of ASAE, DMAW.

For more information on Granite Partners, visit www.granite-part.com , or

July 27, 2015
You’ve Worked Hard To Sign Up Those New Members . . . Now, Keep Them Around

With the realities of the “new” economy intruding into everyone’s business and personal lives, and the recent political theater further adding to the uncertainty about the future, it’s more important than ever for non-profit organizations to focus on member retention, on devising and living up to that key value proposition that keeps members coming back year after year.

Based on nearly 100 executive interviews over the last 10 years, we’ve compiled five core activities that seem to keep association members renewing their memberships time and again. Not all five are necessary, or even reasonable together, but by selecting elements that are true to their organization, non-profits can make all that member recruiting work pay off beyond the initial year.

5) Remind them what they’ve received this year. Renewal notices that list the benefits which that particular member have partaken of during the year is a quick, but effective, way to show the value each has received when it comes time to write the dues check. For those with no transactions on record during the year, defaults could include participation by their voice in aggregate on industry-centric political or regulatory issues, or mention receipt of key information through their magazine or newsletter articles that helped them advance their knowledge or career.

4) Communicate the message in the media and format they prefer. Hopefully in your member database there’s a field for “preferred communication method” that can be selected. If members have chosen to receive ALL communication from you electronically, make sure they receive at least one renewal notice electronically. As a matter of strategy, you should hit them from several different angles using several media, but make sure the preferred method is first and most prevalent.

3) Make sure they are actively engaged as soon after enrollment as possible. Studies over the years have backed this assertion that the likelihood of a member renewing beyond the first year directly correlates to their speed and level of active engagement. Invite them to be on a committee, put them on an editorial review board, ask them to attend a seminar for free as an introduction to the organization, have a staffer phone them and ask what they feel are the most important reasons to join – something to show you know they exist, and that they are welcome at the organization.

2) Repeatedly restate and reinforce the strong, unique, value proposition your organization represents to them. Show each member how the benefits you offer directly affect their personal or professional life in a positive way. Make it easy for them to walk that renewal notice up the hall to the CFO’s office and show how the value received is worth the dues money you’re asking. Be specific, attach a dollar amount to each benefit if possible – just like when you were in school and were asked to “show your work,” you have to do the math for them, and it has to make sense.

1) Have recent, solid, professionally-performed research on your particular members, to really know what benefits will resonate with them, and show how those were delivered over the past year. Telling members about benefits they don’t use or care about can actually work against you, making it appear that you are wasting funds on things that don’t matter to the members. This knowledge is critical to creating and implementing that unique value proposition as well as formulating a benefits package that will attract and keep good, loyal members.

There are many different tactical schemes for boosting retention, at least temporarily, including rate discounts, waivers, hardship grants, and a host of other discounts or special deals, but the most powerful of all is delivering the desired value in a timely, engaging, and directed fashion, year after year. Find out what they want, and give it to them in spades – you members will be as loyal as can be.

If you found this valuable, and would like to read more, subscribe to this blog, above. Also, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

July 20, 2015
And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor . . .

Are you really getting as much value from your sponsorship activity as you were lead to believe when you entered into the agreement? Have you ever tried to measure the gains, results, or revenue generated from a sponsorship opportunity?

It’s tough, isn’t it? It’s difficult because there were no metrics or measurement tools built into the sponsorship, and likely no real activation point with which to leverage the value of that sponsorship into more sales opportunities. Sounds like gobbledegook, but there’s a fundamental truth buried in all that jargon: You can’t elicit or assess value if you don’t have a way to measure the return, and you can’t take advantage of visibility unless you find a way to make it turn into action by the viewer.

Let’s take the activation portion first.

Creating activation for a sponsorship, be it a meeting, a sporting event, a team, a radio program or other media opportunity is not easy, and it’s often not just a one-step process. Companies who’ve had success with sponsorship have found ways to really turn that awareness generated by this type of activity into action on the part of the viewer.

Modern technology can help. The QR code is one way, the photo submission contest is another, with cell phone cameras being nearly ubiquitous in the US. The idea is to give event attendees or viewers a reason not only to interact with your brand, but to extend that interaction beyond the context within which it started to outside the venue, to incorporate it into their daily activities. Technology helps you give viewers a channel through which to interact with the brand that is new and fun and engaging, and if you do it correctly, they will become evangelists for your brand and pass their experience along to the others in their personal network, extending your reach even further.

Now with modern technology, viewers have a method to engage, but you still have to provide a motive. They’ve got to WANT to interact with your brand, hopefully in a positive way. Motivating emotions for sponsorships tend to be the need for individuality (only people who attended in person get this shirt), aspiration to be an early adopter (be the first on your block to have one), greed (something for nothing), and the need for attention (winner gets his picture on our product box) these can take many forms in terms of the offer and the audience.

Clearly, the brand/venue/activity/audience match-up is critical to making the most of your sponsorship, always has been, and technology hasn’t changed that much. Making smart selections based on your brand character, and your goals for the sponsorship are still critical exercises. But the need to engage, not just raise visibility for a short time, is higher than ever as message clutter has risen and attention spans have shortened.

Now, on to measurement. Not coincidentally, engagement and measurement go hand in hand. The more actively engaged your audience is with your sponsorship activity, the more easily measured it is. Engagement involves action, and actions can be recorded, measured and assessed. If you put up a banner in a sporting arena as part of a sponsorship, that doesn’t inspire much engagement. But if you put that banner at eye-level in front of the entrance to a famous venue gate, and ask people to take a picture in front of the gate and send them in to your website for a prize, now you have engagement. The more photos you receive, and the wackier they are, the higher the engagement and the more value you get from the sponsorship.

More sophisticated measurements can be taken if you have the need and the use for the data. There is tracking technology, built into ticket stubs, bracelets, and the like that can track attendee movement and dwell within a venue passively, over time. The readouts in aggregate can show you roughly how much exposure your physical representations got that day or that week, and give you a target number to benchmark against for future events in that venue. Connect the two methods, and you set up a sort of Where’s Waldo scenario that can lead to an avalanche of engagement, at least within the venue, for more bang for your buck.

However you choose to do it, the basics are the same: Give them a reason and a way to interact with your brand in a positive way, and then measure the activity and benchmark it against the cost and the value of the sponsorship to assess ROI and renewal decisions. With a little extra effort, you can reap huge benefits from your sponsorship opportunity.

June 18, 2015
When In Doubt, Do SOMETHING!

Granite Partners ‘ sole reason for being is to help trade and professional associations excel at what they do, to grow and thrive and move forward confidently in their work of improving their members’ professional and business lives. Many of the engagements we take involve marketing, and one of the most frequent things we’ve been asked to do is essentially play the role of “energizer” for the organization’s marketing efforts.

They’ve done the same thing year after year, promoted the same conference the same way, recruited the same type of members in the same way for years, and are starting to see their results deteriorate. Their membership numbers are flat, retention is down, conference attendance is dwindling and fragmenting, and the whole organization is struggling as a result of curtailed budgets, reduced momentum, staff ennui, and a general lack of verve for the organization’s mission.

We come into the organization, review all their efforts, work with senior management and staff to break down some of the reasons why things are done the way they are, maybe slaughter a few sacred cows, generate some ideas for new initiatives going forward, and then work with them to implement them. From 10,000 feet, that’s what our practice looks like. Under the hood, however, there’s a lot more going on. Counteracting all that inertia, brightening up the mission and the message, assessing member’s preferences and needs, researching new member segments, generating program initiatives, all takes time, resrouces and energy. But what it really takes is courage.

There is often some long-standing doubt surrounding these new initiatives, some deeply-rooted skepticism among the staff, many of whom have been working there for years, and have seen initiatives come and go, to no apparent effect, and don’t expect these to be any different. The courage to change the status quo is difficult to locate and harder to draw out and nurture, to bring to light and expose for all to see, so that it can spread among the staff and be transmitted to the membership. That’s our real job.

Often what it comes down to is this: Something is better than nothing, so when in doubt, do SOMETHING and we’ll figure out if it worked later. Getting this type of thinking started takes the courage of managers and rank and file alike, and is a cultural anomaly, especially among older employees. Asking forgiveness rather than permission is counter to most Association cultures, build up after years of top-down management and communication, lack of mid-level empowerment, long chains of budgetary approval and micromanagement. Breaking that paradigm (I hate that word, but it actually fits here), is a tough challenge, but the benefits are myriad and multifaceted.

Marketers in many organizations have been working under this new “Do Something” regime for a while now, and the one’s who pull it off successfully have earned the respect and understanding, and in some cases the admiration, of senior management in their organizations, having proven themselves to be solid, reliable producers, despite what might be seen as the use of unorthodox methodologies. Unfortunately, this new disease is not highly contagious, and needs to be spread deliberately among other staff departments. The courage to take the initiative, to empower the staff to think for themselves, to solve problems pragmatically and immediately, takes time and effort to develop, but the results are unequivocally worth it.

Do yourself a favor – when your marketing program seems stale, your efforts start to look tired and hackneyed, the results start to droop – DO SOMETHING! You’ll be glad you did.

May 28, 2015
Members Behave Like Consumers . . . and Make Decisions The Same Way!

As the debate rages on as to whether non-profits would be better off behaving more like for-profit corporations, it would be wise to keep in mind that the central reason most non-profits were formed was to serve the members, and in that aspect non-profits could learn a lot from their for-profit counterparts. If you were to substitute the word “member” for “customer” in much of the modern marketing and advertising literature, there is a deep mine of wisdom that non-profits could plumb in order to more adequately frame their value proposition, and find greater success in the ever-present quest to find, recruit, and keep members.

There is an obvious schism in the way corporations reach out to consumers. The two schools of thought – the “logical” and the “emotional” – are forced to co-exist, and if done properly, can work cooperatively to achieve their goal of building customer base and consumer loyalty. The “Logical” school, promoting features of the products, and the benefits thereof, using statistics, facts, information to make a “case” for their product’s superiority; and the “Emotional” school, in which images and messaging that appeal to some of the more base emotional motivators to influence purchasing behavior appear.

This can perhaps be seen most readily in the automotive industry, possibly due to the sheer volume of television and print ads for cars that pervade national media. In roughly half the ads, the manufacturers promote things like fuel efficiency, flexibility in seating arrangements, crash safety, popularity with consumers, cargo space, back-up cameras or parking assist, features that make it desirable to certain segments of the buying population. The other half feature imagery and messaging that promote how the car will make you look, feel, how it will make your neighbors envious, how you’ll be more popular or get more attention if you own one, how it will make your co-workers jealous, appealing to the base emotional drivers like need for recognition, elevation of status or popularity, vanity or need for acceptance.

In nearly all the non-profits we’ve worked with or counseled, the value proposition has been of the “Logical” variety – here’s the benefits you get from joining and staying a member. The other half, and some would say the much more powerful half based on some recent consumer research on buying behavior, has been left out in the cold, as if because they are a professional organization appealing to other professional organizations or persons, there is no emotional reward for becoming a member. This bloodless approach is unfortunately too typical of B-to-B marketing in general, but the ethos surrounding non-profits is so laced with the need to be taken seriously, many cannot bring themselves to voice the benefits of membership in any sort of emotional way for fear of being seen as weak, or needy, or heaven forbid, unprofessional!

By injecting some of the emotional component into their outreach approach, non-profits could certainly experience great success in their recruiting efforts, as they would find a much larger segment of the buying population would respond to their appeals. Even in a B-to-B purchase decision, there are one or more PEOPLE making that buying decision, people with emotions, feelings and attitudes that can drive behavior in a much stronger way than the typical “Franklin List” of pros versus cons of joining an organization. By taking a “business only” approach, membership marketers have sidestepped a huge driver of consumer behavior – the need to belong, for acceptance, for praise and recognition. Maybe they feel that the emotional appeal may not be strong enough to pry the dues check out of the fingers of hard-nosed business members, who need a business case to justify every decision. Maybe they’re uncomfortable using a more emotionally based appeal to reach their potential members because they can’t guarantee to “deliver” that type of benefit year after year. Whatever the reason, there would seem to be tremendous gains to be made by positioning their organizations emotionally as well as economically.

Maybe a look at another area of their operation would yield some insights – many non-profit, member-based organizations have a charitable arm or foundation of some sort, and the search for donors is often not only more aggressive and better focused than the member recruitment effort, but the appeals tend to vacillate between the logical and the emotional appeal, doubling the reach of the organization and driving donations beyond what the membership could logically support. Much can be learned from corporate marketing efforts and applied to non-profit recruitment and retention efforts. Sometimes its a case of simply looking over the backyard fence . . .

May 21, 2015
Engagement Turns Your Members Into Cheerleaders

Under the traditional membership model employed by the majority of non-profit trade and professional groups, membership in the organization offers you benefits, but doesn’t necessarily deliver them directly to the member. That doesn’t refer to third party affinity programs or insurance underwriters – it refers to the fact that the interaction with the organization is typically voluntary and one-sided. The member has to reach out to take advantage of the particular benefit directly, the organization typically doesn’t drive the benefit to the member. As a result, what often happens is that many of the potential benefits of membership are either unknown, or unused, and as a result, there is not sufficient member engagement to really live up to the value proposition that the initial membership offer proposed.

Studies have shown that if a member is actively engaged in the activities of the organization, either through staff or another member, their chances of lasting longer than the initial year as a member skyrocket, rising by over 400%. Given the lifetime value of a member to the organization, it would seem a smart investment to craft an engagement program to reach out and grab those new members, get them involved, give them a sense of mission, of empowerment, and of belonging, that will help retain them for years to come.

Those organizations who do put in the time and effort find they reap fairly substantial rewards at renewal time. Renewal rates above 94% are not uncommon in those organizations we’ve studied, and the members not only rejoin, they go out and recruit as well. That’s a double win for any organization, in an era where time starvation and economic uncertainty make membership a low priority for most professionals. And it doesn’t have to be complicated or automated to show strong returns.

Sometimes a simple welcome phone call, from a prominent member, Board member, or staffer, to introduce themselves, welcome the new member to the organization, ask some questions, including what they expect to get out of their membership. Not only does that keep staff in touch with members on a programmatic basis, but provides a constant source of research data on the value of offered benefits, and their popularity among the membership, in real time. Not a bad bonus for making a few calls a week.

Sometimes the effort can be more formal, such as an invitation to join a committee, or to provide feedback on a new product or service prior to it’s introduction to the general membership. Sometimes it’s a request for support for a cause, lobbying effort or legislative initiative. The key is to do it early, and in a systematic way so that no one falls between the cracks. More elaborate efforts will incorporate timing features, automated systems to reach out to certain sectors on a rotating basis with a specific focus, and other bells and whistles, but those automated systems tend to dilute the impact of the effort, to depersonalize it and distance the group from the new member, the exact opposite effect of what you were seeking. The simplest and most effective is the most honest and direct method, a personal phone call or letter from an known member of prominence, welcoming them to the organization, asking what they need or expect, and helping them take direct advantage of the benefits the group offers.

Engagement can take many forms, and the right form is different for each individual, as different as their real reason for joining. Once such a program is in place in your organization, you’ll be amazed at the increase in retention, engagement, and connectivity of your members. They wanted to be a part of a group for a good, real, reason. Tap into that need, and you’ll have a group of lifetime members who closely affiliate and identify with your mission – they become cheerleaders, and that’s where the gold is!

May 13, 2015