By Manon Audibert, Marketing Manager, Higher Logic

Marketing in the digital age is all about expectations and reality. The association hopes its online marketing strategy will resonate with new and existing members, increase revenue and provide value to stakeholders.

But the reality is that without the time and resources necessary to meet those expectations, even well-intentioned marketers can find their efforts crumbling, giving way to unsweetened results.

Luckily, marketing automation can help bridge the gap between expectations and reality, bringing teams of all sizes significantly closer to their goals than otherwise.

“In a perfect world, you would want to think seriously about every email campaign, including what to promote and the flow of ideas. Association Evangelist at Higher Logic“I want it to be cohesive, to tell a story, but I’m writing to meet deadlines. Automation allows me to really send the right message at the right time.”

Think of it as a marketing superpower that lets you trade time-consuming and error-prone tasks for more innovative, results-oriented efforts.

Not sure if automation is right for you? Look for signs your current efforts aren’t working.Red flags include inability to create member experiences felt Personal, poor member and sponsor engagement, and an overworked or understaffed marketing team. The following marketing automation trends and best practices can help you solve these problems.

latest trends

Arritt says many people are reluctant to adopt marketing automation. In effect, this practice increases personalization and reduces irrelevant communication. It’s important to not only give your end users what they need, but also to exclude what they don’t.

Consider this in the context of meeting registration. “Automation allows us to remove users who have already signed up for campaigns so we don’t bombard them with irrelevant information,” he says. “There’s nothing quite as ignorant of you as repeatedly asking members to sign up for something you signed up for two months ago.”

If your association leverages marketing automation but is not providing the most personalized member experience possible, the solution is to add more automation, not remove it. Especially considering the rapid nature of technological progress.

“Technology moves fast. The association is not used to that speed, but our members are,” she said. “They don’t want frustration. They don’t want slow page loads or a clunky mobile girlfriend experience.”

As commercial organizations step into the association’s realm, it becomes even more important to keep up with these expectations. “The association is talking about offering an Amazon-like membership experience,” Arritt said. “We need to go further with the Amazon Plus experience. We need to know our members better than Amazon.”

An automated approach to digital marketing can also help associations mitigate the damage caused by large resignations. Associations cannot lack marketing capabilities when faced with turnover, but automated evergreen campaigns keep the effort going while associations look for new hires.

best practice

When it comes to maximizing automation, Arritt’s first piece of advice is to increase credibility by sending emails from individuals rather than organizations.

“Don’t have members reply to generic email addresses like ‘membership@association.org,'” she said. “Instead, add a personal touch by replying to a person, who in seven years she could be seven different people, but importantly, the member is related to humans.”

According to Arritt, automation will allow retailers to provide the same personalized customer service that brick-and-mortar retailers do.

“A colleague of mine came up with this analogy that I love: Say you work at Gap and you see someone looking at a sweater. , are trained to check inventory and ask if they can do it. We can get the right message to the right people.”

Another tip: Automate smaller programs that typically don’t get as much attention as an annual conference or trade show.

“There’s always a program where you think, ‘I really should promote that,’ but I’m too busy to focus on lower priority tasks,” says Arritt. “We automate almost all of them. We figure them out once, he checks two or three times a year and we’re good to go.”

Finally, work with providers who offer automation training and collaboration opportunities. For example, in his role at Higher Logic, Arritt works as a direct partner.

“The association doesn’t want vendors. The association wants partners,” she said. “On-demand training, strategy sessions, and an active user community set Digital Marketing Partners apart.”

Ultimately, like the right chef putting the right ingredients together to make a great cake, engagement tools such as community and marketing automation combined with expert guidance will ensure that the association’s marketing expectations and members’ It can be a powerful force in matching deserving real-life experiences.

Higher Logic Thrive is a member experience solution that offers a powerful yet simple approach to community, marketing and member engagement. To learn more about how Higher Logic’s years of experience, research and feedback solves your challenges, visit thrive.higherlogic.com.

(Distribution photo)