Many associations want to become more data-informed but find themselves hesitating to take the plunge into analytics. It does make sense – non-profit workers have an edict to good stewards of the organization, and need to be careful in the choices they make. During a recent Analytics in Action webinar, Bill Conforti and Merritt Rohlfing of A2 discussed some salient issues that come up when associations consider new tech, and ways around them.

“Analytics”, as an idea, can be daunting. The thought of changing the way you do business altogether – not to mention having to introduce new tools – can be worrisome and spook people, even if they have good intentions. That said, the reality is that lack of knowledge of just how to “do analytics”, while commonly cited as a barrier, shouldn’t prevent progress down the data-informed road. It’s not that organizations don’t know what to do – they’re simply not doing what they know they should. The good news is that there are numerous free resources available for learning analytics, from Microsoft and Google certifications to university courses offered by places like Harvard or Yale. You can even go on YouTube, channels like Guy in a Cube being a popular one. The barrier to entry has never been lower, it’s just about taking a glance and seeing what is possible. Taking that first step is the toughest, but even that can help. It’s not even about becoming an expert, just being able to speak the language a bit can help open doors to analytics. Introducing just concepts can pique the interest of colleagues and leaders.

The “we’ll do it later” mentality is a common trap. While timing concerns are legitimate, indefinite postponement means missing out on valuable insights. As Bill notes, “Just be careful with the things that are quite open-ended. If you do have a legitimate reason to push something off and it’s finite and known, like ‘I’m going to absolutely revisit this at the beginning of next fiscal year’ – then all those things are legitimate.” But sometimes, it’s more an excuse. Building a precise plan is vital, building toward a goal is a must.

The key is to build internal momentum by finding allies within your organization. As Merritt suggests, “Don’t just do it by yourself. Find some other people you work with and kind of build a small team within your organization.” This building of a coalition or united front makes it much harder for the higher-ups to say no to at least researching new tools that could help their team. Between the coalition and agreeing on at least the beginning of a timeline (“We will look at this on January 10th, I know it”) makes the “someday” disappear, and turn into “in a few weeks”.

Limited budget and resources emerged as one of the top concerns. The solution? Start small and build incrementally. “Think smaller,” advises Bill. “You might really want that cluster analysis of all your customers… but instead you need to do something a little bit smaller. You can absolutely get started with a couple of key activities and an Excel template.”

Consider analytics as an investment that can benefit multiple stakeholders. As Bill explains, “If you implement that analytics platform, that central repository, it extends and augments the source systems that are connected to it… rather than incrementally changing your marketing system or your LMS or even your AMS.”

While some struggle to see the concrete value of analytics, calculating potential ROI isn’t as complicated as it seems. “You look at different business areas or strategic goals and think about what it is now, like our retention rate, and come up with a reasonable future state that you feel like you could achieve,” explains Bill.

“When you leverage data, it shows that it’s proven something and then shows the value of other projects as well,” adds Merritt. “You can show that this marketing outreach had this level of impact on membership growth or event attendance.” Data helps associations tie seemingly separate aspects of the organization together, and paint a broader picture of where it stands. Plus, it opens up a window into the future of what could be.

Many organizations feel paralyzed by messy or incomplete data. However, perfect data is neither realistic nor necessary. “Perfect data is dead data,” as Merritt puts it. “If you have perfect data, that means you’ve done a great job in cleaning everything up and there’s nothing new coming in. That means you aren’t growing, and the end is nigh!” A bit dramatic, but very true.

The key is to start with what you have. As Bill emphasizes, “You’re making decisions already with imperfect data” in areas like digital transformation initiatives and event planning. “We don’t need all the data in order to make decisions… and to see patterns, spots, anomalies and things like that.”

The path to becoming a data-informed organization has its challenges, but probably challenges that are familiar to most association professionals trying to make new decisions at their organizations. Having new tools and techniques to address these obstacles head-on and taking incremental steps forward can allow them to start discovering valuable insights from their data and making more informed decisions for their members’ benefit.

The idea of the “generation” as a grouping is a wholly American invention. The Lost Generation is the first truly named group, a term coined by author Gertrude Stein and later popularized in the epigraph of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Since then we dubbed the Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha successively. The very concept is utterly arbitrary at best, possibly even bad for society at its very worst. So why do we care?

It can make sense to group people into age groups. It makes sense to think someone who’s 60 needs something altogether different from their professional association than a 30 year-old. And there have been growing assumptions that younger people don’t do email anymore, though that may be less of a case than previously thought. While “nobody” answers phones we all have a cell phone in our pocket, it’s just part of life. There’s got to be better ways to see what people want, to target and message, and deliver on the value proposition.

Just sticking with the sheer amount of data that’s gathered, and the myriad ways to segment, there’s a good number of other methods of targeting outreach and tracking member need that serve a greater purpose than an arbitrary age bucket. For professional associations, things like the highest level of education or certifications earned – or asked for – are powerful. Two diploma holders 30 years apart might actually want the same thing while two Zoomers, one with a grad degree and the other a bachelor’s, are going to need a different experience despite their closeness in age. On the trade association side, revenue or staff size can be vital in how you treat a member organization. It’s hard to believe that the multinational company in your member base wants the same thing from you as the 3 person shop in a garage somewhere. Sure, the second one might hit Amazon level eventually, but they’re going to need a boost from their association friends. Meanwhile, that big company might just want a voice on Capitol Hill. Going beyond age to where they are in their life – subtle but different – just allows for a clearer resonance. 

If associations work hard at one thing, it’s simply trying to hear and understand what their members want. Surveys, engagement scoring, tracking online community activity, even just bugging people via phone, there’s so much. It’s a lot of work though! Sifting through noise, filtering out the overly boisterous minority voices that just want things precisely their way, it can be mind-numbing. With the right tools though, and with the right effort, you can understand that maybe that course IS what everyone wants. That a conference doesn’t have to be cookie-cutter, there can be sessions that draw everyone in. Asking and answering, reacting to what people actually tell you, can be a perfect way to organize and build an association.

Actions speak louder than words. We know that people who went to a wine tasting twice probably did so because they enjoyed the first time. When you observe people’s specific behaviors, it’s a powerful way to survey them without asking a single question. And this can be an easy fallback. Simply for economic reasons, you’re more likely to find a Michelin star restaurant full of mid-career and older people, while the dive bar across town is where the young professionals hang. But this leaves a lot of other activities ignored. It ignores the fact that not everyone joins the association at the same time, but they still need to be engaged.

Smart associations know to have a common roadmap, that has branching based on where they are on the member journey. Using a centralized data model allows associations to give that new member what they need early on, then as they move deeper into their engagement with the organization they can be fed what matters next. Courses, events, the right advert at the right time (I recently heard of an association that explicitly DOES NOT send sponsor or partner messaging to new members for 15 months, to help them get more acclimated) all these different messages and opportunities are right for someone, but not for everyone.

This could be looked at as a tweak of a sort of “mentor/protégé” system that many associations want. Especially in the professional association sphere, there are a handful or so of career tracks and groups that are serviced and delivered content. So of course you can figure out what a new member in a certain job or discipline might want to learn and see, but that’s just focused on the role. What about their goal? Where does that pathway lead, and maybe it’s not wrong to feed content that might be considered “advanced”? It’s as much about building pathways as it is looking at who is responding to your messaging. So rather than just saying “this is early career”, maybe give the option to later career people, then there’s the chance to pitch it as an opportunity to work with the next generation in their field. 

We have to sort and segment our audiences in some way. It’s a known fact – presented at our own Predict conference recently from our partners at Higher Logic – that the smaller the segment, the greater the impact. By that exact notion then, it is wholly wrong to just go and assume that whole sweeping tranches of certain age groups want and need and behave in a certain way. Listening, watching, and trying novel ways to resonate, that’s the path to true success. Anyway, sometimes it’s fun to hang out with the old guy at the conference, why shouldn’t we be seated next to each other? He has fun stories. And, of course, the wisdom. 

The role of the marketer – particularly in associations, and especially focusing on content delivery – has changed drastically over the last decade, perhaps and only seems to be speeding up. Associations are facing an issue of an increasingly digitized membership, and need to roll with the times to make sure their messaging and content reach the right eyes and ears, at the right time. A recent Analytics in Action webinar, titled Embracing Data Analytics to Reinvent Your Content Marketing, delved into just this.

1. Personalized Content: Tailoring Messages for Maximum Impact

Creating highly personalized content using data and AI tools is crucial for engaging members effectively. During the webinar, Association Analytics VP of Strategy and Solutions Bill Conforti emphasized, “We’re talking more about like communications, right? The content that we’re gonna send, and who is going to receive it. How do we curate that message? How do we make that member feel validated and valued?”

Key components of this approach include:

• Segmentation: Divide your audience based on demographics, behaviors, and preferences.
• Data Integration: Ensure your data is collected, integrated, and optimized for analysis.
• AI-Powered Content Creation: Use AI tools to craft personalized messages for each segment.
• Dynamic vs. Static Personalization: Move beyond basic “merge and purge” methods to create more engaging, context-aware content.

Bill cautioned about data privacy, noting, “You can use the AI for the content creation, but if your organization has standards or practices around data security, make sure to anonymize somehow.” With how AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude.ai pull in all your data, it can be as simple as missing out on a checkbox and you’ve accidentally allowed them to aggregate with public data. So keep an eye on that.

This content personalization and curation is vital to associations, as members look more and more for the information that matters to them with having to work for it. Associations sit on a trove of valuable information as members look to grow their career and improve themselves, it’s the delivery that is the problem. With these new tools, there’s lots of new opportunity to fix that.

2. Make the Most of Predictive Analytics

Predictive tools are becoming a bit more common with associations, but they’re not ubiquitous yet. Smart associations are starting to see amazing insights though, and that shouldn’t be overlooked. Leveraging predictive analytics can help associations anticipate member needs and behaviors, and be the proactive organization that modern members are searching for. During the webinar, Bill highlighted the increased accessibility of these tools: “Associations have the data for it, they just haven’t taken the leap. There’s a growing list of them, whether Acumen or other more rudimentary tools, it’s a great option for associations to find actionable insights.”

This approach involves:

• Utilizing various data inputs (profile data, engagement metrics, behavioral data, transactional data)
• Applying predictive modeling to analyze churn risk, segment members, and recommend content
• Generating actionable insights to inform targeted campaigns and personalized recommendations
• Even without dedicated data scientists, associations can use cloud-based services to gain predictive insights.

Considering these tools as a resource specifically for marketing is a novel approach in its own right, but uniquely powerful. Typically people expect to take advantage of predictive tools to look at big activities – renewal, recruitment, or annual conference attendance – but increasingly it’s becoming easier to infer smaller steps, and more micro-engagements within the larger data model. If you have the right tools to do it, predictive analytics can unlock a host of benefits for staff and members alike.

3. Take Advantage of Content Automation Delivery

Time is any content marketer’s greatest asset. Whether saving time in their day-to-day, or building the precise cadence of outreach that will drive optimal engagment with their audience. This is where automation comes in. Automating content delivery ensures the right message reaches the right audience at the right time, every time. Bill explained, “We want to automate the matching and the delivery of the content. So we wanna leverage all of that evergreen content that we have. We want to build the experience that each member is looking for, and make it repeatable and effective.”

Making this process work isn’t a snap of the fingers, it’s going to take some work. Luckily, those steps are pretty easy to identify and take, even if the work involved can be a bit of a lift. They look something like this:

• Developing a content taxonomy for structured categorization
• Using AI-powered tagging to categorize content efficiently
• Leveraging evergreen content (case studies, white papers, research reports)
• Setting up automated delivery systems based on member profiles and behaviors
• Repurposing existing content for different formats and audiences

It’s not a hard and fast process, but this is a good structure for any association to approach optimizing delivery of their content. Bill’s colleague Merritt shared an example: “We’re trying to find a way to repackage [case studies] for easier consumption. This is evergreen content like you said, but sometimes hard to digest because they’re seven, eight pages long. Repurposing segments for new persona-based outreach or re-targeting aspects of them to specific demographics can make old content new again, and have a whole new impact.”

Implementing these strategies doesn’t require a complete overhaul of existing systems. Bill encouraged an incremental approach: “We’re making improvements to how we automate. We’re making improvements to how we save time, and we are positioning ourselves and our organizations to take advantage when things like private LLMs and things are more affordable and more accessible to us.”

By focusing on personalization, predictive analytics, and content automation, associations can significantly enhance their content marketing efforts. These data-driven strategies allow for more targeted, efficient, and effective communication with members, ultimately driving engagement and value for the association.

The key takeaway is to start small, iterate, and continuously improve. By leveraging the power of data and AI, associations can create more impactful content marketing strategies that resonate with their members and support their organizational goals.

Member engagement sits at the core of everything an association does. No matter the staff-member, no matter the member benefit or event or email sent, each is a piece of the larger tapestry that is member engagement. While this is a generally accepted fact for any forward-thinking and plugged-in association leader, knowing what to do with this knowledge – or even what membership engagement really means – can be a nebulous task. What do members want to do? More importantly, why are they taking the actions they are, why aren’t they taking advantage of affinity programs or new benefits we rolled out this year, and what can we do to call them to act?

The real issue lies in that while most associations serve a very specific niche, industry, profession, or need, the membership base isn’t a monolith. We’ve watched over the last four-plus years as the makeup of the industry has shifted dramatically, the needs of members have changed, and even how they get reached is different than it ever was. Gen Z don’t answer the phone, boomers are retiring and exiting the professions, and millennials and Gen-X are too busy to take advantage of the traditional opportunities of association membership. On top of all the other things out there that people want in their life, and all the other sources of information and learning and networking – engagement, quite literally – that are increasingly available, associations need to be smarter about what they do, and how they reach out.

Engagement is a living thing

As mentioned, the needs of a membership change over time, and so the offerings an association provides should shift, as well. It’s important to track not just what people do with you – what events they attend, what courses they take, what emails they respond to – but also what they don’t care about. A popular class from five or ten years ago can fall out of favor. A well-attended event that’s long been seen as a key piece of the annual conference, could actually be costing you money.

Tracking behavior is key, but when applying an engagement score and weighting those behaviors, making sure you audit it over time is just as important as those weights. If a large group of your membership – those in mid-career with families – don’t have time for the big conference every year, what else can they do, and what else is important? How will that change next year, or in five years? There are young people just entering “student membership” range now – that so-called Generation Alpha – who have grown up differently and want to experience life and their careers differently than even Gen Z. Watching the shifts in engagement between these age groups, between demographics any any number of other subsets of your membership, is paramount and can teach so much to the staff, if they’re looking. It even creates new segments of outreach – not of traditional demographics, but of behaviors and needs themselves. That is the real path of a living engagement.

Be proactive

When an association is tracking engagement correctly – whether with something cutting edge like our own Acumen platform or with a homegrown tool in Excel – use it to be proactive. So someone joined last year, great! And better yet, they’re engaged, they’re clicking on emails, they’re taking a course, they might even be considering going for that certification. But it isn’t just on rails at that point. Be proactive, see what else someone like that member might want to do next. Experiences get stale if something new isn’t offered. Whether it’s the membership experience, a movie franchise, or your annual vacation, doing the same thing over and over gets boring, repetitive, and ultimately makes people less interested. Understanding that pathway that a member should be on helps in every department. Marketing knows what messaging will ring loudest, membership can accurately project retention (and even leverage a well-built engagement score on high-engagement non members), the events team will know who will want to come to this year’s conference, and who might need a nudge.

Use engagement scoring as a tool

Dovetailing off that, use the scoring rubric at the heart of a well-rounded engagement score as a tool to track new actions. When a new association product or benefit is launched, track the micro-impacts it has to the engagement of whatever member subset or demographic that you’re targeting. Use A-B testing to see how different groups respond to messaging around it. Test long-held organizational beliefs and prove to your leadership that’s sometimes the old way of doing things is the wrong way.

Engagement scoring – when executed with a proactive, data informed and results-focused mind and practice – can unlock a wealth of value for an association. Peering into the path of membership, from first touch to organizational evangelist, can help you and your colleagues understand what really matters to members, and make sure that each year is a new journey for members ,and the right one for them. Many tools out there provide some level of engagement scoring, and using these can be a good snapshot of what people are up to, but members– and engagement itself- is a moving target, always shifting. Doing an engagement scoring exercise that’s holistic and looks beyond just the big things, beyond just the data in the AMS even, can be a valuable effort for any association.

We’ve reached a point where quantifying what was once thought to be uncountable and purely anecdotal is easy with modern technology. Associations have to be able to know what their members are up to, and what they might want to do next. With all the other distractions and chances for engagement that your members have, whether professionally or otherwise, being heard through the noise takes novel ideas, new tools, and a bit of risk taking. That’s not always easy in the association world, but the organizations that do take a chance and think outside the box will find positive results. That means more members, happier members, and a clearer future.

If you’ve observed a decline in student membership retention or a slowdown in attracting new members, you’re not alone. There’s no one simple reason, and no singular solution. Whether industry-wide shifts, a stale or inapplicable value proposition to the prospective member, or external forces beyond your control, this is happening across the industry; associations aren’t filling the top of that membership pipeline. There’s work to be done, so let’s understand the situation, and what to do about it. To better understand and address this issue, it’s crucial to consider the external factors currently influencing student membership across the board, and what you could do about it.

University Enrollment is Contracting

One factor that nobody can do anything about, the pool associations are pulling from is just smaller. We’re seeing less and less kids moving into higher education, with enrollments dropping over 8 percent between 2010’s all-time peak and 2021. International enrollments are also down in the wake of COVID, dropping more than 11 percent since 2019 according to US News and World Report. And experts aren’t bullish, since the United States has seen a steep drop in birth rates since 2007 leading to fewer high school graduates.

Many Americans now question whether a bachelor’s degree is worth the investment, given the often-disappointing returns in the job market. This leaves associations stuck, simply less opportunity to find new opportunities for recruitment in college halls.

Investing in Student Membership Quality

Dealing with a smaller cohort means improving what’s offered, and keeping the people that are reached interested in the organization. To boost student membership retention and seamlessly transition them into permanent members, associations must rethink their approach. The key lies in meaningful, targeted engagement that offers more touchpoints to connect students to the industry.

Consider strategies like mentorship programs or internship matchmaking, which not only foster connections but also make students feel like they’re on a clear path to success within the association and the broader industry. In a world where students are constantly scanning for better opportunities, providing them with clear insights into the financial benefits and potential lifetime earnings within the industry can be a game-changer. By demonstrating the long-term value of staying in the field, you can help ensure students remain committed to their chosen career path.

Alternatives to Student Membership

It could be that the idea of the student membership itself is becoming outdated. Reflecting on my own experience in my 20s and 30s, I remember how much I bounced around in my career, uncertain of where I wanted to land. This is not a unique experience either, young people regularly take time to find their place and put down roots. During that time, discounted “young professional” memberships made all the difference, allowing me to have the chance to see what’s out there. I joined various associations as I explored my career options and honed my professional development. Today, if you check my LinkedIn, you’ll see a CAE (Certified Association Executive) attached to my name-a credential that traces back to those early “young professional” days. Does your organization offer a clear pathway for younger professionals? Where is the entry point that sets them on a journey toward long-term engagement and growth within your industry?

Associations are increasingly categorizing programs, courses, and even demographics under the banner of mentorship. In an era where digital connections often feel hollow and millennials or Gen Z workers are looking for something real, the power of a genuine community stands out. Building such a community requires effort, but the payoff is immense. When you foster a sense of belonging and support, you cultivate energetic, committed members who are eager to build their careers within your association. While launching a mentorship program might seem resource-intensive, the potential returns make it a strategy worth pursuing.

Student membership faces many headwinds. Understanding what your association faces, where growth and engagement is possible, and whether it’s even a viable pathway to full membership are all vital questions to answer in the coming years.

Leveraging your data throughout the entire member journey can impact your association and your members. From successfully converting non-member audiences into members, to your membership engagement strategy, to events and non-dues revenue, data can inform every step along the way.

As valuable as data is, though, without a clear and actionable way to track and report across your entire association, it can be difficult to tell what’s actually working.

Read on to learn how to best track and report on your key performance indicators (KPIs). This blog post will break down the essential steps for aligning KPIs with strategic goals and designing dashboards to monitor and share performance.

Performance Management in Three Easy Steps

Strategic plans are noble documents that are interesting to read and can tell the world a lot about your association’s mission. At the same time, it can be a real challenge for association staff to translate them into something measurable.

Let’s break down three steps to aligning your strategic plan with tangible goals and designing dashboards that can help you monitor and share performance across your association and beyond.

Step 1: Planning

Planning is the foundation of effective organizational performance management. It involves:

Step 2: Designing Dashboards

Once you have a clear plan, the next step is designing dashboards to monitor performance. There are a few best practices to keep in mind to make sure your association staff will actually find the dashboards usable and helpful.

Another option is to leverage an analytics platform, like Acumen, to aggregate all your member and non-member data into one place that delivers out-of-the-box dashboards.

Step 3: Collaboration and Sharing

Effective dashboards must be shared and used collaboratively within your association. To make sure dashboards are adopted:

Measuring What Matters

Translating strategic goals into measurable KPIs can be challenging, but it is essential for monitoring performance and making informed decisions. Most strategic plans include goals you can think of as main pillars that make up the overall strategy.

Here are some examples of how to measure commonly stated goals or pillars:

See how the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA) went about translating their 3 pillars into action in this on-demand webinar.

A Data-Informed Approach To Tracking Performance

Aligning KPIs and metrics with strategic goals is crucial for driving organizational success.

By following these steps—planning, designing dashboards, and fostering collaboration—you can create a robust performance management system that not only measures success but also drives it.

Data and visualization can help you transform strategic plans from lofty ideals into actionable, measurable outcomes.

For a look at how data can inform your membership experience every step along the way, make sure to check out our six part webinar series: Navigating the Member Journey with Data.