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.