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.