Adding a Personal Touch to Your Association’s Marketing

By JOHN FOLEY – April 17, 2018

Marketing automation provides many benefits to associations, including saving time, money and improving your marketing efforts. However, when it comes to reaching out to your members and prospects, don’t forget the importance of the personal touch. Personalization and automation might not seem like easy bedfellows, but in fact, marketing automation can be used to personalize your messages.

Your Members are Not the Same

One of the pitfalls of automated marketing is the risk of sending out cookie cutter messages to everyone. These messages may well end up in the spam folder and negatively impact your reputation. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. With forethought, automation can be used to make sure you deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.

Your prospects are different than your members. Your experienced members are different than those newcomers. Almost every member is looking to get something different out of belonging to your association. That means your communications should be personalized to each one. Marketing automation understands that and makes it easy.

Going Beyond a Personalized Greeting

Personalized messages, using the recipient’s name, make the reader feel personally valued, but automation can be used to do so much more. Here are some other ways you can use automated marketing to keep it personal:

1. Tailor your messages to where your members are in their relationship with you. The message you’ll send to nurture a new prospect is different from what you’ll send to a longer-term member, so craft your automated messages accordingly.
2. Get even more personal by using automation to create email messages and landing pages that are specific to each recipient. Details such as geographical location and length of membership of your association are examples of personalized information you can use.
3. Keep your messages timely. Don’t just send blanket information about renewing a membership, for example. Instead, design a drip campaign to foster trust and show the benefits renewal offers, timed to fit in with the end of their current relationship.
4. Give your members the content they want. You can use automation to track what they click on and tailor the content you send them accordingly. Splitting your target audience into groups based on what they like and sending automated messages based on that adds a personal touch.

Marketing Automation is a valuable time saver for any association. By taking the time to personalize what you send out, it can become a vital tool for connecting your members and prospects with the right information at just the right time, establishing your association as relevant and useful to them.