4 Opportunities for Associations to Deliver Value & Drive Revenue
At CredSpark, we’ve been helping clients leverage the power of affordable artificial intelligence to hyper-personalize their content and drive real value for their audiences. One market segment in particular is seeing incredible results: industry and professional associations and trade groups. These membership-driven organizations offer their members an overwhelming number of services, educational & learning opportunities, high-value content and research, discounts & benefits, events & conferences, and so much more.
But different individuals value different things differently. And this is where abundance can become a curse. Enter Personalization. Associations are beginning to utilize AI-driven personalization to transform how they showcase their values to different people with different sets of needs, goals, and interests. They’re providing real value for their membership because they’re providing relevance. Here are four examples how associations are driving ROI by using personalization.
Increase Membership
One of the biggest challenges for associations is that it can be difficult to position the full range of services, offerings, and benefits to members. Most associations offer a deep trove of content, learning & certification courses, journal articles, research, discounts, benefit plans, and more. The full value of membership can be daunting and overwhelming. Plus, individual members may value different aspects of membership differently based on their particular career function, certification requirements, interests, etc.
That’s where the true power of assessment can be leveraged. In general, people like to express their opinions especially when it comes their particular needs and interests. Asking just a few straightforward questions can unlock insights into what’s important for each individual member. Based on those responses—and with the assistance of AI-driven personalization—you can tailor and position the most relevant services, offerings, and benefits to each individual member. Showcasing the value of membership to people based on what’s important to them is a big winner when it comes to marketing membership to potential new members, as well as the all-important membership renewal efforts.
Increase Enrollments in Learning Offerings
Association learning assets—such as live learning sessions, online courses, and certification programs—provide another rich opportunity to leverage the value of personalization. Instead of presenting members with a vast product catalog, take them on a journey of self discovery. At CredSpark, we’ve worked with clients to create Personalized Learning Pathways where individual members are given the opportunity to relate what’s important to them, what topics interest them, their specific career education needs or requirements, which skills they’d like to improve, and more.
Personalization technology then kicks in and produces a personalized, curated list of your learning offerings completely tailored to each member’s specific interests, needs, and requirements. We’re literally holding individual conversations at scale and delivering real value for your membership in the process. And when presented with the relevant programs that best match their interests and needs, enrollments increase as does member engagement with your content. It’s relevance-driven ROI.
Improve Engagement with Events
Conferences and events hold particular importance for many industry and professional associations and trade groups. And again, this is another situation where abundance and depth can impede engagement. Many association conferences offer a bewildering array of speakers, sessions, networking opportunities, exhibitors, classes, meals, parties, and more. First, it’s an awful lot to successfully showcase and market to potential registrants. And second, it becomes difficult for attendees to choose the exact right mix of opportunities that will deliver the best return on their time and investment.
At CredSpark, we work with associations and large event and exhibition organizers to create personalized conference experiences. By assessing potential registrants’ interests and needs in advance, we can create personalized programming for event attendees. With the power of personalization technology, each attendee gets a curated conference schedule with particular sessions, speakers, networking events and more all tailored to their interests. It amplifies the value /ROI of attending the event or conference by clearly establishing relevance for the potential registrant and their employer if they’re footing the bill. And because your guests will be attending the most meaningful conference sessions, they’ll be much more engaged and are more likely to recommend the event to others.
Provide Premium Value for Sponsors
Querying your audience also can provide deep insights into the interests, goals, and motivations of your membership. More than traditional market research surveys or advertising vehicles, these assessments provide participants with personalized, tangible value in return for their participation. These insights can be used to drive better informed decision-making across the association, including marketing, positioning, membership benefits, product development, research topics, and more. But also, this member data can be incredibly valuable to sponsors, providing insights into member knowledge of their services, purchase intent, brand resonance, and demographic information.
It’s a powerful way to amplify the value of association sponsorship programs by going beyond just brand visibility and providing sponsors with actionable data to help them more effectively achieve their business goals. And did we mention they’ll pay a premium for it?
Unlock the Power of Personalization & Relevance
When associations hyper-personalize their content, they not only add value for their membership, they can create endless opportunities to drive new revenue streams; better inform decision-making processes through data; and ultimately deepen engagement with members, based on their individual goals, interests, and needs. And that drives membership renewals.
