Monthly Archives: April 2014

Email marketing is arguably the most successful, long-term online marketing strategy today. Period.

Starting an email marketing campaign with the right email marketing software increases its effectiveness by capitalizing on its efficiency. The least amount of time is takes for your staff to run the system, the greater your opportunity for member engagement and awareness to be realized in your association and the more opportunities for your staff to truly understand the needs of your members.

Many associations have realized that “off-the-shelf” in house systems are archaic and have opted for software-as-a service hosted email marketing packages such as Informz.

Like all expenditures of an association, the bottom line cost is always an issue when deploying software. However, you always get what you pay for, right!

With email marketing software, you may receive the following benefits:

• Improved email deliverability-If your members are not getting your message, what is the use of sending.
• Web-based platform-Your staff can send from anytime and anywhere.
• Powerful analytics that track everything from opens and clicks to what type of mobile device your members read your email on.
• Robust integration that extends the value of your association management system (AMS or EMS).
• Member Data and targeted lists created in your member database can be accessed from within your Email Marketing System when conducting email campaigns — in real time.
• Emails can be personalized using your association or engagement management software platform.
• Subscriber actions (unsubscribes, opt-outs, opens, clicks) are written back to your AMS so you can view in the contact record.
• Versatility: The ability for chapter groups to create and publish emails.

 

Database Integration is likely the most pressing issue for most Association Executives. It is simply imperative to integrate your Engagement Management Software with your Email Marketing Solution for many reasons. The most impactful will be the segmentation and the write backs of information such as who clicked on what link, when they opened up your email, and if they opted in/or out of your correspondence. In the age of holistic associations, it’s important that everyone knows more about your members communication requests and history.

Email marketing isn’t the wave of the future. It is the wave of the here and now. Starting an email marketing campaign begins with the right software.

Until you implement an Email Mail Marketing solution, it’s not likely you can advance to true Marketing Automation. The next topic of another conversation!

Please contact us for more information about developing an email marketing system that works for you.

We recently read that Gartner Research projects that by 2020 customers will manage 85% of their relationship without talking to a human.

As nonprofit associations’ members, customers, event attendees and advocates become increasingly comfortable transacting business online, marketing automation software for membership based organizations is taking a progressively larger mind share for Executives today.

Marketing automation is the sending of relevant, time-released (aka “drip-campaign”) emails to segmented groups within your Association Management Software database. With marketing automation, you can easily manage the targeting, timing, and content of your outbound marketing messages in response to prospects’ actions and behaviors so that your potential members and current members find and do business with your association.

With each email sent associations are now able to measure the “digital body language” of their audience. Digital Body Language is the aggregate of all the digital activity you see from an individual. Each email that is opened or clicked, each web visit, each form, each search on Google, each referral from a social media property, and each webinar attended are part of the prospect’s digital body language. With Marketing Automation, each email sent from your association can direct a targeted group to a specific “landing page” on your website, with individualized content that connects with their particular interests, determined by their past participation and expressed needs.

In the past, marketers and marketing software focused on developing and sending high-volume outbound emails. Today, if we hope to guide new members to consider, prefer, and select to renew or register for your conference, we need marketing automation software that provides the precise information your members need as they move through the join/renew/registration process.

To learn more about the possibilities inherent in marketing automation and the various marketing automation software tools designed for your association, please contact us today.