association growth

Many association leaders don’t realize it, but being mindful of your members’ experiences is the secret to growing your community. This week, I’m sharing five key ways that your association can curate a unique, memorable membership experience that will make your organization stand out in the marketplace, attracting members that will continually reinvest in all you have to offer.

Visit us at sarahsladek.com

From a young age, we’ve had nursery rhymes memorized that we pass down to younger generations. As the leader of an organization, I want you to commit this acronym to memory: EIOU! I developed this initialism to help associations attract, retain, and engage their members. In this week’s episode of the Membership IQ, we discuss how the EIOU tool can support your organization’s efforts to drive meaningful change and bolster your member-focused mission. 

Visit us at sarahsladek.com

Is your association sharing the latest buzz with your members? Just like every bee has a role in the hive, you and your members play an important part in your association's overall operations, which includes sharing all of the incredible achievements taking place! Oftentimes, associations choose to help their communities behind the scenes, avoiding “unnecessary” recognition or attention. It’s time to abandon this mindset and take on a new approach that will garner buzz and momentum while attracting new members to your hive. 

Visit us at sarahsladek.com

About this Episode

In this episode, we talk about digital sustainability and how sustainable web design can help to improve the user experience​. We will explore how the pursuit of sustainable web projects can produce more functional websites and help associations to drive traffic to their website. 

About our Guest

Tom Greenwood is an author, web designer and activist devoting his time to the field of sustainable web design. His work demonstrates that making eco-friendly choices does not have to be a sacrifice; environmental choices can impact our membership and association's growth for the better!

Full List of Questions We Asked Tom

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work?

What is sustainable web design?

What are some of the advantages of thinking about sustainable web design?

How popular should a website be to be really serious about this?

Can you walk us through your process: how would you build sustainability into the process?

How would you change the user experience on a website to make it sustainable?

Sustainable web design is a mutual responsibility of both the client and the developers. What can the developers do to impress upon the client that sustainable web design should be a priority?

What is the role of the client?

Should we really cut down the content on our sites and really focus in on a few things that really matter?

We are a big proponent of reducing waste. What practices can designers and developers change about our work to be more sustainable?

We build membership sites where many members visit the same pages. Is there better value to optimize the sustainability of pages that are used more than others?

We are working on a lot of websites where we are trying to include accessibility. Is there a way to include accessibility and sustainability principals hand-in-hand in the design?

For membership websites, are there things they can do to reduce their carbon footprint?

For the day to day activities, what are sustainable choices associations can make?

You mentioned a website that can help people assess the sustainability of their website. Tell us more about this?

Audience Questions

What are some examples of web design choices that people make that they don't realize have a terrible ecological impact?

How can we communicate our sustainable web choices without being pretentious or gimmicky?

Does eco-friendly also mean longterm sustainability of the internet?

Closing Remarks

What is your biggest takeaway for our audience?

Can you share a personal habit that has contributed the most to your success?

Special acknowledgement to our guests for providing powerful insights into membership management. 

Follow our podcast for more free educational content.

Visit memberlounge.app to learn more about us.

Contact anika@grype.ca for questions or support.

About This Episode

In this episode, we talk with association management royalty, Velma Knowles, about the four pillars of membership growth, discussed in her latest best-selling book about how to scale your membership. We start by busting some myths associations hold around membership and replacing them with data-driven pillars that are universal to all associations.

About Our Guest

Velma Knowles is a coach and consultant to associations and non-profit leaders around the what, when and how of growing membership, engaging boards, and delivering member relevance. Velma works with leaders to create sustainable membership growth by focusing on the 4-drivers of growth: Clarity in Numbers, Alignment in Resources, Relevance in Value, and Accountability in Planning. She is a speaker and best-selling author.

Full List of Questions We Asked Velma

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

What are the biggest misconceptions around membership growth?

Can you tell us more about how association employees can avoid working in silos and how to break down those silos?

You mentioned that there are 4 key ingredients to membership growth. Can you talk about those key drivers of growth?

Out of those 4 key drivers, where should associations start?

How can we be sure to listen to the voices of members?

When we are onboarding new members, what can we do to ensure a good member journey and start building the relationship right away?

For a large association that has many new members, it may not be realistic to reach out to each new member. How do we build relationships at scale?

What are the key metrics associations should track about their members?

Why do you see a membership website as important for associations?

What features should associations have in their member portal?

We hear often hear from clients that having a login area is a barrier for members. Do you think it is inherently a barrier?

Many associations have benefits that are not being used or only used by a few members. Is there value to keeping those benefits around or time to retire them?

What universal benefits should be in an association’s portal?

Audience Questions

Are membership drives out of fashion?

How do we engage members with limited resources?

How often should we add to our different membership tiers?

What are some valuable strategies to recover members that were lost during the pandemic?

How can we turn engagement into revenue opportunities?

Closing Remarks

What is your biggest takeaway for our audience?

Can you share a personal habit that has contributed the most to your success?

Special acknowledgement to our guests for providing powerful insights into membership management. 

Follow our podcast for more free educational content.

Visit memberlounge.app to learn more about us.

Contact anika@grype.ca for questions or support.

In this episode we are joined by Wes Trochlil, author and top data management consultant. We talk about how smart data management strategy will help your have better reports, communication, marketing and engagement. Clean data and strategic data collection will helps an association stay organized and on a growth trajectory.

To learn more about Wes, you can visit his website.

We'll include here the questions we asked Wes in the podcast with time stamps so you can easily refer back to the parts that most interest you:

01:26 Can you start by telling us about yourself and what you do?

02:08 Why is it so important for an association to have a strategy for their data management before they put anything in place? Why is strategy so important?

03:10 What are common mistakes that you often see associations make with their data management?

04:22 Do you prefer that people build out their member database in stages and not try to do everything at once, and plan for an initial role out with the most important thing with a plan for what will come after?

08:10 You mentioned that the CRM or member database should aline with the association's objectives. We need to know the mission. What are some of the things we can do to make sure the CRM plan or database align with the association's goals?

09:29 Do you see that the data that is collected and tracking with the member data management system should inform our marketing and sales efforts and beyond?

10:58 Do you have any thoughts on how we should approach the audience segmentation?

15:57 If an association doesn't have the data they want, what do they do then?

18:00 Now during pandemic times, a lot of organizations are trying to up their digital game, they are transforming their overall systems and go online more and more. If I am looking to reimplement by data management system or CRM, where should I begin?

20:20 Can you tell us a bit more from the types of reports you would want to see from their data management system?

22:55 Tell me a bit more about how you do engagement tracking?

30:30 You mentioned that at one level we have to start by looking at what the technology will give us, how much of an engagement report and how much we can do ourselves. If we have the freedom to choose a CRM tool or member management tool right now, what are some of the things we should consider?

45:26 We are towards the end of the episode; do you have any last words for associations?

49:00 When you give the example of a board member's information not being accurate on the website or in the system, it may be there is no way for the board member to update the information independently or no one thought to update it, how would you solve that problem because we see this all the time.

51:38 Audience question: What is the number one expectation you find these days that has to be managed?

53:04 Sometimes we see that just because an association has been doing something for a long time, doesn't mean it's the right way. Sometime they have to fix their process rather than the tool?

54:17 Can you share a personal habit that has contributed to your success?

55:15 Can you share a digital tool or strategy that makes you successful in your work?

58:09 Where can people reach you if they want to get in touch with you?

Special acknowledgement to our guests for providing powerful insights into membership management. 

Follow our podcast for more free educational content.

Visit memberlounge.app to learn more about us.

Contact anika@grype.ca for questions or support.