Today’s association members expect consistent communications, seamless online interactions, and a modern experience throughout every aspect of their engagement with your organization. At the same time, adopting comprehensive backend technology makes internal processes more efficient and centralizes data collection and analysis so your team can make more informed decisions.
When these two priorities combine, they form the foundation of your association’s digital strategy. Tech Impact defines this term as “a unified approach to leveraging technology and communications to support broad organizational goals,” such as member engagement, revenue generation, and mission awareness.
To help you start building your association’s digital strategy, this guide will walk through five planning tips that will show you how to unify marketing and technology for your organization’s overall benefit. Let’s dive in!
1. Set Clear Goals & Objectives
The terms “goal” and “objective” are often used interchangeably, but in the context of a concept as large as a digital strategy, it’s helpful to differentiate them. Your goals should describe the overarching accomplishments you want your digital strategy to facilitate in alignment with your strategic plan. Then, objectives are the smaller achievements that act as stepping stones toward your goals.
Both your goals and your objectives will be most actionable if you use the SMART method, which involves formatting projected accomplishments so that they’re:
- Specific about what you want to achieve.
- Measurable according to a concrete number or percentage.
- Attainable given your association’s current capacity and past impact.
- Relevant to your organization’s general strategy or to the goal each objective supports.
- Time-bound by a clear deadline.
For example, let’s say you’re creating a digital strategy in the hopes of counteracting a drop in your member retention rate that you’ve seen recently. A SMART goal for this situation (assuming you’ve assessed its attainability) might be “to increase our overall year-over-year member retention rate by 10% over the next calendar year.” An objective in the same format may be “to launch an automated renewal reminder cadence next quarter that reduces attrition by 5% as compared to the same quarter last year.”
2. Understand Your Audience
Before you can put your goals into action, you need to know who you’re trying to reach with your digital strategy. In most cases, your primary audience will be your association’s members. However, this group isn’t a monolith, and some of your initiatives and messages will be more attractive to some members than others.
To understand your member base on a more granular level, Clowder’s member communication guide recommends segmenting them based on shared characteristics, such as:
- Demographics: Age, location, education, marital and family status, employment details (specialty, career stage, income, etc.).
- Psychographics: Hobbies, interests, values, communication preferences, technical literacy, reasons for joining your association.
- Membership status: Tier, years of membership, stage in the member journey (i.e., prospective, new, engaged, retained, or advocate).
- Engagement: Events attended, online courses taken, credentials earned, purchases made (e.g., gated industry reports or branded merchandise).
Your association may also have other audiences to consider when you’re communicating about topics like corporate sponsorships or opportunities open to non-members. Do your research on these groups as well so you know what’s important to them.
3. Leverage Multiple Communication Channels
Many organizations conflate their digital strategies with their digital marketing strategies when marketing is actually just one aspect of a digital strategy. However, the channels you use to spread the word about your association’s happenings are still an important consideration for reaching your target audiences effectively.
Consider how you can leverage the following communication methods to engage members, generate revenue, and boost your association’s overall image:
- Every aspect of your website, including your member portal, blog, and submission forms
- Email blasts and newsletters
- Mobile messaging, whether through SMS or a dedicated association app
- Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and even TikTok
- Paid ads on social media or search engines
Additionally, contrary to popular belief, print marketing is not dead. However, your direct mail messages and print flyers should tie into your digital strategy in their visual branding, contents, writing style, and calls to action (e.g., including a QR code to an online signup form on an event flyer).
4. Assess Your Association’s Tech Stack
Technology is the internal infrastructure that powers your public-facing communications and offerings. As you develop your digital strategy, you should make sure you have all of the tools you need to execute your marketing plan across the aforementioned channels first (a flexible website builder, graphic design solutions, email platforms, etc.). However, you should also consider whether other essential association software is part of your tech stack and is serving you well, including your:
- Association management system (AMS)
- Member community platform
- Event management tools
- Payment processor
- Administrative software (payroll solution, accounting platform, etc.)
- Other specialized solutions for unique activities (e.g., credentialing or online course creation)
Whenever possible, integrate these platforms so data transfers seamlessly between them. Event registration details automatically appearing in your AMS or transactions being logged in your accounting system as soon as payments process saves significant time and effort for your staff and prevents data silos from forming.
5. Establish Digital Governance
Working toward broad goals and innovating in the process is always exciting. However, you still need boundaries to protect your association legally, ethically, and reputationally as you execute your digital strategy.
Some ways to implement digital governance at your association include:
- Checking your software’s cybersecurity settings to ensure that encryption, two-factor authentication, and single sign-on are available and turned on.
- Limiting user permissions so only team members who need access to sensitive data can view or edit it.
- Implement policies regarding general technology usage, AI implementation, member data privacy, and other common problem areas.
Make sure to communicate all of this information to your staff so they understand organizational expectations as they work, and to your members to promote transparency about your technology and data usage.
Every association and member base is different, so you’ll likely need to adapt the tips above to your unique situation as you start developing your digital strategy. When you move from planning into execution, remember to collect data that relates to your goals and objectives so you can monitor your progress and improve your approach over time.
Not sure whether your current technology supports your digital strategy? Schedule a technology assessment with Michael Fisher 443-393-4705 [email protected]