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Effective Marketing Begins With Your AMS

In order to improve your current product and service offerings--and develop new ones--you need to analyze your data. But to do this, you must first have a system in place that allows you to be successful. The majority of association management systems on the market today offer an array of functionality that can be useful in your pursuit of increased marketing opportunities, provided you use them effectively. 

The AMS foundation is critical to effective marketing. Not only should your AMS capture “base” data such as name, title, address, and buying history, it should also capture other nontransactional data, including demographics, inquiries, and issues of concern (attitudes, interests, and reasons for joining). When all of these data are combined and considered, the resulting analysis allows you to understand your target audiences’ (members, customers, prospects) wants and needs to develop new--or improve existing--products and services, increase revenue, and grow loyalty.

When establishing the foundation for using your AMS to improve your marketing activities, consider the following:

• Centralize your system. Given the maturity of the AMS industry, and the relatively inexpensive technology it provides, there is no reason for associations not to have a fully centralized and integrated association management system. Whether it’s membership, educational events, publication sales, certification, or exhibits and advertising, all of this interaction, including the financial transactions, should be captured in a centralized AMS.

And don’t limit yourself to financial-based transactions. Your AMS should also allow you to track the “nonfinancial transactions,” or interactions, that occur among you and your members, including committee and other volunteer service, comments and questions from constituents, and issues that need to be addressed. These transactions can be among your best sources for identifying what “keeps your members awake at night.”

This information will help you uncover emerging trends and market dynamics as you refine existing products and services and develop new products and services that are truly in line with your target audiences’ desires. No more “from the gut”; your database will tell you what your customers want.

• Establish processes for collecting and managing data. With a fully integrated and centralized system in place, you need well-established business processes that allow you to collect and manage data efficiently and effectively. For example, if you are gathering data from the Web (for example, contact information changes, membership joins and renews, event registrations), how is this information being entered into the back-office AMS? Is it being downloaded from your Web site and rekeyed into your system? Or does a direct link from your site to your back office allow those transactions to occur in real-time, with no intervention from staff? Each of your processes needs to be well documented so that data are entered systematically and consistently. The data will have no value if they are only entered on occasion, or entered in a way that will not allow you to pull them easily.

You need a process that allows staff to collect nonfinancial transactions in one place in the AMS so that the cumulative data become useful. For example, where in the database will you capture all inquiries about a given subject of interest? And how will these data be “coded” so that the information can be pulled from the database in a useful manner?

For all areas of data collection (membership, events, certification, exhibits, and so forth), written business processes will ensure that the data are collected consistently, which will allow for effective analysis. With all this information in one place, you can make smart, cost-effective business decisions.

• Identify which data should be collected. Is it important to your organization to have information on members’ college degrees? Will collecting highest-degree-earned information be useful to your organization in developing new products and services? For some organizations, the answer is a resounding yes, while for others, it’s not important.

  The same question can be applied to a wide range of demographic information: date of birth, time with current employer, household income, and so forth. While more demographic information offers greater opportunity to understand and relate to your members, customers, and prospects, the importance of this information will vary by organization. Decide what information needs to be collected to help you better serve your members, customers, and constituents, in priority order.

  With that decided, establish methods for collecting your data. Will you go out directly to the members with printed or phone surveys? Will you ask for the information on order forms? On your Web site?

The desire to better market your products and services is honorable. But without an integrated, centralized system--and the processes in place to manage that system--great efforts may yield minimal return. A solid foundation for improving your marketing efforts begins with your AMS.

Wes Trochlil is president of Effective Database Management in Fairfax, Virginia. Wes can be reached at wtrochlil@effectivedatabase.com.

Reprinted with permission from Marketing Fast Facts, copyright 2003, American Society of Association Executives; www.asaenet.org.   

 

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