The 2021 MemberWise Digital Excellence Report provided us all with 34 pages of uninterrupted reading about all things digital in the membership sector.
As always, we were treated to many facts and figures, and an inside viewpoint of how the pandemic has affected membership organisations’ attitudes towards the digital shift.
What did we learn?
Loads of things! The report included sections on several key areas, including website and Association Management System (AMS) integration.
More than a third (35%) of organisations have not integrated their AMS with their website content management system (CMS). The top three reasons are cost, time and AMS incompatibility.
MemberWise: “There are significant implications here from a member personalisation and self-service perspective for organisations that have not integrated their AMS and CMS.”
Of those who have integrated their AMS and CMS a significant number (32%) had only done so within the past two years.
What are the implications?
An Association Management System (AMS) is used as part of the day-to-day operations of membership bodies, including some of the world’s leading organisations. As well as being the centre of all operations, these sophisticated systems provide valuable information and a link between all your departments.
Your website’s CRM can present a wealth of information to your organisation; this can be pulled from a member signing up for an event or even from downloading educational content and filling out personal details. Previously, this would have been manually inputted to the AMS by an employee.
If this information is not being captured in real time and transferred to the AMS in an automated process, you will almost certainly be wasting resources in entering this data manually – or worse – not at all.
But, why should these be integrated?
By integrating your CRM and AMS, this process can be automated to save you serious admin time. Not to mention your member satisfaction and personalisation efforts are reduced.
As the number of leads generated by your website grow beyond a certain point, it becomes difficult to manage and keep track of each lead using a simple database or spreadsheet. Plugging in a CRM solution to your website will make this job easier. Rather than inputting data, your marketing team can focus more on their acquisition and retention strategies.
By integrating your website with your CRM, you will get a fuller, more complete picture of your customers’ interactions with your organisation, from initial enquiry to sales, communications and eventual feedback.
The seamless integration between the two systems will provide your staff with a new level of confidence when developing data-led member strategies.
More Engaged Member Experience
As a membership organisation, your website is usually the first point of entry for both current and prospective members. By capturing data and intelligence on their online behaviour you are far better placed to provide a more engaging user experience for your members.
Member acquisition rates
Member acquisition was in the top three priorities for organisations in the 2021 report (second only to Member Engagement).
By integrating your CRM and AMS, you can capture, nurture, and convert leads. The automated process gives you the ability to understand your audience, capture quality data and take a disciplined approach to turning prospects into members.
Member retention rates
One of the top priorities for membership bodies in the Digital Excellence Report was member retention. Make sure your members are making the most of their membership – and interacting with your website – by applying an automated process in your system that alerts you to non-activity. This can be those who haven’t booked onto an event for 12 months, or haven’t downloaded educational content for more than six months.
Member Satisfaction and value
Member Satisfaction and member value were listed in the top six goals in the MemberWise Excellence Report. But, how do you evaluate member value and ensure members are satisfied?
Integrating your CRM of course! A CRM has the capability to tell you member value scores based on their online activity with your organisation; such as website interactions, email campaign clicks, or online purchases.
What else can it do for you?
Integrating your website with your AMS/CRM will also give you the following benefits:
- Help give a better member experience
- Greater understanding and segmenting of members
- Less workload and increased productivity
- Reliable and consistent data
- Increased sales from improved marketing strategies
PSP IT is a Microsoft Silver Partner. With more than 120 years’ combined experience, they have worked with large membership bodies to develop highly-functional websites, CRMs and bespoke applications. For more information, visit: www.psp-it.co.uk. Or email [email protected] for a consultation.
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