This year 186 membership organisations took part in Think’s Re:member research, making it the largest deep-dive into membership organisations’ communications strategies. The scale of response meant that we could produce two Re:member reports in 2021 – covering both the professional and consumer membership sectors.
Over the long Easter weekend I immersed myself in both reports and picked out seven trends that I reckon will shape member comms in the long run:
1. There’s no going back. The brave new world that Re:member has identified – digital-first, agile, hybrid, data-driven – has parked itself like a teenager in front of Line of Duty and isn’t moving for anything. These forces are here to stay.
2. There’s never been a better time to rethink how we communicate with members. According to Re:member, 34% of professional bodies say their structure prevents them from having a joined-up approach. This worries me. Unless membership bodies address this, it’ll hold them back from communicating effectively with their members.
The good news is, there are tools and platforms available that help you transform your comms, and Covid has only increased people’s willingness to use them (even my mother-in-law is on Zoom)
In specific terms, now’s the time is to think differently about:
- Virtual events. In our Re:member dataset we’re hearing about extraordinarily high levels of attendance at virtual events, and with increased level of international engagement. Virtual events enable membership bodies to ignite interest from previously disengaged members. Obviously, things may shift again as we come out of lockdown, but we’re keeping a close eye on evolving best practice.
- Hybrid events. We’ve been doing hybrid events for years but just didn’t call them that – for example, sports events with crowds that are televised at the same time. Hybrid events offer us ways to open up our event content to a much wider audience – geographically and demographically,
- Digital. Membership organisations must think digital-first in their communication – obvs!
3. Change is okay. We’ve all adapted our communications because we had to; now we can make other significant changes. Today, even in traditional sectors, people are much happier to accept change. In fact, membership organisations that don’t change will be the ones who seem weird. Go on, have a go…
4. It all starts with the member – and understanding what each one wants from you. Which brings us to data. We need to know our members much better than we do – only 35% of respondents in our Re:member research describe the quality of their member data as good; and only 3% say it’s excellent. Fewer than one-fifth are using the data they collect to inform their content strategy in a meaningful way.
As well as harvesting data, we need to ask the right questions of it: where are your members in their member journey with you; what do they really think of you; what are their content preferences and how do they want to receive these; which pieces of content do they like most; and which services don’t they use?
5. You really need a clear, joined-up communications strategy. Without the right strategy in place, how do you know where you’re going and whether you’re getting there? How will your teams know what’s expected of them and of each piece of content they’re producing? How will you know which content to share across which channel? And which channel to prioritise?
In our research, 39% of membership communications specialists say that content strategy is their biggest skill gap. Only 13% say they are confident they have a comms strategy in place that coordinates all of their channels. Ouch.
6. Measurement is critical. In digital, you need to be measuring everything. Nail down analytics and understand the ROI of your content programme. The same applies to your CRM and CMS platforms. How well you know your members will depend on how good and how well run your CRM is.
7. Take an honest look at your digital platforms. So many organisations are stuck with legacy digital platforms that don’t give them the data they need about their users and make it difficult to respond to changing market needs. How many of you know what you need to do digitally but can’t get your in-house teams to deliver it?
It’s important to recognise that the digital world has moved on dramatically in the past year.
WordPress – get this! – today powers 40% of the world’s websites. Yes, that platform we used to think of as a blogger’s plaything. (The next nearest competitor Joomla has 2.6% of the market.) And WordPress is free (to begin with) and open source. No more arguing with your developers about who owns what and who can change what…
Now is the time to rethink what you’re doing and how you’re going about it. It’s telling that several of our membership clients have this year ditched legacy platforms and seen immediate, dramatic, positive results. At last they’re able to understand what their members really want, and to start building truly engaged, valuable membership communities.
Ian’s on Twitter and keen to discuss all these issues.
For ten years, Think’s Re:member research has been exploring the challenges facing membership organisations in their communications strategies. Re:member is designed to be a data-driven tool for membership bodies to benchmark their communications against best practice. With data going back ten years, we’ve now got detailed, long-run sensitivity to changing communications strategies. If you’d like a copy of this year’s Re:member Consumer or Professional reports, email [email protected].
Leave A Comment