By Guest Blogger:

Phillip Law, Head of Insights

Your Favourite Story

The top 100 Membership organisations (by total membership numbers) websites were audited for technologies related to Analytics, Tagging, Optimisation, and Personalisation activities. This report identifies and benchmarks common technologies.

The rationale

Some of the organisations we work with key strategy for increasing total membership numbers is to reduce member churn; a key part of this is to focus on increasing member engagement. Any organisation embarking on a strategy to increase engagement must be able to leverage data to understand member behaviour and measure the impact of any initiative to drive up engagement.

This post is a first step towards identifying technology gaps and trends in the Membership sector.

Key Questions

  • What Web Analytics technology is currently deployed?
  • Do Membership organisations have multiple Analytics solutions?
  • How prevalent are Tag Management Solutions?
  • What is the prevalence of/most popular Web Optimisation technologies?
  • How popular are Data Management Platforms (DMPs) amongst Membership Organisations?

Leveraging a variety of methods, we inspected and identified key technologies on each Membership Organisation’s website, which fell into typical digital activities, namely: Web Analytics, Tag Management, Website Optimisation, and Personalisation. Each of these categories were cross-referenced against popular technologies for each category.

Definitions

Web Analytics – Web Analytics is the process of analysing the acquisition, behaviour, and conversion of visitors to a website.

Tag Management – A Tag Management System (TMS) makes it simple for users to implement, manage, and maintain tags on their digital properties with an easy-to-use web interface.

Website Optimisation – Website optimisation is the process of using controlled experimentation to improve a website’s ability to drive business goals.

Personalisation – Website Personalisation is the process of creating customised experiences for visitors to a website.

Key Findings

Web Analytics Technology – 95% of Membership Organisations are using Google Analytics for their web analytics, however 4% of have no detectable analytics solution meaning they have no way of quantifying member engagement.

Tag Management – 27% of membership organisations are not leveraging a Tag Management technology (with is standard practise in the web analytics industry). This reduces the ability of the organisation to maintain tag hygiene.

Website Optimisation – To create a personalised experience, optimisation and personalisation technology is a necessity. However, of the organisations we audited only 24% having an active solution present on their website.

Conclusions

Membership Organisations overall seem to have the basics of Analytics technologies deployed: however there appear to be large technical gaps which limits organisations to “What has happened?”, rather than a “How do we make it happen?” ethos.

Three-quarters of the sites in this audit are missing opportunities to measure and optimise the performance of their digital Member Experience.

Read the full audit (including a detailed methodology and results) here -> Engagement Technology Audit  https://www.yourfavouritestory.co.uk/blog/membership-engagement-technology-an-audit-of-the-top-100-membership-organisations)

 

Your Favourite Story is an independent agency specialising in strategy and analytics. Contact us if we can help you with your membership marketing initiatives.