Archive for September, 2007
September 25, 2007
If a Tree Falls & No One’s Paying Attention…
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Yes, and yes! “Kill your darlings,” someone said about writing. They meant to get rid of those clever turns of phrase that the author loves but are merely getting in the way of the point. This applies equally well to many association programs.
September 20, 2007
If I’m Not Good At It, It Must Be Wrong
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So now people are talking about marketing in the tiny little association blogging world. Jason Della Rocca posted something that sounds a lot like my last couple of posts (except I don’t think “marketing” is a line item). Scott decides “traditional marketing” doesn’t work because apparently somebody is mailing out 500-page brochures to hundreds of thousands of helpless people. Tony says only an idiot would send out 500-page brochures without testing them against postcards. (I’m paraphrasing here.)
Well, they all raise good points and I don’t really want to get into too many details because frankly I’ve had a long week. However, I have to point out that the problem with Scott’s post is a problem I see all the time on ASAE listserve discussions: “If I’m not good at something, it must be inherently wrong.”
Scott says that traditional marketing = things like big brochures = isn’t there a better way? But Tony gets it right when he says marketing = figure out what works = do it = repeat.
(Of course, Scott has already said he’s not a big fan of data, so I guess we’re supposed to … I’m not sure … give in to whoever is the most sure of their convictions?)
Since I don’t really have any convictions, I’m stuck with data. And I’m willing to concede that just because I tried one thing once — and it didn’t work — doesn’t mean the thing itself is wrong. Maybe I just did it wrong. I see this all the time with email marketing, as I’ve written before. So many people think “email marketing” doesn’t work, which is absurd — they’re just not doing it right.
Scott is right on one thing — if you’re sending out 500-page brochures, whoever you are, for god’s sake stop it. That is, if you’re only doing it because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, or it’s what you’ve always done, then you should stop it. But if you’re doing it because you’ve actually tested it and have data that your audience responds much stronger to 500-page brochures than anything else, then you go right ahead and kill all the trees you want. You sure as heck don’t want to stop because some random bloggers think “WOM” sounds so much cooler.
(I feel like I’ve been picking on Scott the last few posts. Since he was the one who dragged me from the abyss, I promise to try and go easier in the future.)
September 19, 2007
Gone to See Jesus
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This is a really good idea (for senior staff as well as CEOs). Of course most of us don’t like to think about it.
September 14, 2007
Kudos
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Just noticed this. Kudos to WHADITW. 1000 copies of an association-related book is pretty damn good, especially one that was independently published. And it’s a good book.
September 14, 2007
The Growth Thing Keeps Growing
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Not to belabor any further this discussion, but reading through my last post and Tony Rossell’s comments I’m afraid I may have given the impression that I am somehow anti-marketing, which could not be further from the truth. One problem with blogging is that its format lends itself to oversimplification. So here is a more direct statement — a “clarification” if you will, that I’ve tried to scrub of my usual flippancy:
The purpose of an association is NOT to grow its membership. The purpose of an association is to serve its membership. If it serves its membership well, and markets its efforts correctly, the association will grow, within the boundaries of whatever industry segment or membership it serves.
That’s it. Really. (How’s that for oversimplification?)
But of course I have to keep talking:
Associations that have “room for growth” often view membership growth as a measurement of how well the association is serving its members. Unfortunately, some associations lose sight of what those numbers really mean, and instead become blinded by the formula “Growth = Success.” They forget that it is only one measurement among many designed to help the association understand if it is meeting its goals — probably because in many cases it is the only metric they have bothered to track, since it is the easiest of any possible measurement other than P&L.
These are the organizations that become Membership Obsessed. They stop selling membership and start selling discounts. Meeting artificial number goals becomes more important than serving their existing customer base. They offer cut-rate or even free membership dues with no thought as to what impact it might have down the road, because that is something to worry about later. (For those who think associations have little in common with public corporations, there is a striking similarity between Membership Obsession and Quarterly Numbers Obsession.)
Ironically, volunteer leaders are far more likely to be Membership Obsessed than professional staff. I say ironically because metrics that cover such things as customer satisfaction and, yes, even “engagement”, sound as though they would matter more to volunteer leaders who are, of course, already customers, and should benefit from such a focus. Yet most staff afflicted with Membership Obsession find themselves in their predicament ultimately because of pressure, somehow or some way, from volunteer leadership.
The question is, why do so many association leaders focus so intensely on membership growth? Again, I think it may be because membership is usually the only measurement we give them other than financials. Especially in business organizations, leaders tend to be a little more comfortable talking about tangible things like numbers than intangible things, and since it’s considered somehow unseemly to stand up in front of an association meeting and talk about black ink, the focus turns to membership.
The solution is for the organization to provide other metrics in addition to membership numbers that are meaningful and useful. This of course leads back to Scott Briscoe’s original post on this topic; the only disagreement I have with Scott is that I believe membership growth and retention figures are not “of tertiary interest”, they are of primary interest, but should be viewed in context. To put it in personal terms, the organization I work for has grown very significantly over the last few years. That’s a fact we’re very proud of. It is not of tertiary interest — but it’s not necessarily the most interesting thing we’ve accomplished.
What should the “other metrics” be? That’s where the rubber meets the road. In his very first post on this topic back in January, Scott had some specific ideas. Ultimately I think that many of these metrics, if they are to be truly meaningful, will have to be unique to individual associations and depend on their commitment and capabilities for necessary data collection, tracking, and analysis.
(As to Ben’s thoughts on want vs. need, that’s something I’ve thought a lot about over the last few years, and will be hopefully writing about soon in a post tentatively titled “The View from the Ivory Tower.”)
September 12, 2007
Bad Subject Lines
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You’d think by now people would know at least a little something about how to send an email campaign. But tonight I received a piece of unsolicited email (aka spam) with the breathless subject line: “Are You Planning to Enhance Your Member Communications in 2008?”
My itchy trigger finger could not hit “delete” fast enough (though my Outlook preview pane was open just long enough to reveal that this marketing masterpiece was actually being sent by a company that sells email newsletter services … for how much longer, I don’t know.)
Three quick tips on email subject lines you can take to the bank (and one cranky bonus tip that I’m probably wrong about, but feel strongly about just the same):
1) Your goal is to get the email opened, not to make people roll their eyes.
2) Make your email subject lines read like a sentence that someone might actually send to someone else. Avoid Email Subject Lines That Capitalize the Initial First Letter of Each Word Like a Book Title.
3) Keep subject lines short and, as Strunk & White so famously advised, “omit needless words.” Short subject lines don’t just read better … many people have various screen configurations that will only display a certain number of characters under “Subject” in their inbox.
Bonus subject line tip that is much more a personal opinion than the others: Almost never do regular people send emails to other regular people with subject lines that start with the recipient’s first name (as in, “Kevin, Did You Eat All the Cookies?”). I’m sure there’s probably all sorts of data showing that email subject lines that do this sort of thing get opened, but it won’t last long, trust me. You can start the email body with “Dear Kevin” all you want, but avoid temptation to personalize the subject line. It screams “This Is an Ad.”