September 24, 2024   |   Vol. 23   |   Issue 9
By AJ Jankord, Business Development Representative

In Today’s Marketing Landscape, Data Reigns Supreme

Every association aspires to possess comprehensive data about their target audience. Having the most up-to-date data on your prospects is not just a crucial part of a marketing campaign, it’s the foundation. Without it, all the effort, resources, and money invested in crafting your best campaign will be in vain.

This is where proper data sourcing comes into play, empowering you to ensure your campaigns reach their intended audiences. Data sourcing enables you to identify people based on the key characteristics that already define your membership base. Understanding how the prospects you are reaching out to share characteristics with your current members will significantly increase the likelihood of them joining the association. This insight helps you emphasize your association’s value to the right audience, avoiding less likely prospects.

We’ve identified three key strategies that set associations on the path to effectively leveraging their data, ensuring their messaging meets the right people exactly where they can be found.

Three ways to set your data up for success

• Cleaning & Updating Data
  People today frequently change jobs, move, and get new emails and phone numbers. The data that you have on your members and prospects is likely out of date, which means you aren’t reaching a lot of your prospects. We’ve worked with many associations to update work contact information, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses to make sure they are correct for each person in their database.
• Member Demographics
  When looking for new members, an association needs to know which of their prospects are the most likely to join; otherwise, they will not get the ROI they are looking for. You’ll want to comprehensively examine current members to find their most common demographics. Knowing these demographics sets you up for success when launching a new recruitment or member retention campaign.
• Profiles & Segments
  Knowing that the people you are reaching out to are the most likely to join is only half the battle. It is also important to know what medium they are most likely to respond to. We’ve partnered with many associations to create member profiles and segments based on their communities. This helps to guide associations in determining the best messaging for future campaigns and suggests relevant messaging tests for email, direct mail, and phone calls. The result is a much more targeted approach with a higher ROI than just sending out a campaign to all new prospects or members.

If you have not implemented any of these data-sourcing initiatives, think about doing so. The nature of these three initiatives is to set your association up for future success with all future marketing campaigns. Having accurate data allows your association to take the first step to running successful membership marketing campaigns.

If you need assistance or have any questions, our team is here to help. Reach out to me at aj.jankord@marketinggeneral.com