We can now simultaneously track our steps, locations, heartbeat, calorie intake, sleep, energy consumption, movement in our houses, whether the garage door is open and more. But what does this trend toward tracking micro-datum mean for associations?
Membership data is important for a number of reasons, including segmentation for marketing and succession strategic planning for your association. Here are a few ways that big data inspires us.
Insights on Membership Benefits
Being able to look at your membership through a variety of filters is important to ensure you’re delivering the benefits and service your members are looking for. Associations are always evolving, and you need collect the right information to track how your particular members are changing, anticipate their needs and best communicate your mission.
Whether you are preparing for your regular renewal cycle or building up to a strategic planning meeting, having insights on your member demographics, interests, trending behaviors and needs will equip you to grow your organization with your membership.
Planning a Better Annual Meeting
Another great way to use big data is during the planning stage for your meetings. Including key demographic and interest fields in your registration process helps tailor your meetings to your specific attendees helping to ensure a positive response, increased engagement from members and a higher membership conversion from non-member attendees. Go beyond post-event surveys and incorporate you most important questions directly into your registration forms and event apps.
Get Creative with Data Collection
There are a number of tools we can use to collect this necessary data from our association members, many of which you are most likely already using to some extent.
While surveys are fantastic for collecting data, it can be difficult to receive a high enough response rate to be a true reflection of your total membership if you use them too often. One of the best ways to collect data is through your membership applications, registration forms and membership renewal forms as these touch points are already established and expected by your membership. However, you do not want to make any of these processes too long or tedious so you need to whittle your data points down to the most effective questions.
You can also track engagement through tools that work in the background, such as social media insights (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram) and website analytics. Knowing when and how your members are looking to engage with your resources is an important first step toward ensuring you are providing the correct platforms to meet your members’ needs.
Keep in mind that certain privacy laws, like EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the CAN-SPAM Act, may influence your general privacy policy, data use policies and data storage policies.
Summary
The data you collect will enable your leaders to make more informed decisions, help develop the next generation of benefits and services to meet your members’ needs, and help you provide more proactive management for your clients.