June 2025 - Rottman Creative

You don’t have time to chase small fish. So what’s the solution?

Big firms get the attention. They have the budgets. They make your numbers look good. But while you’re chasing whales, hundreds of smaller firms slip by, unnoticed.

Not because you don’t care. But because your team is already stretched. So you prioritize. And the smalls slip through.

It doesn’t have to stay that way.

Small Firms Are a Growth Channel. Not a Distraction.

There are more small firms than mid-size or large combined. Many are ready to join. They just need to hear something that sounds like it was meant for them.

They don’t need hand-holding. They don’t need a concierge. They need clarity.

That means messaging that fits their world—and a process that doesn’t burn out your team.

Build a Workflow That Meets Them Where They Are

You don’t need to build from scratch. You need to reframe how you approach the segment.

Start with:

Plain speech: No jargon. No puffed-up promises. Say what you mean.
Grounded design: Clean, clear, easy to skim. No boardroom shots or glossy hero images.
Familiar situations: Talk about wearing too many hats. Making decisions fast. Finding real value quickly.

Then put it in motion.

A Flow That Works

Here’s one we’ve used that delivers:

Lead with a pain point: “Pressed for time? Join the club.”
Add a peer voice: Someone in a small shop talking about why they joined.
Map out the first 30 days: Tell them what happens after they say yes. Week by week.
Ask for the join: Direct, simple, now.

This is how you move from generic outreach to real relevance.

Clean Up Your Landing Pages

If your landing pages speak to “everyone,” they speak to no one.

A page that works for small firms includes:

A clear headline that names their problem
A short visual preview of what’s ahead
One clear call to action

This doesn’t take weeks to build. It takes one afternoon and a clear point of view.

Start Small. Let the System Scale.

You don’t need to reach every small firm. Just build a workflow that makes it easy for them to see themselves—and say yes.

Once it’s running, it works in the background. Your team stays focused. The system does the heavy lifting. And you stop leaving value on the table.

Small firms aren’t harder to convert. You’ve just been talking to them like they’re someone else.

Speak directly. Build the right path. Then let them walk it.

At Rottman Creative, we help associations shift from noisy assumptions to impactful realities—creating outreach that fits naturally into your members’ lives. Let’s replace guesswork with targeted, intentional engagement that works in the real world. Let’s Talk >

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ARE YOUR MEMBERS TRULY ENGAGED?

NOT ANOTHER SNOOZELETTER.

How Well Do You Really Understand Your Members’ Time?

It’s Q2—Time to Act on Member Acquisition

Your members’ time is their greatest asset. To inspire members and prospects to consistently choose your association, you first have to understand how they’re investing and engaging—not just how you wish they were.

The Misconception of Member Engagement

We all carry a romanticized notion about engagement. As if members are waiting, ready and eager to commit hours each week to read email newsletters, participate in webinars, and explore new offers. But that’s not reality. Just like you’re splitting attention across competing responsibilities, your members are balancing work demands, personal obligations, family needs, and their own health and wellness. Even the smartest, best-intentioned association professionals often overestimate how invested their members can really be.

Take weekly emails as an example. Maybe your Monday morning email sees decent open rates—but is it generating real action? Or are your members opening quickly, skimming, and then instantly moving on to their first meeting of the day, never truly absorbing your message?

We’ve seen this happen before. One client discovered that their members, busy healthcare professionals, were only available on Fridays. Another association we interviewed found that engagement peaked on weekends and evenings. While Monday morning emails were once considered the best time to connect, this reality has shifted. That long-standing habit of sending emails on Mondays was actually limiting opportunities for deeper engagement.

But if you’re not continuously testing and asking the right questions, how will you ever find this out?

Too many associations are relying on data from months ago, automatically assuming what worked then will work now. But life—and work—continue to shift. People’s routines change drastically, and their availability and preferred engagement times change with it.

The Shift in How to Measure Engagement

The key question to ask is no longer, “Are members opening our emails?” It’s now about actionability and usability. Is engagement actually happening as a result of your outreach? What times, formats, and methods create true, actionable engagement—especially among the busy majority who aren’t responding to typical midday communications?

Instead of sending yet more emails into the busyness of mid-morning inboxes, ask yourself: Would evenings—after dinner, family time, and exercise routines—be more effective moments for relaxed, intentional engagement? Could Sunday night, when people’s thoughts naturally shift toward planning the week ahead, be the perfect window to connect? Finding these pockets of attention means your association can become a welcome ally.

Doing this means committing to ongoing experimentation. Test emails sent Sunday night versus Monday morning and measure what’s driving increased registration, deeper content interaction, or stronger membership renewal intent. Regularly poll your members in quick, lightweight surveys about their preferred times and channels. Segment your audience not by assumptions, but by actual behaviors—by what they’re really choosing to engage with now, in 2025, and beyond.

The Key to Member Engagement

In short, understanding your members’ limited time shouldn’t feel like guesswork or habit. The end result means respecting your members’ realities, and thoughtfully integrating your message into the times they truly have available.

Share this post in LinkedIn:

ARE YOUR MEMBERS TRULY ENGAGED?

NOT ANOTHER SNOOZELETTER.