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You probably know by now that member stories are great for marketing. But did you know that some story formats work better than others to convert prospects into members and event attendees? For maximum success with your next member story, divide content into three key areas: early career, mid career, and late career.

Early Career

Focus on the resources your organization offers someone who is new to the industry. How can you help them learn the business and increase their value to their organizations? What events or offerings do you have to connect them with other newbies? How might you help them meet industry veterans and mentors?

Mid Career

Mid career professionals already have a pretty good feel for their role and industry. Now they want to focus on professional development, leadership skills, and promotions. Keep in mind their personal lives are often getting increasingly busy at this stage.

Late Career

Seasoned veterans want resources and connections that can help them lead better, develop stronger teams, and improve their organizations for the long term. Chances are they are interested in working smarter, not harder, given their demanding schedules.

Incorporating all three of these elements in one member story helps your marketing reach a broader audience while showcasing a range of your association’s offerings. But getting a member to articulate all of this during an interview or survey can be tricky. Here are a few pointed questions to help you get the info you need.

7 Interview Questions for Better Member Stories

  1. Tell me about how you got into the industry. What was it like in the early days of your career?
  2. How did our association help you learn the business and make connections? Can you point to a specific resource or event that was helpful?
  3. Thinking back to the middle years, how did our association help you advance in your career?
  4. Can you think of anything specific that helped you land a promotion or execute an important project?
  5. What is your role today? How does our association help you thrive in that role?
  6. In what ways does our association help you be a better leader? Develop your team? Strengthen your company for the long term?
  7. If our association ceased to exist tomorrow, how would that impact your role? What would be harder for you? What would you miss out on?
  8. What would you tell someone who is on the fence about joining our association?

How to Use Member Stories

Once you have concise, compelling member stories with rich details for early, mid, and late career stages, it’s time to put them to work. Create a website with three or four stories. Add headshots to emphasize the human element of your organization. Launch emails and social ads that direct people to the site. Include a call to action button that encourages prospects to schedule a call to learn more about your community and your full range of member benefits.

Why It Works

Member stories work because they speak to the real-world value of your association and offerings. They help build trust and drive engagement by creating a human connection with your audience. Career-focused stories are even more powerful. They prove to your base that you are there for them at every stage of their professional journey. These stories work because they compel people emotionally while also focusing on tangible resources that help them do their jobs better.

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The digital age demands a new approach to word-of-mouth marketing that actually gets results. Gone are the days of casually hoping people will talk about your brand. Today, you need strategy, creativity, and authenticity. Thanks to social media, the dynamics of word-of-mouth marketing have changed. The potential reach of a single positive recommendation is staggering. So how can you harness this power effectively? Let’s break it down.

The Power of Organic Social Media

Organic social media is a great place to build trust and authenticity. It’s where you can have genuine, unpaid interactions that form the bedrock of your of word-of-mouth marketing. While paid ads can grab initial attention, they often fall short in fostering the same trust that organic engagements do. Similarly, world-of-mouth marketing is even more valuable than a paid ad from user-generated content or an influencer.

Buzz Kits: Your Secret Weapon

Buzz Kits can help you turn passive followers into proactive brand advocates. They offer a blend of easy-to-share content—from infographics to quotes—designed to spark curiosity, create FOMO, and energize action. Think of them as a toolbox that your loyal followers will be excited to share.

So many members see the value of your event and offerings, but they don’t organically post unless they are guided to. A well-crafted Buzz Kit turns your audience into a marketing machine, distributing your message organically and spontaneously. For maximum impact, customize your Buzz Kits for various audience segments, such as members, board members, staff, event speakers, and registrants. 

The Game-Changer: Social Media Takeovers

Social Media Takeovers disrupt your routine content by lending your platform’s voice to an influencer or enthusiastic member for a day or even a week. This approach doesn’t just broaden your audience but injects authenticity and novelty into your channel. It’s an invitation to see your brand through fresh eyes. A successful takeover can generate a surge of engagement and leave lasting impressions.

So much of social media marketing is about cadence and timing. If your base doesn’t see your ad, the ad can’t get results. But an extended takeover will help make sure your audience sees and engages with your message.

CASE STORY: We recently helped a client stage a week-long social media takeover to promote their annual conference. The results were impressive! The takeover generated 18,000 impressions, up 40% from the same week last year. It also garnered 1200 engagements and 457 clicks, each up about 100% over last year. Best of all, 250 people registered for the event in just that one week.

Engage via LinkedIn: The Professional Playground

LinkedIn has evolved into much more than a network for job seekers and recruiters. It is a place to connect, both personally and professionally, where you can build meaningful connections that convert into invaluable word-of-mouth marketing.

Leverage Personal Profiles

Personal engagement on LinkedIn is about humanizing your brand. Share authentic behind-the-scenes stories, professional challenges, and triumphs so you can engage with members and their victories. Showcase projects you’re working on so you can be seen as a leader in your space. When your audience sees the real faces and narratives behind your brand, they’re more likely to feel a deeper connection and become an advocate for you. This approach transforms your business from a faceless entity into a community of real people with compelling stories.

Maximize Business Profiles

On the business front, LinkedIn is an excellent place to showcase your credibility and expertise. Post thought-provoking content to create an image of authority and knowledge. In-depth articles, industry trend analyses, and case studies should make up the bulk of your LinkedIn strategy. This approach positions your brand not only as a participant in your industry but as a leader to whom others turn for guidance. Plus, you’ll get extra milage out of posts that mention members and their companies and projects. These help foster a professional relationship.

Showcase Value: More Than a Sales Pitch

Modern consumers are savvy; they’re not interested in being relentlessly sold to. They want to know how your product or service can add significant value to their lives. Your task? Show them in ways that resonate deeply and authentically.

Show, Don’t Tell

Turn testimonials and case studies into your brand’s storytellers. Let your base articulate how your offerings have made significant impacts or solved complex problems. When potential customers see these real-world applications, your value proposition becomes credible and compelling.

Connect Through Relatable Narratives

Facts and figures inform, but stories resonate. Craft your content around powerful narratives that highlight real-life impacts. Show potential members the tangible differences your solutions have made. This narrative approach creates interest and moves people to share these stories within their own networks.

The Final Insight: Make Meaningful Noise

In a digital world of constant noise, you’ll need more than a great event to generate word-of-mouth marketing that stands out. You’ll need to create a narrative people want to share. Aim to foster genuine connections, demonstrate real value, and maintain an authentic presence. Then let your audience do the rest.

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5 Steps to Easier Membership Renewals
It’s time to get fired up about membership renewals!

Easier membership renewals happen when members see your association as more than a line item that can easily be cut from the budget.

Sure, you’re up against some challenges—people are busy, money is tight, and uncertainty hangs around every corner. But you’ve also got a lot going for you—people want to connect, they’re looking for solutions to their challenges, and they see your organization as the heart and homebase of their community.

This renewal season, focus on nurturing relationships, delivering value, and communicating that value to hit your numbers and minimize lapses.

Convince the Check Writer

Often, the people using your resources and attending your events aren’t the people paying your membership dues. The check writer doesn’t experience your value firsthand. This could spell trouble in a tough economy when that same check writer is looking to make budget cuts. Do you have a way of definitively showing the value of your association to someone who deals only in facts and figures?

One way to show value is to set up member engagement tracking. This will track where members spend time on your website, how many questions they ask in your forums, which events they attend, and more. It will also give you the ability to generate a report for each member to show them exactly what they got for the membership dues in the past year.

If you suspect your members aren’t taking full advantage of your association and the report will show a lack of engagement, start there. What can you do to entice people to lean in?

Speak to Trends and Pain Points

The best way to fuel member engagement and improve that report is to make sure your editorial calendar mirrors current industry trends and pain points. In short: Stay relevant.

You might think you’re already doing this, but are you really? What are you doing to look ahead? To innovate? Can you honestly say your members should renew every year because you have new, different, and amazing offerings they can’t afford to miss out on?

Relationships vs. Transactions

Once your content is on point, consider your relationship vs. transactional messages. How often are you asking your members to do something (e.g., pay dues, attend an event) compared to sharing valuable resources with no strings attached? In addition to the message itself, you’ll need to optimize how you package and deliver it so members see it and react.

Maintain Momentum

Don’t wait until September to start showing value. You must nurture relationships starting with onboarding and continuing all year long. New members are often enthusiastic initially but need a reason to maintain momentum. Think about the last subscription you paid for—maybe a gym membership or video streaming service. At first you’re thrilled and eager, but it’s all too easy to lose interest or forget about it entirely. If your members don’t see your value, they decide not to renew long before you reach out to them in the fall.

5 Proven Steps to Fuel Renewals

Once you have a solid strategy, it’s time for action. Here are five tried-and-true ways to get attention and move people to renew.

1. Segment: Divide your audience into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behaviors. For example, large and small enterprises. Why? Because a one-size-fits-all message is the quickest route to the spam folder.

Purpose: To tailor your messages and offers to the specific needs and interests of each group.

  • Analytics: Use detailed analytics to understand member demographics, engagement history, and preferences.
  • Customization: Create specialized content and offers for different segments. For example, in-depth industry reports for seasoned members and orientation resources for newer members.

2. Use Technology: Tech is your ally. It can help streamline, automate, and enhance every aspect of your renewal campaign.

Purpose: To increase efficiency and member engagement through advanced tools and platforms.

  • Automated Email Marketing: Set up drip campaigns that adjust messaging based on member behavior.
  • CRM Systems: Use CRM software to track member interactions and personalize communications.
  • Analytics Tools: Employ data analytics to monitor engagement rates and refine your strategies.
  • AI Personalization: Use AI to offer personalized content recommendations based on past interactions. Highlight key features dynamically to maintain member interest.

3. Humanize: People connect with people, not with faceless entities. Humanizing your campaign makes it relatable and engaging on a personal level.

Purpose: To connect with members emotionally by showcasing the human side of your organization.

  • Member Stories: Share real-life testimonials and success stories that illustrate the impact of your organization.
  • Engaging Tone: Use a warm, conversational tone rather than corporate jargon. Focus on community, not transactions.
  • Visible Faces: Highlight team members and other faces of the organization to create a personal connection.

4. Offer Unique Benefits: You must give people something really good that they need that they can’t get anywhere else. Your value proposition must be crystal clear and compelling. This is what makes members decide to renew rather than lapse.

Purpose: To communicate the unique benefits of renewing membership.

  • Articulate Benefits: Focus on key pillars like brand value, community, networking, and personal growth.
  • Exclusive Perks: Offer exclusive access to events, valuable resources, and special discounts.
  • Clear Communication: Make sure members know exactly what they’re getting by renewing.

5. Remove Barriers: Even the most compelling offer won’t work if you don’t address the obstacles standing in the way of renewal.

Purpose: To identify and mitigate potential reasons for non-renewal.

  • Feedback Loop: Conduct surveys to identify common barriers like cost, time constraints, or perceived lack of value.
  • Address Concerns: Proactively solve these issues by offering flexible payment plans, showcasing clear value through success stories and benefits, and providing easy access to customer support.
  • Flexible Options: Provide a range of membership options to cater to different needs.

Renewals don’t have to be a struggle or a year-end scramble. Keep the focus on relationships and measurable value all year long. Use proven strategies and tactics to get more from what you’re already doing. You’ll will better serve and delight your members while also pleasing the check writer who ultimately makes renewals happen.

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Your Association and AI: The Story You Need to Be Ready For

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Chances are you’ve thought about the impact AI might have on your association this year, next year, in five years…There’s likely some apprehension as you wonder whether AI will replace your content, education, or other key offerings—at no cost to your potential membership base.

You’re right to be concerned. AI will no doubt get smarter, become even better at finding people’s pain points, and provide value you likely can’t even predict yet. But you also have a golden opportunity. You can embrace this new game-changing technology while you hone in on the unique value of your association.

The big question you’ll need to answer is this: Why would anyone pay your membership fees when they can access a universe of AI-driven value for free? The answer lies in the things AI can’t touch. Your community. Your advocacy. Your people.

Finding the “Almost”

AI will provide almost everything that your association can. Even today, it’s pretty good at content generation, data analysis, and education. If all you bring to the table is AI-level service with a “human-made” tag, you are already obsolete.

So, what about that elusive “almost”? When AI tools and resources mirror everything you do—only faster—will your members still see your worth? Can you define your value in that sliver of “almost”? 

If you can’t answer these questions with a confident “YES!”, then you’re right to be concerned. It’s time to get ready.

How to Be Proactive

First, stop viewing AI as a handover to robots to ease your workload, and start leveraging AI to deliver unique value to your members. Position your association to embrace AI, not compete against it.

You might think, “Here we go with another tech panic.” You’re right to a degree. Apps and social media were hailed as member engagement godsends, and yes, they had their moments, but they didn’t shift the tectonic plates. Conference apps? Usually downloaded in a hurry. 

Social media was once labeled the “email killer,” but now more emails are sent than ever before (not that this is a good thing). 

The real power lies in leveraging AI to serve your members in ways you never could before. AI can help your association better understand your audience, refine event offerings, improve your administration, track and enhance your marketing efforts, build smarter chatbots, create better content, and so much more. Don’t compete—let AI amplify the human value of your association. This is how you stay ahead and lead, not just survive, in the age of AI.

Broadcast Your Unique Value

Pillars of Your AI Strategy

The next step is to amplify what makes your association irreplaceable—your brand, your voice, your tight-knit community. Strengthen your story, build your community, and clarify your advocacy. These are your pillars.

Let’s get tactical. Here’s how to bolster your foundation while thinking strategically:

Behavior: Recognize the seismic shifts in event registration behavior. Enter The 40-Day Dash—our tailored program acknowledging the last-minute registration frenzy. Get ahead of this curve and you won’t just survive; you’ll thrive.

The Here and Now

Don’t panic. But don’t stand still either. AI is here and it’s only going to get better and more powerful. Now is the time to find ways to move forward alongside AI while still enrolling prospects and renewing members. Expect some bumps along the way, and sure, your numbers might take a hit. But keep your focus razor-sharp on your core value for lasting success.

Future-Proof Your Association

It’s time to define what makes you irreplaceable. Let’s dive in, refine, and proclaim the “almost” into something powerful to futureproof your association.

Need to talk? Contact us today.

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Your Association’s Marketing Plan Isn’t Working as Well as You Think It Is

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Ask any one of your members or customers how they’re doing, and there’s a good chance they’ll say, “Busy,” as part of their answer.

Busy professionals are busy working hard, accomplishing goals, and advancing their companies. They’re also busy making phone calls, answering texts and emails, and sitting in meetings. Busy parents are extra busy taking their kids to things like piano lessons and soccer practice. Many people are also busy scrolling endlessly through social media and binge watching their favorite shows.

The Dark Side of Busy

The trouble is that a lot of this busyness is a distraction. It’s activity, not productivity. Just think about how many meetings could have been an email, how many emails could have been a quick phone call, or how many of those emails and phone calls weren’t really necessary at all. Consider how many hours you have lost to social media scrolling or streaming television this week alone.

The Things That Matter Most

Of course, some of this busyness is truly worth your time and attention—like work and family milestones. People will always make time for the things that matter most. As an organization, this is the sweet spot you are looking for. First, you need to cut through all the busy noise that steals your audience’s attention. Then, you need to be one of those things that matters most so they carve out time for you in their busy, busy lives.

Your Biggest Competition

Busyness might just be your biggest competition right now. But there are ways to overcome it. Here are two strategies to get you started:

1. Adapt to New Technologies

First, do your part to fight busyness by reducing the number of emails you send. Next, fish where the fish are. Package your messaging in formats that your audience can digest in places they’re already spending time. Try short videos, subscription-based TV ads, social media ads, and web retargeting. These formats can be targeted to your current email list so you reach the same audience but with better results.

2. Speak Like a Human Being

Corporate speak just doesn’t cut it anymore. Your messaging needs personality. Your tone should be caring and empathetic to pain points. You need people to trust you as a human being, not an impersonal entity. Prove you’re worth their precious time and attention by speaking like a human being who understands their challenges and is here to help. 

Adapt to the new Busy Normal

It’s time to adapt to the new busy normal because busyness isn’t going away. Even if you’re getting okay numbers with your emails right now, it’s only a matter of time before people will be too busy to read them. Besides, you’ll have to do better than just “okay” if you want your organization to grow and thrive.

Rottman Creative can help you cut through the busyness with new marketing formats and technologies. Let’s chat.

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With Email Bot Clicks Skewing Your Open Rates, It’s Time to Diversify Your Strategy

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Tell us if this sounds familiar.

You send out an email to members and prospects in the morning, and then check your open rate and click-through numbers in the afternoon. As usual, your numbers are stellar! 

You’ve got an open rate of 70% and a click-through rate of 60%. You notice that your numbers seem to keep getting better and better.

If you haven’t realized it by now, your numbers aren’t accurate. Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly common for security bots to be responsible for the great majority of B2B email engagement—as much as 80% by some estimates. 

These bots don’t mean to screw up your marketing plans. In fact, they’re in place to scan for links to malware and phishing attempts. 

They derive from security software associated with various B2B email programs. Their job is to scan the email intended for your recipient. And in fact, if they just scanned it, it would be no problem. But the bots also open the email and click the links to check the redirects and make sure they aren’t malware.

The problem is, bot engagement gets recorded just like actual engagement. According to HubSpot, these security filters are more common in certain industries, like finance or healthcare. Ultimately, you don’t really know if your emails are getting opened or not.

And while some marketing automation programs have tried to create fixes, it’s a cat-and-mouse game. Every time the bad actors increase their phishing efforts, security must get more sophisticated, too.

The bottom line is: The bots are going to win.

But that doesn’t mean you need to lose.

Let’s Stop Talking About Your Emails

During our regular client meetings, one topic consistently dominates the conversation: emails. The focus revolves around the emails we sent last week and planning the next set for the upcoming week.

We get it. We monitor our own email performance, hoping for high open rates and click-throughs. We recognize the value of email as a form of communication.

However, we also know that email shouldn’t be the sole communication platform. Relying excessively on it carries the risk of failing to reach the intended audience.

Therefore, our primary message to you is this: It’s crucial to significantly reduce the number of emails you send.

It’s scary to think about slashing the number of emails in the queue. But it’s even scarier to rely on a false narrative of engagement, created by security bots.

Instead of your entire marketing strategy being tied to sending email after email, you need to create a more holistic strategy. There are lots of names for this. Integrated. Omni-channel. Multi-channel. Cross-channel. Unified.

We’re agnostic as to the terminology, but for our purposes in working with associations, the key idea is Not just email.

Not just email can look like utilizing the social media platforms where your members and prospects hang out. It can look like texting, calling, and messaging. And it can look like thoughtful content strategy that hasn’t just been rinsed and repeated from the previous year.

We know it’s uncomfortable to let go of the main tactic you’ve always cleaved to. To untether from what seems like a sure thing. And it’s overwhelming to think about learning platforms you’re not yet familiar with or perhaps haven’t even been invented yet. 

Marketers in industries across the spectrum are feeling the pain, but we know the particular stress that membership- and subscription-based organizations are feeling. We also know that it will only get worse—and not “worse before it gets better,” but “worse before it gets even worse.”

Rottman Creative can help free you from email dependence. Have questions? Let’s chat.

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Test time! Which of these statements is true?

Marketing campaigns should be data-driven.
Marketing campaigns should be story-driven

We’ve debated, gone all-in on one and then the other, and here we are again. In this particular moment in time, data on one side, stories on the other, seemingly a chasm between them.

It’s time to close the chasm. To blend the science of conversion with the art of storytelling.

But how did the divide between narrative and numbers come to be? Where did we get the false assertion that we needed to cleave to one or the other?

In addition to being an agency committed to using a data-driven process for our clients, we’re also in the business of storytelling. That’s why we’ve thought a lot about the danger of de-prioritizing one for the other. 

There’s been an evolution of how associations use stories and data in their go-to-market strategies. It’s never been more important to understand how to blend them. But to fully grasp the potential of this moment, we need to trace where we’ve been.

When Storytelling Saved the Day

With the Global Financial Crisis that swept across multiple industries in 2008, marketers saw the writing on the wall. Non-essential things were getting cut. Belts were tightening.

To release the purse strings, to move out of a mindset of scarcity, people needed something more. They needed to be inspired

Having released the first iPhone the year before, that’s exactly what Apple was doing. They were spinning a story about a product that nobody had any idea they needed, even as the economy all around was teetering.

A few years later, marketing guru Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start With Why, based, in large part, on noticing the way Apple was able to captivate and reinvent itself through the decades. People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, he wrote.

This wasn’t a new idea, but it was the right idea at the right time, and it re-ignited the power of brand storytelling. Just about every marketing firm jumped on the story bandwagon. Inspiration was the name of the game. 

We lived it, too, and we helped our clients create campaigns meant to inspire. As Millennials began to come of age, with their focus on mission-driven organizations, the storytelling frenzy only grew stronger. It was about authenticity and creating deep connection. 

And Then the World Started to Shift

As social media increasingly muddied the waters of authenticity, storytelling started to feel too fanciful for a world grappling with what was true and what was fake. There was a pandemic and another economic crisis, but this time, it was data that seemed to be the savior. 

What can you measure? What can you track? What can you see? It was the metrics that mattered, that would cut through the white noise and distraction.

Now, we’re slowly emerging from that epicenter of fear, but the landscape is different again. We’re forced to be constantly connected—and yet, we’re wholly disconnected from each other. We’re also distrustful.

Do we need stories? Do we need data?

Yes and yes.

But what we really need is discernment about how the two are connected.

The New, Data-Driven Storytelling

What we know now about storytelling is that it’s more trial and error than it is magic. Simon Sinek wasn’t wrong when he said that people connect with WHY an organization exists, more than the particulars of WHAT they do.

But it takes a lot of work to know what stories to tell around that WHY. It takes careful measurement to know which stories, told which ways, will convert people. And more than anything, in today’s environment, it takes building trust.

Finding the right story to tell can build that trust and inspire members and prospects to take action. But you can only find it if you know how to measure and track.

When we talk about brand storytelling now, what we’re really talking about is conversion.

We’d love to hear how you’ve used storytelling in the past, and how you plan to use it going forward.

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Trust provokes, entices, and motivates.

It’s also the only thing of value remaining once the noise recedes.

So why not start there?

This is what we do. We start with what is true. And we stick to it.

Converting people to members and customers is not a magic show. Forget the smoke and mirrors. It should be a transparent process. One that’s relevant, data-driven, and measurable.

If your organization is still clinging to remnants of how you did things before, let them go. You must be in the present with your members. Their behavior drives everything.

And you? You need to be real. Authentic. Straightforward. You must answer members’ questions, allay their fears, speak their language, and know their goals and challenges. You must deliver value and be rock solid for people, in good times and bad.

To do this, you need purposeful marketing, not wishful thinking. That means having bold, powerful messages that flow from the trust. A marketing plan based on the science of conversion with the art of storytelling. And an agency partner like us that will never mislead you.

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