For many associations, fall is crunch time. It’s the annual scramble to meet membership numbers and set yourself up for… READ MORE>

Chances are you’ve thought about the impact AI might have on your association this year, next year, in five years…There’s… READ MORE>

This is the third of a four-part series about how to market your association’s events in 2024. Human beings make… READ MORE>

Ask any one of your members or customers how they’re doing, and there’s a good chance they’ll say, “Busy,” as… READ MORE>

Associations have been all over the place with brand storytelling. It was everything... until it got replaced with data. To… READ MORE>

They’re afraid that you’re wasting their time. Squandering their attention. Making promises you can’t keep. READ MORE>

Trust provokes, entices, and motivates. It’s also the only thing of value remaining once the noise recedes. So why not… READ MORE>

It’s great to be passionate about your association. It’s understandable that you want to tell everyone about all the resources… READ MORE>

Answer this question quickly, and in one word: What is the number one reason you believe people attend your event?… READ MORE>

We Are In Crisis Mode, and It's Unclear When We Will Be Out of It.

On the other side of crisis: does your association have a plan?

We know how diligently associations are working to adapt during this pandemic and to engage members through virtual events. We… READ MORE>

What Does the Coronavirus Have to Do with Association Marketing?Answer: It’s always a good idea to prepare for the worst.… READ MORE>

6 Ways to Help your Association Thrive

Part 6: Grit

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6 Ways to Help your Association Thrive

Part 5: Events and Programs

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6 Ways to Help your Association Thrive

Part 4: Prospecting

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6 Ways to Help your Association Thrive

Part 3: Marketing Assets

This is the third post in our series 6 Ways to Help Your Association Thrive. If you missed our earlier… READ MORE>

6 Ways to Help your Association Thrive

Part 2: The Plan

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6 Ways to Help your Association Thrive

Part 1: The Cause

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My car died last month. I went online to see what my local dealer had available. I filled out a… READ MORE>

When my daughter was in fifth grade, she made a model solar system for the science fair. So did 15… READ MORE>

When my daughter was 10 years old, she came home from school one day with a sad, skinny puppy in… READ MORE>

4 Steps to Inbound Lead Generation

Why Inbound Marketing is the Best Way to Generate Leads

My dishwasher died recently, and I had no idea where to begin shopping for a new one. I found a… READ MORE>

4 Steps to Heal your Brand Breaks to Drive Membership and Non-Dues Revenues

Why you need a consistent brand story

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Engage your Audience with Holistic Digital Marketing

6 Ways to Reach Your Marketing Goals in Uncertain Times

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Learn How This Connection Influences you Marketing Strategy

How Brand and Culture are Connected

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Houston, we have a conversion problem. In the current climate of data breaches and over communication, people are more protective… READ MORE>

If you’ve ever procrastinated on giving the-birds-and-the-bees talk to your kid or having an uncomfortable conversation with a friend, you… READ MORE>

Once you establish your holistic email marketing strategy and set your campaigns in motion, you will need to monitor performance… READ MORE>

Why You Should Market Holistically for Long-Term Sustainability

What is Holistic Marketing?

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” — Aristotle Imagine how effective your marketing would be if… READ MORE>

So you Can Make Smart Decisions to Reach your Goals

12 Marketing KPIs Every Association Should Measure

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How to Track Ket Metrics to Make Better Strategic Decisions

Key Performance Indicators for Event Marketers

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So your event had great attendance and you saw a surge in membership. Feedback was positive and you feel triumphant.… READ MORE>

How to Move People from Prospects to Attendees, Members, and Ambassadors

Member journeys in the digital marketing world

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Strategic Event Marketing is About Inspiring and Connecting Potential Attendees

4 Pillars of Event Marketing to Fuel Attendance and Engagement

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If you struggle with event attendance and membership acquisition, chances are the problem isn’t your organization, your member benefits, or… READ MORE>

Lots of associations focus on the numbers. How many members do we have? How many people attended our event? While… READ MORE>

Drive Attendance and Engagement Using a Time-Testing Technique

Why event marketers need more storytelling

Storytelling is a proven technique for sharing information, bringing people together, inspiring action, and exploring possibilities. Recently, neuroscientists have shed… READ MORE>

Insights to Help you Bridge the Gap Between What you Want and What you Have

How Organizations Drive Membership and Attendance

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You Know your Event has Value, But Can you Prove It?

How to fuel attendance and engagement with an ROI Toolkit

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Prove the ROI of Attending your Event to Drive Attendance and Engagement over the Long Term

Why Your Event Needs a Value Proposition

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7 Strategies for Improved Engagement and 7 Bonus Tips

How to Use Engagement Marketing in Your Emails to Drive Event Attendance

Email marketing represents a big opportunity to drive event attendance and encourage engagement. As a platform for communication, it remains… READ MORE>

Introducing Julius Seizer, one of the profiles you might see after you take the Rottman Creative Engagement Assessment. If you’re… READ MORE>

How to Connect the Dots Between Messaging, Members, and the Buying Cycle.

Get the Marketing Superpowers to Engage Your Members

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How to Measure Engagement to Improve your Events and your organization

Are your members engaged?

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Why you Need to Measure your Level of Inspiration

Inspiration Assessment Drives Member Engagement and Attendance

The perfect scenario for your organization: Your event attendance and membership are at all-time highs. Attendees are engaged and eager… READ MORE>

How to Gain and Retain Millennials for Your Organization

What Inspires Millennials?

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Forge Connections to Further Your Mission and Sustain Your Organization

How to Create High-Quality Connections

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How to Build Loyalty, Drive Event Attendance, and Further Your Mission

Motivation vs. Inspiration

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TO MOVE MEMBERS FROM AN INSPIRED STATE TO TAKING ACTION, YOU NEED A TRIGGER AND A TARGET.

Triggers, Targets, and Inspired Journeys in Event Marketing

So far, we’ve debunked the myth that inspiration is unknowable. We’ve shed light on the powerful Inspiration-Connection Duality™. And we’ve… READ MORE>

Step one in conference marketing is to create an inspired state for your members. Inspiration is not as mysterious as… READ MORE>

Writer Jack London said, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” Rottman Creative… READ MORE>

How to Drive your Organization’s Life-Changing Work by Harnessing the power of Connections Did you know you have traditional intelligence,… READ MORE>

Twitter offers incredible potential for event marketers to promote events and inspire members with meaningful content. And you don’t have… READ MORE>

Dick’s Sporting Goods Takes Storytelling and Storymaking to a New Level with a Recent Series of Commercials Featuring the Tagline,… READ MORE>

In an effort to make its pages more engaging to users, Facebook might not be showing your business page postings… READ MORE>

Inspiration and connection move in a noiseless, effortless, infinite loop. People want to be inspired to connect. They connect to… READ MORE>

These days, data is big business. You have unprecedented access to information about your audience’s location, age, income, education, and… READ MORE>

McDonald’s turned some heads recently with the release of its “Signs” commercial. In just one minute, this emotional piece of… READ MORE>

Wooden toys are great. They’re fun, engaging, and durable. They’re so simple they hardly ever break. Very little goes wrong… READ MORE>

What’s the difference between storytelling and corporate communications? Some of the earliest human stories were told around a campfire. We… READ MORE>

While our stories have mostly remained the same throughout history, the tools we use to tell them have changed dramatically.… READ MORE>

When was the last time you were moved to tears? Well, if you’ve watched any television lately it probably wasn’t… READ MORE>

Help your reader enjoy your long content with these simple tricks. We talked last time about the benefits of long… READ MORE>

We’ve discussed in the past just how powerful emotions are when it comes to making decisions. Figuring out the emotional… READ MORE>

In Jab, Jab, Jab, Vaynerchuk says that if Facebook is the dining room where we entertain, then LinkedIn is the… READ MORE>

Twitter seems to be the preferred platform for many associations. We suspect it’s because Twitter is safe. It’s fairly easy… READ MORE>

Let’s start with an idea that you know is true, but may stress you out to think about nonetheless. It’s… READ MORE>

Being vulnerable means you take risks, expose your authentic self, and open yourself up to the possibility of attack, rejection,… READ MORE>

We Want To See You Be Brave:

Bravery

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We Want To See You Be Brave:

Vulnerability

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We Want To See You Be Brave:

Fear

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We Want To See You Be Brave:

Professionalism

“But We Have to Look Professional” For most associations, the crux of the fear is this: we are a professional… READ MORE>

The Anatomy of Inspiration:

The LIMBS

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The Anatomy of Inspiration:

The BELLY

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The Anatomy of Inspiration:

The BRAIN

MARKETING: THE BRAIN Marketing is the BRAIN of inspiration. It gets its blood supply from the brand (the HEART), but… READ MORE>

The Anatomy of Inspiration:

The HEART

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Archetype Based Branding:

The Patriarch

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Archetype Based Branding:

The Advocate

THE ADVOCATE: Stories about Effecting Change For the American Network of Community Options and Resources (ANCOR), it was the classic… READ MORE>

Third Harness the power of video. But edited video. Five-minute videos about why your association is great are just self-indulgent.… READ MORE>

Plan B: Case Studies Mailers The alternate approach (and one we love) is to craft three direct mail pieces around… READ MORE>

4. Be deliberate in your timing. People read more emails in the morning than the afternoon, and the earlier, the… READ MORE>

6. Include calls to action. In each email you send, you want to have a specific call to action. Tell… READ MORE>

2. Segment your storytelling. The same stories don’t appeal to everyone, because not everyone cares about the same thing. For… READ MORE>

We perceive that conference marketing is one arm of an organization’s holistic messaging for fulfilling their mission. We embrace conference… READ MORE>

6 steps to Inspiring your base to act.

Step 6 of 6: Work with the timing

Knowing when and how to make your offers is an art to itself. Registration occurs along a bell curve, peaking… READ MORE>

6 steps to Inspiring your base to act.

Step 5 of 6: Leverage your offers

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6 steps to Inspiring your base to act.

Step 4 of 6: Develop your voice

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6 steps to Inspiring your base to act.

Step 3 of 6: Identify your archetypes

Archetypes are personality types or stories that show up over and over again, across all cultures. Think about the stories… READ MORE>

How many emails do you get every day? Most professionals get more than 200 emails a day. Sure, it raises… READ MORE>

If you’re starting to plan your next annual conference, we have a story you really need to hear. It’s about… READ MORE>

You need to be doing direct mail. We tried very hard to find a stealthier way into this statement. But… READ MORE>

Today, e-mail is the main form of communication. With hundreds of e-mails flooding your account daily, how do you distinguish… READ MORE>

The mandate to inspire isn’t going away. How will you conquer it? We have an answer. To drive event registrations… READ MORE>

East to West, Big and Small – we’ve been watching what’s going on and it’s time to report the facts.… READ MORE>

In our recent edition of WhiteSpace we cover how an organization’s strategic plan, brand and conference must connect with each… READ MORE>

A strategy to stand out and get noticed. In the absence of a clear vision, association marketing staff members start… READ MORE>

Little, three word statements can get you in trouble. Take “I love you”, for instance. Said too soon, too often,… READ MORE>

The Internet has made it very difficult for artists and other creative types who produce original songs, paintings, photos, movies,… READ MORE>

Last year, associations saw a 25-50% to drop in conference attendance. Surveys show the outlook for this year isn’t much… READ MORE>

Let’s leave behind the nightmares of low conference attendance in 2009, and embrace the hopefulness of 2010. I think we… READ MORE>

We’ve been giving you guys tons of tips and how-tos about conference marketing, and now its time to help you… READ MORE>

What exactly are you promoting? Let’s pretend that you are promoting a conference in Washington DC for middle-school teachers about… READ MORE>

How to increase conference attendance.

Do’s & Don’ts of Conference Marketing

For associations of various sizes and missions, conference attendance has been down and many association executives are feverishly looking for… READ MORE>