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Getting Good WOM
Want to increase your sales, market impact, and online search? According to MarketShare/Keller Fay, word of mouth has a significant, measurable impact on your marketing. A 10% lift in WOM leads...
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The Truth about Bad WOM
There’s a dark side to Word of Mouth, too. Negative reviews are inevitable. So what should you do in response? Develop serenity to accept the things you can’t change: You WILL get negative reviews....
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Five Tips to Increase Your Email Open Rate
Want to increase your bulk email open rate? Of course you do! The subject is the most important part of the email. Spend time writing a meaningful one that will ensure your recipient will open and read...
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How Do I Know What to Charge?
One of the hardest things to do in creating a product or service is to set the price – too high, no one will buy because it’s too expensive; too low, no one will buy because they think what you’re...
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More Tips to Improve Your Open Rate
Tips to help your blast emails shine, Part 2: Personalize it – It’s 2014. We all have the ability to send emails to “Dear Elizabeth” rather than “Dear Colleague” so be sure to call people by name. Be...
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Five Tips for Overcoming Your Fear of Sales
One of the toughest things in marketing is crossing over into sales. While our end goal is to get people to buy what we’re selling, no one wants to be this guy –> So how do you get one (sales)...
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Seven Keys to Great Testimonials
One of the best ways to promote your association and its programs, products, and services is to let your members, customers, audiences, and other stakeholders do it for you. In other words, to use...
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Four Keys to Writing Good Marketing Copy
How do you write good marketing copy? In a nutshell: Think about your audience. Who are they? What do you know about them? Use that information to craft a personalized message. Talk like a real...
View ArticleFarewell, Associations 101
For the past two years, Spark, in partnership with Scott Oser Associates and Peach New Media, has sponsored the free Associations 101 monthly webinar series: “10 tips in 20 minutes” on a variety of...
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Turning Good Ideas Into Action
Looking to increase your association’s revenue? Growth can come about either through acquiring new customers/members or increasing sales to existing customers/members. And you can sell either existing...
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What’s Your Marketing Resolution for 2016?
I’m totally stealing this idea from smartie Beth Brodovsky, who emailed me this same question recently for her Driving Participation podcast series. My resolution for association marketers would be for...
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What Is Your “Customer Journey”?
Reading a recent article in the Harvard Business Review on the topic of “customer journeys” got me thinking about their role in the association space. What is a “customer journey”? The example HBR used...
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What Will 2017 Hold?
Aptify set out to answer this question, at least for associations, in their recent e-book: Top Association Management Predictions for 2017. In the monograph, 13 association pros (including me) share...
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Membership 101: Lead Generation
Where does the membership relationship start? It begins with lead generation. People who might want to become members of your association have to find out that you exist. Lead generation is first...
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Membership 101: Ladder of Engagement
As I discussed in the last post in this series, membership is all about relationship building. The mechanism you use to build that relationship is the ladder of engagement. Simply put, just like you...
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Membership 101: How Do I Know When To Ask?
My last membership 101 post ended: You continue to do that [make offers] for a few cycles, THEN ask her to marry you, once you both know it’s right. Which begs the question: how do you know when is the...
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Membership 101: Why Did They Join?
My last membership 101 blog post addressed the question: how do I know when it’s time to ask a prospect to join my association? The answer was: by studying your data. Data can tell you when is the...
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Membership 101: The Welcome Series
When last we left the Membership 101 series, you had just gotten a new member and were busy finding out why she joined so you could focus your marketing and communications efforts around those 2-3...
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Membership 101: Ladders of Engagement Revisited
Once members join, the next question becomes: How do you keep them? How do you build real relationships over time that deepen your commitment to each other and lead to long-term loyalty on both sides?...
View ArticleSteal This Idea!
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past 20 years, it’s that associations don’t always have all the answers. We definitely have some major advantages, not the least of which is that we are highly...
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