Growth Factors

When Andy Steggles joined the Risk and Insurance Management Society as chief information officer in 1999, the New York City-based association had been struggling to attract new members. Membership was oscillating between 7,700 and 8,000 -- and had been stuck in that range, some years dipping to the lower end and some years climbing back up -- from 1997 through 2001.

"Risk management is about mitigating risk, and the biggest risk for an organization is declining membership," Steggles says. It was time for the association to start living up to its name.

Steggles knew RIMS had to focus its energy on the web and quickly devised a plan to transform the RIMS website. Priced at $1 million, the project was the largest single investment ever made by the association. When social media began to dominate web development in subsequent years, Steggles was able to incorporate those trends into his master plan to create an interactive member resource, with blogs, e-groups (e-mail-based discussion groups), wikis (web pages that allow anyone to add or edit content), dynamic directories, resource libraries for documents, videos and audio clips, and more. He even planned to create a network, following the model of Facebook or LinkedIn, for RIMS members.

The site launched in 2001 and results have been "phenomenal," Steggles reports. Within three years, the site recouped the $1 million investment and covered all operating expenses by generating significant nondues revenue. More importantly, the association's membership soared. Since 2001, RIMS has seen an annual uptick in membership of between 6 and 10 percent (more than 9 percent annually since 2003), thanks in part to the redesigned website, according to member surveys.

Growing membership and/or trade show attendance are endless pursuits for most associations. While the two goals aren't identical, they're often connected, and several associations, like RIMS, have discovered innovative ways to achieve growth in both members and attendees. Solutions range from high-tech to no tech, from pricey to free, and tend to address two central issues: creating a more valuable product and selling a better message.

Social studies
To overhaul the RIMS website, Steggles turned to Suzanne Carawan at Higher Logic, a Washington, D.C.-based company that provides software solutions to nonprofits. (Both recounted their success stories at the New York Society of Association Executives' Technology Institute, held last April.) Carawan, creative director and social networking strategist for her company, says the number-one reason her clients want 24/7 social media products is to drive member value, which, in turn, strengthens the membership sales pitch. "From a recruitment standpoint, it's a huge piece," she says.

And the technology has implications for how meetings and trade shows are organized and marketed. Not only do the virtual forums allow for the wisdom of the membership to be leveraged, industry information to be aggregated and new relationships to be forged, but they offer strategic value, too, Steggles explains. Information about members and their interests can be gleaned from profiles, blog posts, wiki edits or discussion threads, all of which can be used to hone event marketing pitches to individual members or to determine what content should be covered at meetings. Associations can monitor web activity to identify which past educational sessions still generate buzz and what the most popular keywords are to develop future agendas -- all without having to survey members explicitly. The more relevant the meeting content is to members, the more attractive it will be, Carawan says.

What's more, having a critical mass of user-generated content also helps the RIMS site's search engine rankings. High rankings make the site more visible to people searching for risk management-related terms, and that potentially gets the association's name in front of more nonmembers.

Currently, RIMS is developing a complex algorithm that assigns value to any action a member makes online -- a blog post is worth a certain number of points, for example, more if it's rated highly by readers -- which will help the association determine who's contributing the most. "At the end of the day, we'll be able to put a value on all of our members," Steggles says. Recognizing hardworking members will aid member retention efforts, an important part of increasing overall membership numbers.

Of course, social media solutions are not for everyone. "You need to know what your brand is, and if it fits and enhances your brand," warns Carawan. In other words, "Success should not be a surprise," she says. Those who invest in social media should be sure their members want it and will use it. But that doesn't mean associations need to be filled with young professionals to make it work; the average age of a RIMS member, Steggles says, is 49.

The startup period can be hard for some association executives. Fully functional social media web tools require the association to relinquish some control over what's being discussed under its banner. "Associations always have been seen as educators," Carawan explains. "Now the mission has changed. It's gone from 'we provide' to 'we enable,' 'we empower.' "

The tools also must be accompanied by a robust marketing campaign, to encourage use and to let nonmembers know what they're missing. "The way I look at it, this is the biggest opportunity associations have ever had," Steggles says, referring to creating member value on the web. "But to realize the opportunity, they have to take the bull by the horns and be proactive about it."

Custom pitch: A mailer and PURL link from HCEA

PURLs of wisdom
A growing number of associations are turning to a different technology -- PURLs, short for Personalized URLs -- to help with membership drives and event marketing. Essentially, PURLs are websites with a person's name in the address (for instance, JoeSmith.ABCsociety.org) and with custom content based on that person's interests or demographics. Companies can direct recipients to their PURL via e-mail or a traditional printed mailer.

Eric Hawkinson, executive director of Dscoop (Digital Solutions Cooperative) for SmithBucklin, the Chicago-based association management company, recently used thousands of PURLs to advertise a Dscoop meeting. The website addresses were e-mailed to a list of recipients, both members and nonmembers, and the images and text placed on each site were dictated by the individual recipient's job description and area of interest, as well as other data the organization had gathered. The sites displayed teasers for education sessions deemed particularly relevant to each recipient. Each also had information about joining Dscoop or renewing membership. Instead of blasting everyone with one generic marketing message, Dscoop used PURLs to make more targeted, persuasive arguments to specific subsets of people.
 
One advantage of PURLs is the ability to experiment with different marketing messages and measure their effectiveness. How each recipient uses the PURL -- what they click on, whether they end up registering -- is easy to track, and if an association has two designs for its mailers, for instance, it can send each to a portion of its mailing list and see which yields better results.

"It guarantees a full understanding of what works and what doesn't work," says Moe Farsheed, CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based Mindfire Inc., a technology company that facilitated the Dscoop campaign. Mindfire tracks how users interact with their PURLs; if one design doesn't work as well as another, Mindfire identifies exactly where users dropped off.

"The money you invest into it returns much more value than if you'd used the money for a traditional marketing campaign," Hawkinson says. Cost varies depending on the scope and complexity of the project, but Farsheed estimates that using Mindfire to track and measure a typical 10,000-piece print mail and PURL campaign adds about $3,500 to the cost.

Hawkinson includes survey questions on each PURL and offers giveaways or discounts as incentives for recipients to respond. He says the data gleaned from the surveys has been used to hone demographics for future PURL marketing and to tailor meeting content accordingly. (For example, Dscoop created a new education track for people interested in labeling and packaging, after analyzing survey responses and identifying sufficient demand.) The constant stream of data helps the association stay relevant in an ever-changing industry, he says, adding, "I'm trying to push this on other associations because I see the value."

Frank Skinner, manager of membership and marketing for Kellen Co., an Atlanta-based association management firm, and director of marketing and information systems for the Healthcare Convention Exhibitors Association, says, "HCEA has used the concept of extreme demographics to go beyond the confines of traditional target marketing. In order to reach members and nonmembers alike, we're identifying them not only by member type but also by their industry and then reaching them with highly specific messaging and product alignments that are of most value to them first." The cost, he concurs, "is not much more than traditional mailings."

This spring, HCEA sent targeted printed material with PURLs to advertise the association's meeting in June. The response rate from the mailings was close to 15 percent, Skinner reports.

"The traditional rate is in the 1 to 2 percent range," he says. "Even if we had gotten triple that, we would have been happy." More than 90 percent of people who visited their PURLs clicked through to register for the event, although Skinner admits he can't know if the messaging itself prompted people to register who otherwise wouldn't have done so.

Skinner recommends that associations start collecting member data to lay the groundwork for such campaigns. "People are aware they need to be moving in this direction," he adds.

Recipe for success: The Research Chefs Association added members by changing membership terminology.

What's in a name?
Sometimes subtle changes can make a big difference. In late 2006, Jim Fowler, executive director of the Research Chefs Association, another Kellen Co. group, noticed growing discontent among some of his members. Food scientists, according to the group's bylaws, were eligible to be "affiliate" members but not full-fledged members like chefs or restaurateurs. Fowler knew the distinction was artificial: Food scientists paid the same dues and enjoyed the same benefits as the other members. "It was purely an identity issue," he says.

An in-house committee concluded the association was limiting its potential growth with such terminology, so the RCA decided to abandon the "affiliate" concept and allocate more seats on the board of directors for food scientists, though still not enough for a majority. Instantly invigorated, the scientists began participating more and promoting the association to colleagues. "It sounds like a pretty simple thing, but it ended up promoting growth," Fowler says. "We've grown 25 percent since we made that change, and now food science members represent 35 percent of our membership. They had been at 15 to 20 percent."

This year, RCA created a food science and technology education track at its annual meeting and drew 1,600 attendees. "By making a little more effort, we ended up with the biggest attendance in the history of the group," Fowler says. According to feedback and meeting evaluations, the change in attitude toward food scientists was one of the drivers of increased attendance.

"In this day of ever-increasing competition, with all the options out there, to remain viable, an association has got to keep in touch with its dues-paying membership and make sure their needs are being met," Fowler concludes.

Cash rewards
Even the prestigious American Institute of Architects, with more than 83,000 members, goes to great lengths to attract newcomers. AIA waives its annual meeting registration fee for new members. Between 400 and 800 people usually take advantage of the offer, which has been in place for about five years, says Christopher Gribbs, managing director of the convention.

Internal AIA research has shown that registration cost, however, isn't a great deterrent to attending. "The number-one key barrier is overall cost of attendance," Gribbs says, which includes registration and travel costs, as well as time away from the office or home. So this year, for the first time, the association partnered with its local chapter to offer more than 150 travel scholarships to young professionals, and AIA continued its policy of opening up its trade show and key sessions to anyone for free. Gribbs points out the show remains an industry event -- it's not advertised to the public ­-- but the free access encourages local architects to sample the show and, ideally, hooks them to attend future shows or to join the association. Surveys confirm the method works, Gribbs says.

There are other ways to structure price breaks to net new members or attendees. The Washington, D.C.-based ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, for example, has a special membership offer for associations with very small staffs, allowing them to join for a discounted fee. Greg Melia, vice president of member relations and credentialing for ASAE, says even if those members can't attend an annual meeting, they can participate in local events and contribute to the association in other ways.

Hard work ahead
"Probably the greatest challenge for associations is competition for time and attention," says Melia. Websites and savvy for-profit companies have raised the stakes by creeping into associations' territory. As such, members expect world-class customer service "24 hours a day, seven days a week," Melia says. "They are looking to associations to serve their immediate needs and help them take the next step."

While some quick fixes can deliver short-term spikes in attendance and/or membership, only those associations that make it easy to engage, provide outstanding research, produce events that are worthwhile and fun to attend, offer learning strategies and help guide members through their careers will enjoy sustained success. Associations must stay relevant and embrace change, an imperative that promises to be, according to Melia, "a lot of hard work."