Love your learning in 30-minute chunks? Join these Express Learning Labs that focus on topics across association marketing, membership and communications.
A clear, impactful communication culture starts by looking within. Learn how a quickly growing association completely eliminated internal, staff-to-staff emails, clearing the way for more impactful interactions with members, vendor partners, volunteer leaders, and prospects. Leveraging technology platforms coupled with a clear, co-designed culture around internal communications, the small-staff team achieved significant operational efficiencies resulting in membership growth, a highly connected virtual workplace, and even a degree of focused productivity that allows for a four-day workweek. With the same straight-to-the-point energy executed at the association, the executive director and director of marketing will outline how completely killing internal emails can unlock a better association culture and a more impactful external marketing and communications strategy.
Christina Lewellen, CAE, executive director, Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools
Kelsea Watson, director of marketing & events, Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools
Learn how the pandemic accelerated our organization’s digital transformation and in turn enhanced our marketing and communications strategies to reach and engage our NextGen members, while also providing an enhanced member experience. We will showcase transformations in our video strategy, the ultimate transition to a fully digital publication from a hybrid with print, a new digital product offering, leveraging the return to in-person events for membership recruitment, and digital-first tools for recruitment and partner prospectus kits. This session is designed to quickly provide best practices in integrating your marketing, membership, and communications efforts across your association and offer ideas to easily implement, no matter how big or small the association.
Christopher Young, CAE, chief program officer, Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA)
Both members and prospective members visit an association website for a number of reasons, including access to up-to-date industry news, professional development opportunities, an opportunity to connect with industry colleagues, and more. Learn how the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) took an aging website from a repository of outdated articles and information to a state-of-the-art hub for members and industry professionals that features a customized experience with tailored suggestions for professional development opportunities, news articles of interest, an on-demand video library of past webinars easily searchable by keywords and topics, a centralized dashboard with access to previous invoices and membership dues status, and much more by partnering with an association-focused vendor, using member feedback and conducting best practices research—with a total organization staff of just seven.
Sarah Loughlin, communications specialist, National School Public Relations Association
Cutting through the noise is key to any business in today’s environment, especially when you are selling, fundraising, and recruiting for new members. Associations and for profits alike are struggling with time, money, bandwidth, and attention. Abandon brand marketing. Cut to the chase and learn how to use direct response in your membership marketing and recruitment efforts to elicit the response you need—and want.
Steven Mandurano, MBA, CAE, CNP, principal: marketing, communications & membership, consultant
In a world where information is critical to competitive advantage and success, how can organizational knowledge be generated and utilized to optimize revenue and increase share? Organizations that use vague ideas or commonplace notions are not getting to the hot button issues of their membership and underscore the ability to deliver unique products and/or services. Systems thinking, or a systematic process of diagnosing the issues, planning responses, implementation of response actions, evaluation, and learning from experiences, should be part of strategic marketing planning. This session will discuss general systems thinking with an application to marketing. Participants will learn how to use a systems-thinking approach to discovering concrete, identifiable problems in the marketplace and use this critical information in both marketing and communication planning.
Gina Florzak, MBA, marketing project manager, Selected Independent Funeral Homes
Small-staff associations face particular challenges in how they allocate resources and set priorities, but the size of their team does not mean that they need to limit the quality or reach of their content and how they can use it to meaningfully engage with their members. Strategically repurposing content across different platforms and in different formats allows associations to work smarter and extend the life of the content created, saving valuable time, and diversifying their messaging in ways that will feel more personalized for specific groups of members. We’ll discuss how to plan content with repurposing as the goal from the beginning, tools, and technology available to associations of all sizes that make repurposing content easier and share success stories from small-staff associations where repurposing content has allowed their staffs to communicate and connect with members more intentionally.
Sarah Sain, CAE, senior director of content Services, Naylor Association Solutions
ISACA's newsletter was its highest-performing email, with strong engagement and high satisfaction rates. It was tempting to let the success stand, but was it truly performing to its maximum potential? The ISACA communications team conducted member surveys and focus groups and researched the highest-performing newsletters across industries and organization sizes and found we could do even better. Dive into simple updates your team can make to better repurpose content, provide multi-media experiences, highlight member benefits, and ensure that the content you are delivering is exactly what your members need. Learn the small steps ISACA took that resulted in big wins—including the 2022 ASAE Gold Circle Award for Association Newsletter.
Kristen Kessinger, CAE, director of communications and content marketing, ISACA
Jay Schwab, senior content manager, ISACA
An association’s membership recruitment often suffers because of the lack of a specific strategy to grow membership or because the plan is so complex that it hinders implementation. These challenges can be solved by developing a concise one-page membership recruitment plan that incorporates the critical elements for establishing a successful program. Learn the five drivers for a high-performance recruitment program, including targeting, offers, channels, messaging, and economics. Then using a simple one-page template, learn how these elements can be combined to build an effective plan to direct the recruitment strategy for your team and your organization.
Tony Rossell, senior vice president, Marketing General Incorporated
It’s time Associations joined the “Streaming Revolution,” with the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and Prime, creating rich online experiences we have become accustomed to. It’s time to explore how streaming providers are revolutionizing the way we consume the vast range of content we capture and deliver year-round. While non-dues revenue continues to be a top priority in 2023, we’ll break-down the streaming giant’s success strategies, how they can benefit your Association, enhance membership value, and maximize the revenue potential of your valuable video content. We’ll look creatively at new ways to diversify revenue, create stability and security through consistent revenue streams. Explore driving non-dues revenue through your vast range of education and video content. Improve continuing education by moving away from outdated CE/CLE/CME catalog’s and tedious workflows that limit your revenue potential. Let’s keep membership rates and NDR rising by leveraging new digital products and experiences that even appeal to Gen-Z.
Jordana Davis, CEO & co-founder, webcastcloud
Building on its legacy as a proponent for beautiful highways, Scenic America led the way in Congress to revive the National Scenic Byways Program in late 2019, just before the COVID pandemic sparked unprecedented demand for scenic road trips and outdoors experiences. Through timely communications and PR outreach, partnerships with like-minded organizations, and relationships with Congressional offices, Scenic America emerged as the nation’s leading voice for scenic byways, landing major media hits, fueling record-high traffic to its website, and attracting new email subscribers and social media followers. Learn how Scenic America is using the lessons it has learned about its audience, their interests, and their motivations to develop a new visual identity and website to better engage its new fans, followers, and allies on Capitol Hill and in the media on issues beyond scenic byways.
Mark Falzone, president, Scenic America
