Many associations are finding themselves with an aging population, declining revenue and lack of verve. Facing new pressures to become data-driven, gain greater member insight and practice predictive marketing, associations are under even more pressure than ever to evolve. Hear how one organization threw out their traditional marketing playbook and reset their membership, product and service strategies. Learn how to get hyper-focused with your own target markets and how to gain both stakeholder and internal staff adoption to create serious change.

1. Grow Your Organization Through
Hyper-Focused Target Markets
June 13, 2016
2:45p to 3:45p
• Suzanne Carawan, MPH, MBA, Chief Marketing Officer, HighRoad Solution
• Maneesha Manges, MBA, Director of Consulting, HighRoad Solution
• Fern Oram, Director, Content Marketing & Communications, CFMA – Construction
Financial Management Association

2. What We’ll Cover Today
• Traditional Landscape in Associations and
Emerging Digital Shift
• Association Market Challenges
• Trends in Association Management
• Movement: Email to Marketing Automation
• CFMA in Action

3. Traditional Landscape in Associations
• Technology:
– Software buyers
– Budget holders
– Keepers of the data
– Business units wholly
reliant on technology
providing business
reporting & insights
• Communications:
– Software users, but no decision
makers
– Zero budget
– Skill gap in understanding
relational data
– Little access to self-querying or
self-reporting capabilities
– Little focus on lead generation
and revenue; lots of focus on
aesthetics & awareness

4. Traditional Department Dynamics

5. Changing Landscape in Associations
• Technology:
– Keeper of data integrity, security
& the digital ecosystem
– Role is to support the business
units through technology
enablement
– Focus is on exposing the data
model and reporting capabilities
to allow departments for self-
evaluation of programs
– Steward of data-driven decision
making
• Marketing:
– Software buyers with budget
– Responsible for all aspects of
program management,
including P&L
– Responsible for cross-channel
distribution of programs &
products
– Responsible for generating
market insights for further
program & product strategies
– Responsible for pricing &
products

6. What’s Causing the Shift

7. What’s Shifting?
• Budget
• Political Power
• Responsibility for Data
• Know-How More Valued than the Tools
• Who Owns the Customer

8. Meeting Today’s Challenges
MarTech = Marketing Strategy + Technology Solutions
Approach focuses on:
• Business Goals and Drivers
• Measuring for Success (KPIs & Metrics)
• Technology Solution that helps you be
successful

9. Department Dynamics Based on Parity

10. Top Association Market
Challenges We Hear Each
and Every Day

11. 1) Need to Identify & Convert New Members (When
You Can’t Buy Email Lists)
• Database Decay
– Email marketing databases naturally degrade by
22.5% every year*
– Lists will get smaller each year if you don’t
replenish and generate new leads
• How do you find new leads?
– How do you get in front of prospects that don’t
know your brand, programs or products?
• How you do utilize your content to convert prospects
to become members?
*Source: Marketing Sherpa

12. 2) Increase Engagement Within a Member
Company & Within Each Individual’s Participation
Level
• Need targeted messaging for programs and
products
• Need to demonstrate awareness of who your
target audiences are
• Speak their language and engage where they
reside in the digital sphere
– Interests
– Motivations

13. 3) Increase Understanding of Conversion Factors
to Drive Revenue
• Open & CTR don’t cut it
• What compels your audience to move
down the funnel?
• What programs / products are TOFU vs
BOFU?
• No longer about price discounts

14. 4) Address Changing Buyer—Especially Tastes &
Preferences of Members
• Social Media
• Mobile Technology
• Changing Demographics
• Changing Professional Needs
• Price Point Sensitivity
• Members are demanding more value
• Members are demanding that you understand
them

15. Trends in Association
Management
-- i.e. What Execs Are
Discussing

16. Digital Transformation
• Digital transformation refers to the changes
associated with the application of digital technology in
all aspects of human society.[1] Digital transformation
may be thought as the third stage of embracing digital
technologies: digital competence → digital usage →
digital transformation, with usage and transformative
ability informing digital literacy.
-Wikipedia

17. Our Digital Transformation
1. Adoption of the U Mindset:
a) User-experience
b) User-centricity
c) User-defined
2. Change of business models around the U:
a) Membership
b) Events
c) Professional Education
3. Change of business operations around the U:
a) Technology Stack
b) Communications Efforts
c) Reporting

18. Other Conversations
• Executive Director vs. CEO
• Do We Have the Right Staff with the Right Skill Sets?
• Do We Have the Right Jobs Anymore?
• Where’s Our Data & Why Can’t We Get to It?
• Why Are We Sending So Much Email?
• Why Are We Still Manually Creating & Sending Email and Still No
One Knows How to Troubleshoot It?
• Is This What We Should Really Be Doing?
• Do We Have Anyone That Has Experience in Lead Generation?
• Maybe We Need New People With For-Profit Experience?

19. Why Now:
Transforming Your
Marketing Technology
Stack from Email to MA

21. Typical Marketing Technology Stack
ACGI
Association
Anywhere
CMS ESP
(Email
Service
Provider)
EMS
(Event)
PR &
Advocacy
& Social
This is
what’s in
question

22. Why Not Just Email?
ACGI
Association
Anywhere
CMS
(Website)
ESP
(Email
Service
Provider)
EMS
(Event)
PR &
Advocacy
User Journey
People Data

23. Do You See that this is a Closed Ecosystem?
ACGI
Association
Anywhere
CMS
(Website)
ESP
(Email
Service
Provider)
EMS
(Event) PR &
Advocacy
User Journey
People
Data

24. How Do We Attract New People?
• Hashtags in Social
• Social Channels
• Advertising
Content Marketing as the Bait

25. Marketing Automation
• Based on Content as the Hook
• Based on User-Driven Buyer’s Journey
• Organization’s Goal is to Identify Where
to Allocate Costly Resources (e.g.
humans)
• Not the Shotgun Approach – Consider
the Sniper

26. Key Elements in Marketing Automation
• Email Marketing
– Blast Email
– Open & Click
Through Rate
– Distinct, Discrete
metrics
– Push Marketing
– Retention-Driven
• Marketing Automation
– Drip Marketing
– Conversion
– Cumulative look at an
individual’s
interaction (digital
footprint)
– Pull marketing
– Revenue-driven

27. Debunking Confusing Terms
Email
• Email Automation
• Cross-channel approach
– Have social icons in
email
– Have link to website in
email
Marketing Automation
• Workflow Automation
• Buyer’s Journey & Lead
Scoring
• Campaign-Driven cross-
channel approach
– Keywords/SEO
– Email
– Social media
– Blogs
– Landing pages

28. Refocus: Tackling Today’s Challenges
• Identify & convert new members
• Increase engagement within a member
company & within each individual’s
participation level
• Increase understanding of conversion factors
to drive revenue
• Address changing tastes & preferences of
members

29. Putting it in Action:
CFMA

30. About CFMA – Construction Financial
Management Association
• Founded in 1981
• Only organization dedicated to bringing
together construction financial
professionals and partners
• Serving more than 7,000 members via
chapters in USA and Canada

31. Marketing Technology Stack
• Before:
– Association Anywhere
• After:
– Association Anywhere
– +Plus Product
– HubSpot
• Keywords
• Blog
• Landing Pages
• Email
• Social media
• CTAs
• Reporting
• Page Performance
• Attribution Reporting
• Personas
• Predictive & Directed Lead Scoring
• Sales CRM (Opportunity Funnels)
• Comprehensive Individual & Company
Interaction Profiles

32. CFMA’s Challenges
Identify & convert new members
Increase engagement within a member
company & within each individual’s
participation level
Increase understanding of conversion factors
to drive revenue
Address changing tastes & preferences of
members

33. CFMA Takes the HighRoad
• Created a martech-driven roadmap for digital transformation
• Consolidate marketing data sources into HubSpot
– ACGI’s Association Anywhere (Event registration,
membership, demographics, certification & purchase data)
– Webinar data
– Social community data
• Expose the data model to Marketing
• Empower Marketing to create their own targeted queries based
on audience knowledge
• Empower Marketing to utilize responsive modern templates
• Empower Marketing to self-analyze

34. Consolidation & Data Model
Exposure

35. Not a Checkbox Integration
• Marketers need a lot of information in order to
correctly target
• Hyper-focused target markets generate better results
• Need to be able to undertake an integration that takes
into account:
– Opt-ins/outs (rookie level)
– Pre-segmentation (marketing ops efficiency)
– Segmentation (all the variables needed for hyper-
focused slicing & dicing)

36. What Data is Needed in Segmentation
• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Behavioral

37. Technologists Push Back
• Aren’t we replicating the AMS?
• Justify why you need this data
• Don’t pull data that you won’t need and have a plan to
use
• What about data integrity? What’s the db of record?
• Are they just crazy?
• Why do you need this right now? Why can’t you have
planned for this 6 months before and it stays the
same?

38. Fear the Marketer!
• Data is Power!
• Expose the Data Model, Ask the Questions &
Use Results to Make Decisions
• Ability to Make Solid Data-Driven Business
Cases
• “It’s Not My Opinion, It’s What the Data is
Telling Us”

39. End User Impact:
Life With Marketing
Automation

46. Remember: Changing Landscape in Associations
• Technology:
– Keeper of data integrity, security
& the digital ecosystem
– Role is to support the business
units through technology
enablement
– Focus is on exposing the data
model and reporting capabilities
to allow departments for self-
evaluation of programs
– Steward of data-driven decision
making
• Marketing:
– Software buyers with budget
– Responsible for all aspects of
program management,
including P&L
– Responsible for cross-channel
distribution of programs &
products
– Responsible for generating
market insights for further
program & product strategies
– Responsible for pricing &
products

47. Market Disruption –
Embrace It!

48. It Pays to Be a Disruptor
Marketing / Communications Role due to:
• Disruption in the cable industry
• Disruption in the college prep industry
• Disruption in the economy in late 2000’s
What triggered disruption in my marketing/comms role?
• Influence of Content Marketing
• Understanding what Marketing Automation really was
and what it could do

49. How to Make it a Reality
• Test the waters
• Find your allies
• Exploit your passion
• Interject and insert “how it could be”
examples
• Research and quote the experts

50. Build the Case
• Build the Case – Align with the budget
cycle
• Get IT on your side
• Find a great partner like HighRoad!
• Keep learning and exploiting your
passion

51. Contact Us
Suzanne Carawan
Chief Marketing Officer
HighRoad Solution
scarawan@highroadsolution.com
Maneesha Manges
Director of Consulting
HighRoad Solution
mmanges@highroadsolution.com
Fern Oram
Director, Content Marketing &
Communications
CFMA – Construction Financial
Management Association
foram@cfma.org