Research: Associations Battling Info Overload and Clutter
By Hank Berkowitz
Information overload, combined with communication clutter, tops the list of association membership communication challenges by a wide margin. Our proprietary research and interviews with hundreds of association leaders throughout North America clearly support this hypothesis. But, there are plenty of other communication hurdles associations face (see chart below) and we’ve found that these challenges can vary greatly by industry.
This month, we looked at five major industries–health care, building & construction, education, government and food & beverage–that account for almost half of the 700 associations we surveyed, to see how they’re handling their member communication challenges and adjusting to the fast-changing media and information landscape.
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Communicating Member Benefits
The need to “communicate member benefits more effectively” was the second-most frequently cited communication challenge by associations in building & construction, government and health-care associations, but that challenge ranked only fifth among education associations (see table below).
“You have to keep spelling it out and hitting ’em over the head with your message,” one building & construction association exec said. Another association leader, Adrienne Dayton, vice president of marketing and communications for the 1,250-member National School Supply Equipment Association in Silver Spring, Md., said she’s learned to keep member communications brief and not to ask for more than one “call to action” at any given time. “They’re very very busy. Don’t make them have to think too much,” she said.
Maintaining Role as Industry Voice and Authority on Regulatory Issues
The need to “maintain our position as the No. 1 voice of our industry”was the second-most important challenge for education and food & beverage associations we surveyed, but only the fifth-most important challenge for government associations we talked to. Likewise, “providing timely legislative, regulatory or technical updates”was thethird-highest worry for government associations, but only sixth highest for health-care and building & construction associations and seventh highest for education and food & beverage associations.
Ranking of Association Communication Concerns by Industry
on a scale of 1 (highest) to 7 (lowest)
| Concern |
Bldg & Constr. |
Education |
Food & Beverage |
Govt. |
Healthcare |
ALL INDUSTRIES |
| Information overload/cutting through clutter |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
| Communicating member benefits more effectively |
2 |
5 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
| Maintaining position as No.1 voice of industry |
3 |
2 |
2 |
5 |
3 |
3 |
| Customizing communications for different sub-segments |
4 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
| Keeping members informed about events, webinars, continuing ed. |
5 |
4 |
6 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
| Providing timely legislative, technical, regulatory updates |
6 |
7 |
7 |
3 |
6 |
6 |
| Monitoring our online brand/reputation |
7 |
6 |
5 |
7 |
7 |
7 |
Source: Naylor, LLC and Association Advider eNews, 2011
(complete rankings and percentages available in full report)
Our survey sample of nearly 700 associations included 101 health-care associations, 67 in building & construction, 55 in education, 24 in government and 15 in food & beverage.
Not Over-communicating
Charles Sadler, executive director of the Society of Government Meeting Planners (SGMP), said his organization has a policy of not sending more than one email a day. “My deputy director keeps me in line about that,” he said. “Also, we don’t allow advertisements on our home page. We don’t want to interfere with the messaging and interfere with who we are.”
Likewise, Susan Neely, head of the American Beverage Association in Washington, D.C., said she tries to be very judicious about how often she sends her “From the Executive Director” members communiques. It’s very effective when used selectively, but loses its impact when overused. (See Corner Office Profile of Susan Neely in today’s issue)
Customization for Different Members
Stephen Dupuis, CEO of the 1,350-member Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) of Ontario, said you need to have customized communications for each of your member sub-segments and you need to be as succinct as possible in all your communications. Give members a very short synopsis plus a link to the full story if they want more. “It’s got to be timely and relevant and it’s got to be ‘stuff that they can’t read about in the newspaper,’” he said.
Illinois Health Care Association (IHCA) Executive Director David Voepel said, “Our biggest challenge is finding the perfect vehicle to meet our all members’ communication needs.” IHCA members include nearly 400 licensed and certified long-term care facilities and programs throughout the state, plus more than 275 associate and individual members.
Legislative and Regulatory Updates
Sadler said SGMP has a carefully sequenced program of alerts and awareness notices set up. It also has a set weekly schedule for member renewals and “what’s new in the magazine.” But a weekly ad-hoc schedule is reserved for unexepected rule and policy changes that affect members as well as information about the national conference. Some of the nicest messages received from members all the time are, “Thank you for not sending us too much crap,” he said.
IHCA’s Voepel said, “The long-term care profession is constantly evolving with new regulations, etc. and it’s a challenge for us to get our members all the information they need in as efficient a manner as possible.”
Impact of Social Media
According to our research, more than 71 percent of food & beverage associations are touching members via social media on a weekly or more frequent basis. Across all industries, that figure was only 49.4 percent and was just a few ticks higher for associations serving building & construction, education and health care. Case in point, The ABA just landed its 7,000th Twitter follower and has more than 700 Facebook fans. The organization’s Sip & Savor blog is updated and tweeted daily and consistently ranks among the five most-visited pages on the ABA website.
BILD has also been very proactive in the use of social media and social networking, Dupree said. “We have a Facebook fan page for the association,” he said. “We have a Twitter feed and just got our 10,000th page view to our new blog, Build Blogs Dossier. We also have Renomark, a microsite it developed to help individual homeowners find reliable renovators.”
Other industries are more tempered in their enthusiasm for social media, and government associations were the least likely of the five major industries studied to use it regularly to touch members. SGMP’s Sadler admits he’s an “old school guy” whose organization is still coming up with the right mix of social media policies and procedures.
“We need to make sure the social media we offer is integrated with our bigger integrated communication platform,” he said. “We want to set up each channel correctly and make sure it follows our brand messaging and consistency.”
NSSEA’s Dayton said “We continue to experiment in all the primary social networking spaces. We feel we have to be there, but so far, we’re not seeing much fruit from our labor.”
Changing Face of Communication Flagships
Thanks to a variety of economic, demographic and technological changes, our research shows two-thirds (66.5 percent) of the nearly 700 associations surveyed have changed their flagship member communication vehicle in the past three years. For instance, only 32 percent of health-care associations and only 38 percent of food & beverage associations now use their member magazine as the communication flagship. Case in point, ABA doesn’t even publish a member magazine.
Dayton said the weekly e-newsletter (Essentials Weekly) is now her organization’s communication flagship. It’s been much easier to get timely information out to members via the newsletter, especially since the member magazine has been cut back to quarterly, from bimonthly, due to declining advertising pages.
Likewise, BILD now considers its e-newsletters instead of its member magazine to be the organization’s communication flagship, according to Dupuis. Rather than a single weekly e-newsletter, BILD alternates two bi-weekly e-newsletters to keep members up to date. Liaison focuses on government lobbying and advocacy issues and Home Pages focuses on broader membership and association issues. In fact, electronic newsletters are the most-frequently cited communication flagship in the building & construction association sector overall.
IHCAs’ Voepel said it’s hard to nail down one flagship vehicle and he prefers to take a holistic approach. “We communicate with our members in so many ways,” he said. “Our communication efforts have been evolving over time and will continue to do so. We’re certainly very proud of our redesigned website and have received very positive feedback from our members. In addition, our magazine LTC Today stands right out as one of our premier communication pieces. We’ve also launched a Facebook page and are working on adding members to it.”
The Future
Naylor CEO Alex DeBarr said industry up-and-comers across all markets are “digital natives” who intuitively do everything online.
“Associations need to understand the age demographics of their membership,” he said. “They’ve got to ask: ‘What kind of information do you consume? Where else do you go to get your information?’ It’s not a matter of print versus online. It’s what kind of information do they seek?”
NSSEA’s Dayton agrees they prefer everything electronic, but worries that electronic communication is so much easier to delete.
“At IHCA, social media has certainly become a huge part of how younger generations communicate and was one of the reasons we launched our Facebook page,” Voepel said. “We’ve had good initial success and will continue to build on it.”
Dayton said associations will continue to grapple with how to get and keep members’ attention when they have so many other sources of instant, free information. BILD’s Dupree said it’s not just about keeping members informed about government regulations and the housing market, but handling the media’s portrayal of the “big bad developers,” or in ABA’s case, the “sugary soft-drink makers.”
“The toughest part is keeping focused on your organization’s core mission when you’ve made so many changes in the past 24 months,” said SGMP’s Sadler. “It a real challenge to make sure everyone, including the board, is up to speed.”
At the end of the day, BILD’s Dupuis said it’s all about “connecting the dots from initial input to final outcome–and how the association played a role.”
Keeping everyone up to speed when things are changing at the speed of light. More easily said than done. But our research and discussions with industry leaders show associations have demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt during the recession and their hard work will be rewarded as economic conditions continue to improve. Those kinds of dots are easy to connect.
Hank Berkowitz is the moderator-in-chief of Association Adviser enews.
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