Using Member Research to Effectively Direct Future Efforts: Molly Ferns, Director of Marketing, American Association of Immunologists
The American Association of Immunologists had anecdotal evidence about what members wanted but didn’t have integrated data that could be used for future planning. Member information sat in a siloed, outdated AMS, and while the organization had surveyed members ahead of its first strategic framework in 2023, there was no clarity on whether member needs were being met, or whether AAI’s new value proposition, introduced that same year, was landing the way leadership hoped.
To close that gap, AAI adpted an importance-versus-satisfaction framework, a model borrowed from product marketing that measures how essential members consider a given benefit against how satisfied they are with it. The results surfaced two clear underperformers: networking, which ranked fourth in importance but only eighth in satisfaction, and career advancement, which ranked seventh in importance but 11th in satisfaction. A bigger surprise: advocacy ranked second in importance and third in satisfaction, well ahead of where AAI assumed it stood. Those findings gave AAI a clearer picture of where to focus next.
Molly Ferns, Director of Marketing at AAI, participated in these research efforts and implemented strategies from AAI’s findings. She also led a recent session on the subject, “From Insights to Impact: Member Offerings and Messaging,” at MMC+Tech, along with Jessica Richardson, Membership Manager, and Katie Palmer, Communications Manager.
In this conversation with Association Adviser, Ferns walks through how AAI gathered the data and put it into practice.
Association Adviser: Many associations conduct research with an implicit hypothesis in mind. How did the American Association of Immunologists structure your member research to enable it to uncover unexpected insights rather than simply validating existing assumptions?
Molly Ferns: AAI was in a unique position when we approached this member research. Previously, the organization had only conducted some post-event evaluations, and in 2023, AAI surveyed its membership about developing the first-ever strategic framework. Beyond those bespoke market research efforts, it became clear that the organization did not have a data-first mindset. Member data sat in a siloed, archaic AMS, which we have since migrated from, and although we had data on where members wanted to see AAI move in the future, we did not know whether we were truly meeting their needs as immunologists.
We also did not know if members resonated with AAI’s new value proposition, which was introduced in 2023. This made it clear that any member hypotheses were drawn from anecdotal assumptions, based on discussions with highly engaged volunteer members and conversations with members at our annual meeting, courses, or other conferences. So cross-organizationally, departments from membership, marketing, communications, meetings, education, and many others came together to present to AAI’s Council (the equivalent of a board) on the need to quantitively and qualitatively assess what members valued, and our benefits, programs, and services.
With the support of our Council, this effort aimed to instill a data-first mindset and helped AAI structure its research to uncover unexpected insights rather than validate assumptions based on anecdotal conversations.
AA: You used an importance versus satisfaction framework to evaluate member needs. Can you walk us through how that works and what it showed you?
MF: The importance versus satisfaction framework was something I became intimately familiar with when working in product marketing. It’s a compass for product managers who are constantly assessing whether their product or service delivers on customer needs and building new features onto a product. I believe it was introduced by Dan Olsen, and is something frequently utilized in the software as a service (SaaS) industries. I’d highly recommend that fellow association professionals check him out, as I believe in our roles, we can think of our benefits stack as akin to a product stack.
In a survey, importance and satisfaction questions are aligned side-by-side. The importance question asks how essential a particular feature is to users, while satisfaction asks how satisfied they are with those same features. We took this model and applied it to assess the “products” or services AAI offered its members. When we layered importance on satisfaction, it became clear to us that AAI was not delivering on networking opportunities (ranked fourth on importance, but eighth on satisfaction) and career advancement services (ranked seventh on importance, but eleventh on satisfaction). From these insights, we as an organization endeavored to test and pilot initiatives that focused on networking opportunities and career development. AAI’s meetings team introduced “Connect With Me”—a speed networking event at our annual meeting—and our education team launched a new and more robust LMS focused on delivering better career advancement services.
AA: What approaches or methodologies have you found most effective in generating actionable member insights—not just interesting data?
MF: First, I would suggest that association professionals tap into their membership, marketing, and communications teams! These teams have an abundance of insight into member behavior.
During our MMC+ presentation, we talked through a key example of this. Across marketing and communications, we became aware from a social media perspective that members who had published in AAI’s top journal, The Journal of Immunology, eagerly wanted to see themselves acknowledged and represented. It makes sense when you consider the time and energy that goes into publishing your work. So, with that in mind, we brought this insight to our publications colleagues and developed a new social media strategy and workflow specifically for our journals. We now solicit a lab photograph during the acceptance flow, ask for social media handles, and invite authors to complete a video abstract. From there, we post from our journal accounts and AAI’s organization account, which has considerably driven up engagement, follows, and pageviews of the published article.
My AAI colleagues also do an excellent job maintaining strong relationships with our volunteer members, particularly those who serve on committees. This serves as an easy approach for our teams to tap into. For example, when AAI saw a decrease in our annual meeting abstract submissions during the 2025 43-day government shutdown, we tapped into this network of volunteer members. In collaboration with our meetings and scientific affairs colleagues, we surveyed this group on what the primary contributing factors were, what they were hearing from early career researchers in their labs, and how AAI could help. From these insights, we extended our abstract submission period and more than made up for this initial decrease in submissions. I would encourage association professionals to maintain these strong relationships with volunteer members, as they can be your primary source for member insights.
AA: Advocacy wasn’t necessarily on your radar as a priority—but the data said otherwise. What did it feel like to have research point you somewhere you hadn’t planned to go?
MF: Advocacy was certainly on AAI’s radar as a priority before these research efforts. However, because of the increasingly fraught era in which science continues to be politicized, the data revealed how much our members valued AAI’s advocacy efforts. Essentially, our radar became clearer. Advocacy ranked second in our members’ importance ranking and third in their satisfaction ranking. This data point really reiterated that AAI’s marketing, communications, and membership teams needed to do more to elevate the reputation and visibility of AAI’s advocacy work.
From this, we have partnered with our advocacy teams to further highlight our Congressional Briefings (of which AAI has now hosted three), through recap articles published on our AAI News & Views platform, with social media and email campaigns to complement these efforts. Our advocacy team has also introduced a new member feedback process for AAI’s Position Statement program. This is designed to engage members in shaping our policy and advocacy priorities. Again, communications and marketing worked diligently with advocacy to educate members on this new process, and to engage them in providing feedback ahead of publication of each new Position Statement. The hope is that this new process will give our members a larger voice in advocating for or against federal policies that impact the immunology community. It also, of course, provides AAI colleagues with plenty of insight opportunities.
AA: How did you use the research data to change course for AAI and shift your focus to the areas of top interest?
MF: Speaking from a marketing perspective, once we had the data to rethink our products or services, I knew my team’s next step was aligning the messaging across our campaigns. This is frequently the step that organizations want to jump to first—i.e., “oh our abstract submissions are down, well it must be a marketing issue.” But I was glad that cross-organizationally, AAI, with buy-in from leadership, encouraged product or service owners to first sit with the research and then to rethink how offerings could be enhanced.
Then, it was my turn, and I recognized that to align messaging (especially to better engage early-to-mid career members who had a lower net promoter score), we’d need to execute a full shift across tone, timing, and segmentation of our campaigns.
A big example of this shift was in our annual meeting campaign. Before this change, AAI’s annual meeting campaign tone was very deadline-driven (“30 days left to submit your abstract!” or “2 months left to register!”). It lacked that human feeling and did not speak to the why behind abstract submission or registration. So, we adjusted the tone to focus on the connection and education opportunities they would gain by presenting at and attending our annual meeting. We deliberately highlighted the leading speakers that made up the program. We produced more content with these speakers by posting Q&A interviews to News & Views. Additionally, we adjusted the timing of our annual meeting campaign. Instead of weekly emails with deadlines, we reminded them of abstract and registration opportunities during high engagement moments (when they renewed or joined) or with retargeted ads as they continued their browsing journey after they landed on an AAI page.
We also reduced the “noise” by adjusting the timing of other email campaigns, to increase the relevance of and attention to our annual meeting email reminders. Finally, we are currently undergoing a project to enhance our segmentation capabilities so that we can serve dynamic content about the annual meeting to members based on scientific interest areas and career stages.
AA: Beyond a single research initiative, how do you create a culture where data consistently informs strategic choices across your organization?
MF: It’s an ongoing effort at AAI! One way I’ve been able to help move this needle has been through the introduction and management of a single survey tool. Previously, colleagues developed their own surveys and deployed them through Microsoft Forms, so data and insights sat in siloed excel spreadsheets. In 2025, I introduced SurveyMonkey cross-organizationally. This has empowered all teams to deliver forms and surveys in a more effective and timely manner, and acts as a single dashboard for all of AAI’s market research efforts.
It is also important to continuously present your data insights. For instance, although our annual meeting survey results have the highest impact on our meetings team for logistics and our scientific affairs/education teams for the program, I am well aware that the insights from our annual meeting survey impact programs and services across the entire organization, including how we engage with and interact with members at our annual meeting. So, I am conscientious to always share this data with all teams across AAI!
AA: For an association that’s never done this kind of structured member research before, where would you tell them to begin?
MF: My number one tip would be for association professionals to meet with their membership, marketing, and communications teams to analyze your engagement data. Assess email open rates, click rates, pageviews, cart abandonments, application dropoffs, time spent on a page, social media analytics, ad campaigns, and so much more. From this, you might be able to identify and close the gaps between organizational priorities and member needs. If all that data isn’t telling you a clear story, and you’re still struggling to understand the what and why of membership, then develop a member needs survey. AAI was lucky in that we were able to partner with a valued and reputable consulting partner. We then extended our market research efforts to develop more insights around our annual meeting and around education.
Photo courtesy of Mr Soccer/Shutterstock.com.