There continues to be a lot of uncertainty about what business will look like short-term and long-term. An initial reaction by many marketers during this volatile and uncertain period has been to limit marketing efforts for channels such as email marketing.

But from our campaigns and testing, we’re seeing that email marketing campaigns, done correctly, are still proving highly effective. In fact, we’re seeing current email programs outperform those from several months ago when the economy was strong and life was operating business as usual.

So, what are some things that can be done right now to make your email marketing campaigns more effective? Here are five tips:

Test everything, especially deployment day and time. Because the lives of many email recipients have been completely turned upside down and the “new normal” may consist of working from home and during odd hours, the best send days and times may be completely different now from what was optimal in the past. It is best to test to ensure that audiences are reached when they will be most engaged.

Review content for all automated campaigns. It is always wise to periodically review and update content in automated campaigns. Due to the current global crisis, it is even more important to review and update all automated content, ensuring it is sensitive and relevant to what’s happening right now. This is vital to ensure that rapidly changing events are accurately being represented in all content, as well as to avoid being tone deaf to specific evolving circumstances.

Keep audiences engaged. For those audiences where transactional marketing still doesn’t feel right, instead offer highly relevant weekly content marketing emails. Provide them with valuable webinars, podcasts, whitepapers, industry/association specific breaking news, study guides, reemployment training and placement assistance, etc. The key is to keep the audience engaged with your organisation, while being as helpful as possible. When the appropriate time comes to convert these individuals and “sell” to them again, they will be ready to purchase from a trusted source.

Provide flexible terms. For anything that is transactional, consider testing more flexible payment terms. Allow for installment payments, extend your grace period, etc. for purchases with a financial commitment.

Be empathetic. Probably the most important adjustment to make to any email marketing campaign is to ensure that an empathetic tone is conveyed in all content. Your audience is going through an awful lot right now, both personally and professionally. It is important to ensure that your message conveys helpfulness, support, and emotional intelligence.

This article was written by Marketing General Incorporated here. 

Testing out new ideas can seem overwhelming right now. But there may be no better time to do it.

Association boards are slow. Association projects are slow. Associations are slow.

Plenty of myths are getting debunked in the COVID-19 era. There’s no reason we can’t add the myth of “slowness” to the pile.

Last week, I checked in on a video conference hosted by the New York Society of Association Executives titled “Navigating the New Normal,” and much of the conversation by the collected leaders centered on the ways things have sped up in the past two months. Lingering discussions about what projects to sunset have become firm decisions. Associations have ramped up their capacity for virtual events, and have begun planning future meetings anticipating that they’ll likely be at least partially virtual—with greater potential to connect with more attendees outside of North America. Leaders are getting creative about new membership tiers and nondues revenue, and boards are getting comfortable with setting strategy online and efficiently.

“This is the time to try it—if it doesn’t work, just blame COVID,” said the conference’s moderator, Gregory Offner. He was being tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely. “We’re seeing a lot of red tape in every industry just miraculously disappear. People that you could never get on the phone before are now willing to get on a phone call.”

Lest this all come off as pollyanna-ish, it’s clear this newfound urgency is happening due to real concerns among associations about their survival, now that their biggest revenue sources have quickly dried up. Asked to innovate, many might think that the goal in the current moment is to invent a single whiz-bang revenue driver. But experts advise being creative in small ways.

In a recent article for Stanford Social Innovation Review, three leaders from the nonprofit consultancy Community Wealth Partners write that this is the moment for organisations to develop their “adaptive capacity,” looking at the likely environment in the next year and making minor but meaningful adjustments. “Set short-term financial and impact goals, along with plans for what you’ll do if you don’t meet them,” they write. “As you consider creative new approaches or solutions, think about experimenting with rapid prototyping approaches, rather than launching major initiatives that require extensive analysis and proven track records.”

And sometimes innovations aren’t the result of particular projects or initiatives but changes in behaviors and expectations. In the Harvard Business Review, professor Gary P. Pisano points out that efforts to produce a big response to COVID-19, such as a vaccine, have to work in tandem with smaller but meaningful efforts to change social norms about hygiene and medical treatment.

“Many improvements in medical outcomes have nothing to do with technology or drugs; they come from better patient management practices,” he writes. “Figuring out when [is] the best time to intubate a patient or whether to put them on their stomach rather [than] on their back is unlikely to make headlines, but it can lead to better outcomes. You don’t necessarily need game-changing drugs or technology to change the game; you just need a lot [of] learning about what works and doesn’t in practice. Fast learning from experience will be critical.”

And the path to being creative may be smoother than you think. Last week, my colleague Ernie Smith noted that it may be easier to take on ambitious projects these days, with more remote-work tools coming available, many of them free.

It’s unlikely that any of us will look back at this time romantically. But your outlook needn’t be gloomy, either. We’ve been thrust into a moment where leaders can demonstrate their creativity, test new ideas, and (perhaps best of all) trust that the people around them are more flexible and capable than they’d previously imagined.

This article was written by Mark Athitakis, and was sourced here from Associations Now. 

COVID-19 might have derailed your project plans, but it’s worth considering what might still be possible remotely. There might be more to salvage than you think.

There might have been a time when you thought 2020 was going to be the year you’d take on that big project you’ve been planning. But if you’re looking a bit longingly at your resolutions and thinking that the opportunity has passed you by because of the strange times we’re in, I’d like to encourage you to take a deep breath and reconsider.

It might be possible to save those big projects. Here are a few remote project management considerations for associations looking to revive a project that’s been put on hold since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Assess what’s done and what needs to be done.  The software review firm Capterra offers (with the help of a few Dilbert comics) some advice on what to do to fix a project that’s not working. Start by taking a step back to analyze what’s gumming up the works. Check in with stakeholders to figure out what is and isn’t working. You might find you need to shake up the current team to get things moving again. “Even the best project managers—those with excellent project plans, appropriate budgets, and fantastic scope control—struggle, on occasion, with project failure,” Capterra’s Rachel Burger writes.

Find out how your vendor is faring in the crisis. Your vendors may be facing challenges similar to yours due to COVID-19. Those factors could cause delays and even work stoppages for some projects, which may trigger some contract-related questions. “As schedule slippages are not uncommon in technology implementations, most technology development contracts will anticipate them and include provisions that address them,” attorney Jeffrey D. Neuburger writes in a recent article for The National Law Review. “However, it is unlikely that these provisions consider slippage caused by the external factors like COVID-19 impacting both parties, and, therefore, the remedies and procedures that they provide may not be practical in this situation.” But if there’s a way to move forward after assessing potential risks and challenges, don’t be afraid to go full steam ahead. After all, you are likely communicating with a vendor remotely already.

Adjust your communications as needed. When you’re not in the same room as your team anymore, managing a project can get more complicated—video calls can be chaotic, and email threads can inadvertently introduce tension between colleagues. Over at CIO, writer Christina Wood interviewed a number of tech-industry figures on remote project management issues, and many cited the importance of clear communication. “There are all these lightweight, nuanced, subtle ways we talk with colleagues in an office,” Ethan Fast, CTO and cofounder of the cryptocurrency exchange firm Nash, told Wood. “When you work remotely, you can no longer rely on those. You have to be proactive and intentional about communication.”

Do a quick assessment of your software tools. You might find yourself questioning whether the tools that worked well when you were going into the office still make sense in a shifting work environment. Many software firms are offering free versions of their remote work tools to organizations as they try to figure out what works best for them. While it’s not necessarily easy to try something new, the remote environment may offer a little more flexibility than you had before.

If, after doing your homework and asking the right questions, you still believe a certain project just can’t proceed right now, don’t fret. There are always other places where you can divert your resources. After all, the shifting global climate isn’t doing anyone any favors right now.

But if you think these issues through, you’ll come away with a stronger understanding of the mountains your team can still move right now. You might be surprised.

ERNIE SMITH

Ernie Smith is the social media journalist for Associations Now, a former newspaper guy, and a man who is dangerous when armed with a good pun.

The Exhibition and Event Association of Australasia (EEAA) has made an urgent call to Federal and State Governments to distinguish exhibitions and business events from mass gatherings to expedite a restart date for domestic events in the Australian market.

Claudia Sagripanti, EEAA Chief Executive said that it was vitally important that Government, at both the Federal and State level understood that the business events industry can operate under a controlled set of ‘bio-safe’ principles and should not be subject to the ‘mass gathering’ restrictions that apply to other large scale public events such as sporting fixtures, festivals large-scale consumer events.

“The business events industry run highly organised events where we can trace every one of our visitors, delegates, speakers and exhibitors as well as monitor, track and put in place a range of measures that can ensure these events comply with Government measures on hygiene and physical distancing,” said Ms Sagripanti.

“The business events industry, which includes exhibitions, conferences and business meetings contributes $35 billion to the national economy, with another $17.2 billion in value add and employs over 229,000 people across a range of sectors and trades. The re-opening of this important sector will support the Government’s objective to implement work safe guidelines to get Australian’s back to work. It is of vital importance to ensure that Governments understand the role business events plays in restarting the economy,” said Ms Sagripanti.

The EEAA together with the Business Events Council of Australia (BECA) along with other major industry associations including the Venue Management Association (VMA) is developing Safety and hygiene principles for the Government and Health officials and the business events community. The principles will support stringent public health guidelines to manage exhibitions, conferences, meetings and events and ensure exhibitors, speakers, attendees, customers and venue/contractor employees are safe.

The EEAA is recommending that Governments provide a clear timetable on when the business events industry can restart. The planning cycle for exhibitions and events is of paramount importance require adequate lead-time for planning and implementation.

“The sector needs support now with a clear timetable on when we can run events – August/September and the last quarter of 2020 is vital to recovery, but the industry needs a confirmed date to commence planning,” said Ms Sagripanti.

“An August restart allows government and the health authorities further time to ensure the state’s COVID numbers continue to decrease and stabilise and to enable an agreed Bio-Safe environment for our controlled and organised events where the business community comes to do business,” said Ms Sagripanti.

The EEAA has been in talks with all State Governments and the Chief Medical Officers in each state this week to negotiate the restart terms for the exhibitions and business events industry.

The Business Events Council of Australia (BECA) has lobbied at the Federal level to ensure a consistent and clear message regarding the distinction between business events and mass gatherings is achieved nationally.

The business events sector contributes more than $35 billion in GDP, runs over 430,000 events annually and employs more than 229,000 people. The sector is a major contributor to Australia both financially and for its powerful enabling ability to deliver practical business outcomes,” said Ms Sagripanti.

This media release has been sourced directly from the EEAA website here. 

These are tough times for almost every organisation, but some for-profits are finding ways to make membership or subscription models continue to work for them. Here’s what they’re doing.

A lot of organisations are struggling right now as the coronavirus creates new challenges for their business models. But some are finding ways to thrive—or at least discover bright spots in an otherwise dreary time—by leaning into the membership model.

As a result, these for-profit organisations offer examples worth learning from in the association space. Among their strategies:

Don’t be shy, ask for support. Case in point: The Daily Beast, which has nearly doubled its membership growth rate since mid-March, according to Digiday. Site visitors are encouraged to financially support the media outlet, which currently is offering a one-month trial for $1 and says its coronavirus coverage earns only 77 cents on the dollar in ad revenue compared to other content. The Daily Beast also displays a “give more” option, which has raised the average order size by 35 percent, says Chief Revenue Officer Mia Libby.

Offer promotions that help others. With millions of commuters working at home instead of consuming audio content on the way to work, it’s not a great time to be a podcast or an audiobook company. But membership in one audiobook firm, Libro.fm, jumped by 300 percent in March. What’s its secret? A campaign that supported its brick-and-mortar counterparts. According to Forbes, Libro.fm’s #ShopBookstoresNow campaign offered two audiobooks for the price of one, along with the pledge that the customer’s full payment would go to a local bookstore of their choice. The campaign not only helped local shops but gave the audiobook service access to a new audience.

Lean on your content offerings. Did you get sucked into the latest season of Ozark or the wacky weirdness of the Tiger King documentary? If so, you represent evidence that Netflix has been doing its job. According to Adweek, the company added 15.7 million subscribers in the past quarter. And it’s being realistic: “We expect viewing to decline and membership growth to decelerate as home confinement ends, which we hope is soon,” the company wrote in a recent letter to shareholders. Netflix has worked through a significant production backlog—it has filmed most of its 2020 shows already—which is helping serve its audience during a difficult time. When content consumption is peaking, emphasise your content game.

Leverage your natural advantages. During normal times, a service like Blue Apron can offer a nice change of pace for a family whose idea of a home-cooked meal is takeout. But during a time of crisis, such a service can be critical. Blue Apron’s first-quarter sales were up 8 percent over the prior quarter, according to PYMNTS.com, and the company plans on leveraging trends that have driven up subscriptions. “As we move into the second quarter of 2020, we are focused on driving customer retention and establishing longer-term consumer habits out of the heightened demand we have been seeing as a result of the impact of COVID-19, including stay-at-home and restaurant restriction orders and other changes,” said CEO Linda Findley Kozlowski.

Many associations have advantages that can offer benefits during a pandemic, including online education and access to virtual networking and online member communities. As engagement in these offerings increases during the crisis, look for insights into how you can maintain that momentum long term.

This article was written by Ernie Smith, May 4 2020 and was sourced from Associations Now here. 

Find out how ASI transformed their in-person program to 100% virtual in less than 2 weeks while retaining the magic of their annual conference experience.

Starting with iMIS — the #1 rated association and membership software, coupled with the iMIS Mobile app and the right partners — ASI knew they had all the necessary technology to deliver the high-quality conference program that their community expected and deserved.

ASI's Virtual Event Playbook shares the lessons they learned along the way to achieving their most cost-effective and best-attended conference ever.

See how they:

• Determined costs and converted content
• Engaged attendees before, during & after via mobile
• Injected a human element into the program
• Increased attendance by 81% over in-person rates

To download your copy of ASI's Virtual Event Playbook,click here

Technology is our silent partner in the challenging job of keeping the economy moving during COVID-19. This health crisis has taught us that the more we make the digital world our world, the better equipped we will be to manage both business and life in the face of disruption.

Associations who were early adopters of digital strategies made the transition to a remote workplace with minimal distraction. For others, the abrupt technological, administrative and cultural shift has been destabilizing. I have heard about challenges ranging from lack of equipment to the complete inability to accommodate virtual business. 

If your organization was, or is, struggling now is the time to explore what must happen so that when you need to pivot (and that day will come again), you are prepared to manage the change. I learned a lot about resilience from the leaders we interviewed in our recent Association 4.0 Books: Positioning for Success in an Era of Disruption and An Entrepreneurial Approach to Risk, Courage and Transformation.

Something that struck a chord with me is that success in the digital marketplace, or any highly disruptive environment, depends more on attitude than expertise. My interest in technology didn’t spring from being a math or science geek, far from it. I was determined to learn everything I could about the digital experience because I saw it as a gateway to accomplishing things that I had never imagined before. Curiosity and eagerness to adopt, adapt and implement the tools science and technology give us characterized the leaders we interviewed. (To learn more about digital leadership watch my recent webinar.) 

Most CEOs want their organizations to be digitally literate. Yet, even when you can identify the issues that are holding you hostage to ingrained habits and inadequate tools, breaking those barriers can be difficult. I offer these recommendations from my own experience helping clients to build a culture that uses technology to position their organizations for success.

Eliminate Barriers to a Digital Culture

Empower Everyone

Let technology out of IT’s ivory tower. The CEO leads the charge to ensure that every employee understands their role in creating a digital impact by tasking:

Human resources to explore how to create a successful virtual workforce

Education to develop an outstanding online learning platform

Marketing to create the optimal digital experience and harness data as a competitive advantage

Finance to provide analysis to manage and forecast budgets efficiently

Start Today

Don’t wait for the ideal conditions. If you shoot for the perfect timing or experience, you may never launch. The price of inaction is inability. Adopt the concept of the minimum viable product. Run with the best version you can produce given current resources and be willing to adjust and improve along the way. 

Promote Innovation

Yes, digital tools allow you to be efficient.  But if you only see technology as a workhorse you may miss the opportunity to use it as a unicorn, or the catalyst for creating a culture that values innovation. Give your employees room to experiment. Reward effort, anticipate failure and encourage iteration.

Associations throughout our community are using technology to develop creative opportunities for member engagement and to advance their missions. These are some recent examples:

The Emergency Nurses Association is inviting members to participate in a virtual Kudo Board to show their appreciation for frontline healthcare professionals.   

The National Restaurant Association Education Foundation created an employee relief fund to support workers by partnering with Guy Fieri, the Food Network and other prominent food purveyors. Online donations make this possible.

At .orgCommunity, we’ve launched In Lieu of Lunch using Zoom to create an opportunity for members to share stories and exchange information.

Build the Right Team

Smart leaders are savvy recruiters. To create a thriving digital culture, you’ll need champions to fill these three critical roles. 

The strategist/s keep you ahead of the game. Strategists are curious people who want to see around the corner. They explore emerging technologies and imagine how you might incorporate what is cutting-edge into your operations.

The innovator/s say no to tradition for its own sake and yes to invention for continual quality improvement. They seek to maximize your current digital capabilities by looking for opportunities to work better, faster and cheaper and to find new needs to fill.                                 

The driver/s bring others along on the journey. Drivers are the trusted collaborators who can stoke enthusiasm and inspire commitment.

Aim for a Digitized Future

Coronavirus is a hard lesson in the value of a digitized, as opposed to digital, approach to business (see below if you are uncertain about the difference between these terms.)

Digital is the process of converting an analog procedure to a digital form without any different-in-kind changes to the activity itself.

Digitized uses digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities.

These are strategies that can help move you toward a digitized future:

Scenario planning is a methodology that allows you to develop short, mid, and long-range strategies with flexibility baked into the design. It can also help gain traction in a crisis. Sharon Rice, .orgSource’s Managing Director, Business Strategy, explains it like this: “Scenario planning fills you with information and an understanding of the possibilities. It gives you some control when the external environment is rapidly changing and people are looking to you for leadership.” (Watch Sharon’s webinar on scenario planning. Read my blog post on the same  topic.)

 Leveraging data to monitor early signs of change. Now more than ever, it’s important to understand how your customers want to communicate. A colleague of mine who was tracking member engagement saw low open rates on important crisis-related information. Realizing members were being bombarded with content, the association quickly switched to a new strategy. They began sending an email every day at 3:00 p.m. with three important messages and saw both open rates and engagement increase. Simple pivots make a difference, but they can’t happen unless you’re watching the data.

 Experiment and explore the creativity that surrounds you. Let big and small ideas take you outside your comfort zone. Investigate putting a chatbot on your website or expanding your video capabilities. Empower your employees to innovate and co-create. My daughter’s soccer team has developed a whole roster of online activities to stay engaged until they can be back in the game together.  

There is one good thing I can say about COVID-19. It has obliterated the status quo. We are on notice that complacency is a recipe for failure. The digital marketplace demands that you let go of the past, challenge current assumptions and lead with what’s next. It’s not an easy proposition. But when you integrate technology into your leadership style and your culture, you have a powerful silent partner to keep you flying ahead of disruption.    

As a leader in digital transformation, .orgSource can put you on the path to a digitized association. Get started today. 

 By Sherry Budziak

Zoom recently implemented an important update to help make your meetings more private and secure. The most visible change that meeting hosts will see is an option in the Zoom meeting controls called Security. This new icon simplifies how hosts can quickly find and enable many of Zoom’s in-meeting security features.

Visible only to hosts and co-hosts of Zoom Meetings, the Security icon provides easy access to several existing Zoom security features so you can more easily protect your meetings.

By clicking the Security icon, hosts and co-hosts have an all-in-one place to quickly:

• Lock the meeting
• Enable the Waiting Room (even if it’s not already enabled)
• Remove participants
• Restrict participants’ ability to:
  • Share their screens
  • Chat in a meeting
  • Rename themselves
  • Annotate on the host’s shared content

To read more from this article by Zoom please click here. 

Every Friday, AuSAE hosts a weekly catch up with our members to touch base “in person” with their association peers. 

During last Friday’s Member Meeting we discussed membership renewals and what strategies associations are implementing as they approach their renewal process. 

The below is a quick summary of the discussions that we had online: 

• The importance of having individual discussions where possible with members. A few attendees in Friday’s meeting shared their surprise that although their members are in incredibly tough positions at the moment, they see the value in their association membership now more than ever so still happy to renew.
• An echoed voice in the chat room that Associations have never been needed more. And the importance of communicating that value with members and updating them on new initiatives and your advocacy efforts during this period.
• We heard from a few members on the changes/modelling they have looked at in regards to membership renewals and what they are looking to implement:

1. Extending membership period – 3 months, 6 months
2. Membership discount
3. Deferring 100% of membership fees by a quarter period, invoice will still go out at the scheduled time in May however members can choose to pay the invoice in September
4. Offering 3-month membership packages attached with a strong value proposition as we move through this period
5. Shift to subscription membership, paying per month
6. For associations that offer insurance, a member shared that they are deferring payment of insurance until 1 October.
7. Offering Financial Hardship Packages to members on a case by case analysis

• We also briefly discussed non-member acquisition campaigns during this period – a few associations are offering their COVID-19 resources and information to members and non-members. There is also an option to create a digital membership/subscription for access to online learning during this time. We also discussed the option to open up your base level of membership complimentary for a period of time to give the sector a look into your membership offering.