Creating meaningful connections and delivering relevant content is the essence of effective marketing. For associations and membership organisations, this means understanding the evolving needs of your potential and current members and creating personalised messaging that truly resonates with them.
The first step to creating a personalised member experience is segmentation. Segmentation can help marketers gain a better understanding of their audience’s motivations and needs, allowing them to customise their communication, services and products for their members.
What is the best way to segment your audience? What tools can you use to segment based on your audience’s behaviour and interests? What is the difference between member segments and member personas?
Let’s dive in and discover the power of segmentation for associations and other membership organisations.
How can associations segment their audience?
There are different types of segmentation to consider, below are some segmentation types relevant to membership organisations:
- Membership Type segmentation is the most popular segmentation when you group your members by their membership levels, for example, Student / Professional / Retired. This allows you to tailor your communications to their specific needs and deliver messages about relevant services.
- Membership Lifecycle segmentation involves grouping members based on where they are in their membership journey. This enables you to tailor your communication depending on the stage of their member journey, whether they are potential members, members in their first year of membership, or long-standing or lapsed members.
- Demographic segmentation is about grouping members based on demographic characteristics like age, gender, income, education, and occupation. This helps you to understand the needs and preferences of different groups of members, allowing you to personalise your messaging to each group. For example, members with a professional membership level may have different interests and needs if they’re employees, or work as consultants/business owners.
- Geographic Segmentation groups members based on their location. This type of segmentation is particularly useful for creating location-specific offers, events and communications.
- Behavioural Segmentation is based on members’ behaviour and actions, such as purchase history, event attendance, website activity, etc. This segmentation type helps you understand your members’ interests, preferences, and what motivates them.
- Segmentation based on member engagement is another powerful tool. By grouping members based on their level of involvement and interaction with your organisation, you can tailor your messaging and offerings to meet their unique needs and interests. For example, you might segment your members into highly engaged, moderately engaged, and low-engaged groups.
Tools for Behavioural Segmentation
To make segmentation work for you, you need the right tools in your MarTech (Marketing Technology) stack.
While associations are generally lucky with the amount of data they have on members’ demographics, current digital marketing tools can help you segment your audience based on their interests and behaviour.
Demographic segmentation works together with behavioural to create a complete member profile. While demographic segmentation helps you understand who makes up your member base, behavioural segmentation looks at what your members need, want and do.
You need the right tools in your MarTech stack to effectively implement behavioural segmentation. For example,
- Website Analytics: Tools like Google Analytics provide valuable insights into how members interact with your website. You can track page views, click-through rates, bounce rates, and other metrics to understand member behaviour patterns.
- Email Marketing Software: Email marketing platforms enable you to gather data on member engagement with your email campaigns. Apart from email opens and clicks, email software can provide you with an understanding of member interests and preferences.
- Association Management Software (AMS) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: store valuable member data, including demographics and past interactions. CRM data helps create demographic segmentation and gain insights into member characteristics.
- Online Community Platforms: If your organisation has an online community, these platforms provide tools to track member activities and discussions. This data can be used to understand member interests, engagement levels, and identify active community members.
- Marketing Automation Tools: Marketing automation not only triggers targeted messages based on specific actions but also provides valuable insights about member engagement and preferences.
- Social Media Listening Tools: These tools allow you to monitor social media conversations related to your organisation and analyse member interactions and sentiments.
By utilising these tools effectively, you can leverage member behaviour and interests to deliver highly personalised and targeted messaging, resulting in better engagement and satisfaction among your members.
Remember, the effectiveness of these tools relies on data collection and analysis. Therefore, regularly review and analyse the gathered data to refine your behavioural segmentation strategies and improve member targeting.
What is the difference between member segments and member personas?
Now that we’ve explored the different types of segmentation and tools for creating behavioural segmentation let’s take a closer look at the difference between member segments and member personas.
While they may seem similar at first glance, these two concepts have distinct differences that are important to understand when it comes to creating effective marketing campaigns.
Member segments are groups of members who share similar characteristics or behaviours, while member personas are fictional representations of members who embody a specific segment’s characteristics and behaviours.
Creating member personas based on research and data can help you develop a deep understanding of a particular segment of members, their needs and tailor your content to meet these demands.
In conclusion, segmentation is a game-changer for membership and association organisations. By using different types of segmentation and the right tools, you can better understand your audience and tailor your messaging and offerings accordingly.
Ready to take your member experience to the next level? Take the first step by booking a call with our experienced team. We’ll conduct a thorough review of your segmentation and personalisation approach, ensuring that your strategies align with your members’ evolving needs. Additionally, we can assist you in optimising your software usage to maximise your data’s potential, set up effective marketing automation, and develop a comprehensive content plan tailored to different segments.
