Some thoughts on improving member engagement in 2024
I’ve spent my career in software, but human connection and the power of conversation is fascinating to me. The two way exchange of questions leading to a relevant exchange is what makes every conversation unique and personal. It's this essence of conversation that inspired me to start PropFuel, following my 15 years of experience working with associations at my former company, Peach New Media.
As a seasoned association leader, you understand the critical importance of not just communicating with your association’s members, but truly engaging them. However, the challenge lies in effectively listening, understanding, and acting on each member's unique needs. I understand the roadblocks you face every day:
- Lack of Tools for Individual Engagement: Many associations struggle to connect with members at an individual level.
- Outdated and Dispersed Member Data: Often, member data is outdated, incomplete, and scattered across multiple systems.
- Overwhelming Email Communications: Members are inundated with emails, making it challenging for your messages to stand out.
Traditional tools - such as broadcast email platforms and marketing automation - often fall short in facilitating personalized engagement, leaving your team frustrated with disengaged members, slow growth, and low retention.
That’s why we built PropFuel. Our strategic, question-based listening platform revolutionizes member engagement by focusing on continuous, two-way conversations between an association and its members. Through email and SMS campaigns that work differently from any other platform in your tech stack, PropFuel cuts through the noise, ensuring your communication is both heard and valued. By asking targeted questions and capturing fresh data, PropFuel enables your organization to engage with members in a far more personalized and meaningful way.
PropFuel stands out by not just collecting data but acting on it immediately. By capturing fresh, personalized member data - whether it’s understanding their reason for joining in the new member onboarding process or capturing their intent when winning back lapsed members - you can trigger automated actions to engage with relevance right away while also alerting your team when a member needs real human attention. Over time, the idea is to know more about your members, to increase communications relevant to the member, and decrease the number of emails you send.
I’m passionate about software. I’m 30 years into a career in technology, but software is not a tool to replace human interaction. I see software as a tool that allows us to more efficiently do what it is humans do best. Software like PropFuel helps automate what can be automated and identifies which members need the human touch, what to talk to them about, and when to do it.
Does this resonate with you? Are you open to changing the way your team engages in 2024? If so, I'm always up for a chat about what we call “conversational engagement”, and how to transform the way your organization can deliver value to create lifelong members!
Dave Will
While working for SAP, a multi-billion dollar software company, nearly 20 years ago, Dave Will was advised to "Walk faster and smile less, because perception is reality." Dave took this feedback to heart and started a business based on the antithesis of this advice. Fourteen years later, Dave successfully sold Peach New Media, a Learning Management System for associations, which is now part of Community Brands.
Since then, Dave and his leadership team from Peach built an engagement platform called PropFuel, the first Conversational Engagement platform designed specifically for member based organizations to improve member engagement using the Ask, Capture, Act methodology.
Dave lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts with his 3 boys, 3 boy dogs and his formidable wife, Nicole. He's an endurance runner and pretends to work from his boat in Buzzards Bay, MA as much as possible all summer long.