We talk a lot about Conversational Engagement here at PropFuel, and I want to let you in on a secret—Conversational Engagement at its core isn’t necessarily a new concept. We understand the importance of conversation when cultivating relationships, because we do it every day with our friends, families and colleagues.
What is new, though, is the idea that marketers and membership executives can have these conversations at scale. The challenge in embracing Conversational Engagement is figuring out how to take a concept that works well when you have one person—or 10 people—to talk to, and make it work with 1,000 or 10,000 or 50,000 people. As is increasingly the case in today’s world, the solution can be found in technology.
By using automation and AI (artificial intelligence), you can lead people through a process that feels like a conversation (Ask-Capture-Ask), but does not require anyone on your team to actually carry out the interaction. You set up the automated experience, and your members can have that two-way interaction sitting on their couch with their smartphone.
I like to say that I immediately fell for PropFuel because it was the tool I’d been searching for in my eight years as an association executive. You can read more about that in my “love letter” to PropFuel here, where I talk about constantly frankensteining systems to get at what PropFuel does so easily. I wanted to give my members a way to tell me what they needed so I could point them to the exact benefits, services and events at that exact moment they needed them.
PropFuel, and Conversational Engagement on a larger scale, is about more than a new way to send emails to people; it’s about taking the traditional communication methods we’ve been using and perfecting in person since the origin of speech and applying them to email. It puts your members and their needs at the center of the interaction, lessening broadcast email overload, re-connecting to previously disengaged members and uncovering changing member expectations and needs.
You can read this excerpt as well as other Association Marketing practices that focus on two-way, individualized digital communications in the Conversational Engagement eBook. Download it here.
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.