Member-based organizations face a common challenge: keeping their members engaged and retaining them year after year. A significant part of addressing this challenge involves winning back those who have lapsed. The reasons behind a member's decision not to renew can vary widely, from a perceived lack of value to simply forgetting to renew. PropFuel, a conversational engagement platform for email and SMS engagement, offers a unique approach to not only understand why members lapse but also how to win them back effectively.

Ryan Graham

The key to better engagement is unveiled: treating association members as individuals with unique needs and emotions, just as you would in a face-to-face interaction. If you'd engage with a new member in person, why not carry that approach into your digital interactions? Explore how this "human" approach can work wonders across various engagement scenarios.

Dave Will

We all get dozens of emails daily, so how can you stand apart from them and send what truly draws members in? The 4 reasons members pay attention; wants, easy, fear, and trust. It's important to understand the people you're trying to engage and give them something they want, make it easy, give them a fearless choice, and be a reliable source. By asking questions at the individual level about these 4 things, you can treat exchanges to maximize engagement.

Dave Will

The next time you go to build a communication for members, whether it’s general engagement, for an event or some other purpose, try this approach and see what happens. Ask yourself, “What would be nice to know from members that they care about, and will help us understand them better?”

Have you heard of the Sunday Scaries? I’ve suffered from this phenomenon myself. If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to the anxiety - perhaps, dread - that many people feel on Sunday, in anticipation of the work week ahead. Ironically, in the process of anticipating Monday, having the Sunday Scaries actually robs one of the enjoyment of half of their weekend.

Recently, an association leader who was on a call with our team re-stated the challenge of association member communications with a baseball analogy. His take: the majority of communications sent to members are “Home Run Emails,” or emails with calls to action that ask a lot of a member. when this communication style is the majority of how your members are interacting with the organization, they begin to tune out, no matter how great your copy is written and call to action is worded. It all looks and feels the same after a while, literally.

With the release of several industry reports, including MCI’s Association Engagement Index 2022, Higher Logic’s 2022 Association Member Experience Report and Amanda Kaiser’s New Member Engagement Study (NMES), there is a heightened buzz in the association community around how well members are being served, heard and valued. Across these reports, the consensus is that most associations are providing a C level experience. Associations are making some efforts, and members are recognizing them. For example, the Higher Logic report indicates that “64% of members said a personalized member experience is important to them, but only 46% said their association provides a personalized member experience.” There is hope, and still a lot of work to be done when it comes to fully serving members.

What's the difference between PropFuel and marketing automation? There are some very distinct differences between the two; and, you can use the platforms together to create a powerful, ongoing process of understanding member needs and delivering on them.

In our first “Fireside Fuel” – a video conversation to highlight PropFuel client successes – Lili Arguello from PIHRA joins PropFuel team members, Ashley Wucher, Client Success Manager and Brianne Wheeler, Director of Marketing, for a conversation around two campaigns that solved data challenges, helped PIHRA gain new member insights and enabled the association to take immediate action.

Engaging your members and prospects in conversations isn’t just about touchy-feely vibes. It’s about communicating 1-on-1 in a way that mimics human interaction and drives action. That action could be collecting member dues or event registrations, getting member profiles updated, or identifying unique talents or interests among your community members.

Melissa Bittner

Conversation is what brings people together. It’s what brought me closer to my fellow Brazilians, it’s what made the residents in my hall get engaged, and it’s what got me this internship at PropFuel. Communicating without engaging is just broadcasting, and is less impactful in bringing disconnected people together. PropFuel has given me a chance like no other and I can’t wait to engage with them.

Robson Rodrigues

Have you ever purchased a system or product with every intention of using it, but then it just sits on the shelf? I believe this comes down to the learning curve and time balance. Typically after you buy, there will be a short window where a company will download tons of information to you, just to cut you loose to figure it out. In the wings if you have questions, but for the most part they disappear.

Lisa McNeil

PropFuel takes pride in connecting associations with their members. I wanted to work somewhere I was proud to call home, and customer service is extremely important to me - as a consumer and as an employee. PropFuel understands customer service is crucial, and that everyone benefits from quality interactions.

I’m always excited when a new client goes “live”— what we at PropFuel call sending your first campaign out — and this past week was no exception! One of our clients, Oklahoma Society of Certified Public Accountants (OSCPA), went live with an event registration campaign last week and saw big success. Here are some things that worked and what we'll do differently in the future. I hope this jogs your creativity and encourages you to build a similar campaign.

Ashley Wucher

What drew me to PropFuel is the true sense of family that I felt with this team. I am not just talking about the internal team, but also seeing how each PropFuel team member truly takes in our clients as part of the family, too. This product allows you to step inside the brain of your members and deliver on their needs. It takes the guess work away and allows you to focus on providing true value at the individual level. After all, who really enjoys the old, “throw some spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” mentality of engagement?

Lisa McNeil

Member engagement is just like dating. Members are evaluating your association all the time, with every touchpoint, as though you are dating. And at any point, the association can be ghosted when the member decides the value isn’t there. So, what is the only reasonable, proactive action we can take to learn more about individuals, find out what they need, get a pulse on how they’re feeling or find out if something has gone wrong?

Talking to individual members of your association is really time consuming. It's exhausting, too, and I know you have limited resources. We all do.I feel like we should talk to our members as often as we can. I ask this question because it's a conversation I've been having with people more and more, as we're trying to help make it easier for you to talk to your members.

Dave Will

The Conversational Inbox is here! The PropFuel development team has been hard at work to bring you this brand-new concept, built to allow you to continue the conversation with your members after their initial response to a campaign.

It’s been a few weeks since the release of iOS15, and we’ve been able to learn a bit more about what these changes mean beyond skewed open rates. Hint: if you’re still relying on tracking your members’ online activity to draw conclusions about what they need instead of just asking them, then MPP has real consequences that go beyond your open rates.

Ashley Wucher

Effective messaging isn’t all about what you say; it’s also about how you say it. Your tone can completely change your copy, so it’s important to strike the right balance in your member communications to convey the right tone, especially in our increasingly virtual world.

Ashley Wucher

It's no secret that OTF knows how to create a strong culture that translates to membership growth, but what is the secret sauce? I've learned a few things about member engagement over my four years as an "OTF-er", and I wanted to share why I think the OTF way works.

Ashley Wucher

It can be hard to take the conversational approach that you’ve worked your whole life to perfect in face-to-face conversation and translate it to PropFuel to create a more meaningful member experience, especially since conversational engagement is such a new approach to email. We've created the PropFuel Question Guide to make it easy.

Ashley Wucher

In our newest case study featuring Infusion Nurses Society, we highlight fresh use cases of the platform that I think you’ll want to consider. One is an open text campaign asking for member stories on DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion). The second is a profile building campaign, where INS helped members update thousands of member data fields with just a click or two.

Apple's anticipated iOS15 is expected to be released next week. Among its new features will be Mail Privacy Protection, which will stop senders from using invisible tracking pixels to collect information about the recipient, including when someone opens an email. This change will have a profound impact on your analytics if you're looking only at open rate and other tracking instead of having conversations with your members.

Ashley Wucher

You’ve probably heard something recently about “zero party data” (ZPD). The term is everywhere in the marketing and tech world, and it’s showing no sign of going away anytime soon thanks to increased consumer awareness of online privacy and some big tech privacy changes in recent years, like the anticipated release of Apple iOS 15 later this month.

Ashley Wucher

Chances are, if you’re only sending broadcast emails then your members are less engaged than you think, even if your open rates tell a different story. That’s because open rates and engagement aren’t the same thing. Open rates simply tell us that someone opened our email. We can’t tell whether they found it helpful or whether they need something more that wasn’t included in our email.

Ashley Wucher

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.

Ashley Wucher

Every engaging conversation starts with a prompt and a question, leads to capturing an answer for context and then drives a relevant response.That's what this thing called "Conversational Engagement" is all about. It's mimicking the structure of real human interaction and creating an automated way of doing it with thousands of people, all at once.

Dave Will

Conversational Engagement flips the personalization aspect on its head. Instead of deciding what your member is most likely to be interested in, you simply ask them! The goal here is to be personal, not just personalized. Ask questions, be curious, turn some of your one-way broadcasts into two-way conversations.

Ashley Wucher

If you have a choice between sending personalized and non-personalized broadcasts, personalization is always better. But, there is still something missing: at the end of the day, you are still sending mass communication.

Ashley Wucher

Your members are not all perfectly representative pieces of your whole membership. They are individual people with individual needs. Knowing that 35 percent of your members are interested in online earning does not tell you what Britney is looking for right now. Statistics are useful for looking at the big group, but they do not apply to individuals.

Ashley Wucher

Conversational Engagement is based on the premise that what your members have to tell you is just as important as what you have to tell your members. There are many ways to get your members to talk to you; we call them conversation starters.

Ashley Wucher

As association professionals with heaps of valuable information to share digitally with our members, we’ve all found ourselves asking “what’s missing?” That is, “why am I sending emails and not getting the response I need.” Whether event or education registration, membership renewals and everything in between, we all wish engagement was higher.

Ashley Wucher

Conversational engagement is a concept of two-way, personal communications that enables people to communicate more humanly. Thanks to technology, we can engage members both at scale and on a one-to-one level. The conversational engagement ebook details the concept and ideas to implement it in your organization.

When I interviewed for a position with PropFuel a few weeks ago, I told Dave that I wanted to be part of the team because PropFuel is the tool I needed but didn’t have for the past eight years as an association marketer. I’ve always known how important it was to communicate with members, but for so long I relied on products that only communicated to my members.

Ashley Wucher

One of the things I take great pride in as an entrepreneur is finding the right team to create value, and I nailed it again! I’m so excited to introduce our newest team member who will be focused on your success using PropFuel. Meet Melissa.

Melissa Bittner

In association communications, generally we know how best to administer digital communications. We try to avoid bombarding members with too many messages. We know that we need to respond to direct messages that come in through our social channels, and promptly. We know that video and photo engage better than copy alone. We know which days of the week to send email for the highest open rate. It’s clinical, isn’t it? Do this, not that. Personas, behaviors, clicks and broadcasts. Our members still are cogs in a wheel, receiving what we spit out and being asked to consume it. In associations or in healthcare, can we afford to treat our members and patients this way? Is it true engagement?

The people in your organization are not units, or attendees, or registrants, or even members. They’re people. They’re not clicks or opens. We have loads of lists and buckets and bubbles and segments that we put people into to try to understand them better. We send out surveys to dissect them as if they’re deceased frogs in formaldehyde. It’s time to stop thinking about what we want and how to get it and start thinking about building stronger connections with people. With stronger connections, with true one-to-one interaction, we really start to understand each other. There’s a bond.

Dave Will

With this new Rhythm - PropFuel integration, you have the ability to create queries in Rhythm that feed contacts directly into PropFuel conversational engagement campaigns. These campaigns allow you to ask questions of your members, capture the Voice of the Member through structured and unstructured responses, and take immediate action with automated workflows.

Cameron Aubuchon

Discovering potential members, getting them to join and keeping them: it's what member-based associations do! PropFuel client, Missouri State Teachers Association, is rocking it. They're using PropFuel as a central piece of their technology stack, from generating potential member leads to winning back lapsed members.

At PropFuel, we're all about helping associations connect more personally with members and future members. Here are a few quick tips on how to do it!

Thinking back on my decade plus of association marketing experience, it's clear to me the instances when I felt most impactful as a marketer. I was most connected when I communicated directly with members, whether it was at an in-person conference, on a webinar or on the phone. But our team wasn't always doing a good job of listening.

Today, my partner, Cameron and I are building another software company called PropFuel, and not only do I love the product, but I also love our clients, and I really love working with our team. There are 4 of us here. Bri runs marketing. Ryan sells. Cam makes the software work. And I get to play with our clients. But, Ryan is selling a lot and we're growing quite fast now. I need some help.

Dave Will

One PropFuel client conducted a 3-month experiment to determine which method of post-trial communications would result in more new member conversions: their existing email technology or PropFuel. Which campaign resulted in higher membership conversions?

Satisfaction data can be gathered not only for the association to get big picture views and make decisions from them. Using PropFuel, satisfaction can be captured by associations to hear the Voice of the Member – unique feedback from each individual – and then act on it. A survey is limited in these individual listening and action-based steps.

I've been seeing a ton of questions online recently about how to improve the effectiveness and response rate of an exit survey after a member lapses.When I see these, it makes me scratch my head. Why wouldn't we focus on winning them back while also finding out more from the member? Otherwise, we're just presuming their status as a lapsed member is the end of the road and only sending them a survey asking them questions.

Dave Will

While associations often know the basics about their members - profile data, for example - they know less about what interests their members. Why does it matter what interests individuals, outside of association-related benefits and offerings?

Conversational engagement is about finding and acting on opportunities for 2-way interaction with members. With traditional marketing and engagement tactics, the one-to-one connection is sporadic and by happenstance. With conversational engagement, you’re purposely harvesting connections with individuals.

Dave Will

For associations, one of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of member data is its static nature. Who moved last month and needs to update his address? Who gained a new credential? Why did these members decide to wait until after the early bird deadline to register for the conference? While the association might have some general idea of the answers to these questions, it doesn't really know what’s current and what’s not. And beyond basic information, the organization also doesn't know what each member intends to do.

As associations, you're aligned with your members on your unique mission to impact the world. You're not selling shoes. So please, look for opportunities for your members to talk to you.

Dave Will

Of the various types of data gathered by organizations today, profile data is the most essential information gathered on members and prospective members. It seems straightforward, but what happens to this data year after year?

The year 2020 brought its share of challenges; still, associations were able to connect with their members through two-way, individualized engagement. They Asked compelling questions, Captured insights directly from the voices of their members and Acted on their needs in real time.

Why do your members join? I'm surprised at how often I hear "discounts." It's pretty much tied with "content and resources." Instead, let's help them get connected with other members, with the staff, with mentors and mentees. Let's get them volunteering and interacting with their peers.

Dave Will

Now instead of trying to connect with millions of children, one at a time, asking questions (which only Santa could do, by the way), he's opted to check-in with kids by asking questions year round and marrying the feedback with "behavioral" data to act accordingly - pun intended.

Dave Will

You might be thinking, “My marketing automation system already does that.” While there are common threads in functionality between PropFuel and marketing automation systems - such as outbound email, “if this/ then that” workflows and behavioral data measurement, including opens, clicks and downloads - organizations use PropFuel to achieve different engagement outcomes entirely.

Behavioral data represents a wide range of actions and engagements by members and prospects of your organization. While some behavioral data could be sitting in your AMS or CRM, it’s likely that a lot of this data is recorded and housed in your marketing and communications platforms. Now that you have it, what do you do with it?

The directors behind these shows have created brilliant stories that draw us in. They create a story and show it to us. Much like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling write and tell us a story. They're brilliant at what they do.

Dave Will