In the 2018 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report from Marketing General, Inc., associations surveyed revealed the most common level of segmentation for their member marketing efforts:

• 55% – Membership level/type

• 32% – Demographic-based

• 29% – Job/occupation-based

How are you segmenting your members? These numbers suggest some missed opportunity.

Why? Because online community and marketing automation provide member behavior data that allow us to hyper-segment and provide relevant, personalized content, instead of having to guess what members want to read based solely on their membership level or some other item, like demographics. Behavioral data and segmentation are key to maximizing the value of your targeted marketing efforts.

We’re moving from the attention economy to the engagement economy. It’s no longer just about reach – it’s about how people interact with your content.

Website pages with many visitors, but no engagement, will be punished by search engines. Similarly, ISPs with heavy inbound email traffic, but little email engagement, will also penalize the sender. We’re in a period where we’re shifting from large quantity bulk communications, to smaller, more targeted, sustained communication.  

This kind of approach used to be a luxury. We used to think that creating a personalized experience was only for the big kids. I submit that it’s no longer a luxury. You HAVE to do it.