About 5 to 10 years ago a number of associations took a “customer centric” approach to marketing and communications rather than a “member centric” approach.
Quantitative analysis was used to count how many times a member interacted with what. Marketing and communications were then customized to the customer segment to which the member was assigned in the belief that it was “personalizing” the member’s experience while reducing promotional expense.
For many, the unintended consequence was a diminution of the sense of community in the association. Decreased access to a common information stream:
a) insulated members from information about things not tagged in their profile; and
b) raised suspicions that some subgroups were being serviced better than others based on the revenue they generated.
This in turn made some members feel like their interests and opportunities for engagement were being subordinated to those of populations identified as producing more ROI for the association.
Simultaneous changes in dues and pricing strategies, understood by members as actions intended to increase revenue without increasing value, further exacerbated these perceptions.
Qualitative research discovered and confirmed this dynamic. Insight developed from uncovering what organizational behaviors were earning this perception allowed correction to occur. The solution strategies employed by these associations involved re-centering their marketing and communications strategies around the “attributes of community” documented and published by research supported by the original ASAE Foundation 20+ years ago.
As is the case with Web 2.0 in the general population, replacement of a common stream of information with information targeted to predetermined preferences fragments the sense of commonality more essential to a community than it is to a marketplace.
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