Key findings from the 2014 Association Technology Study from Lehman Reports and what they mean for associations.

2. Welcome!
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3. Meet the Presenters
Tom Lehman Lori Ely Rob Kaighn Frank Klassen

4. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Lehman Associates, LLC
• Associations, Nonprofits, and Supplier Companies
• Strategy consulting for technology and marketing
• Customer Satisfaction, Market & Member Research
• The Lehman Reports™ industry research series
• Founded 1992, Alexandria, VA

5. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
• AMS Use and Satisfaction 2006-2014
• AMS International: CA, AU, UK 2010, 2013
• Association Technology Study 2011-14
• Donor Management Systems, NTEN, 2013-14
• Snapshot Surveys and Special Studies

6. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Evolving Role of Technology
Technology
Introduction
Technology
as Toolset
Technology
as
Strategy™
Investment
Investment
Cost Center
Linear
Exponential
ROI Potential

7. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Interlocking Content Marketing
Highest growth
and most
effective models
are in the
overlaps
Both internal
and external
perspective

8. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
A Greater Focus on Outcomes
Member
Database
CRM
Toolset
Engagement

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Third-Party Applications

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Website Redesign Cycles

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360° Member View

12. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Integration Challenge

13. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Move to Cloud-based Solutions

14. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Changing Role of IT
More about
– Being a strategic resource to help leverage technology to
achieve organization mission and goals
– Management of the technology environment and providers
– Big data, analytics, application integration
– Technology education of possibilities, opportunities
– A focus on outcomes, contributions
Less about
– Operating technology
– Purely reactive support function
– Application training
– Focus on input and activities

15. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Importance of Senior Management in Technology
• Technology as the key component in achieving
organization goals
• Technology as Strategy for greater ROI
• Vision of the organization drives investments in
technology,
• Bring the long view to decisions
• Include technology strategy at the senior leadership level
– hire at a strategic level

16. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Technology Leadership Challenge

17. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
In-house Expertise Challenge

18. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Content and Inbound Marketing
Highest growth
and most
effective models
are in the
overlaps

19. Informz =
Opportunity
Results-driven digital marketing
solutions for associations and
nonprofits
Lori Ely, Director of Marketing

20. Circle of Engagement…
Today:
• 80% of associations using an email service today
• Significant number of organizations using more than one service
• Batch and blast, simple email triggering
Trend:
• Integrated marketing technology
• Behavior-based automated email campaigns
• Strategy behind technology

21. What is marketing automation?
Technology that streamlines and automates marketing tasks in
order to be more efficient and more effective.
AKA: Marketing like Amazon – personalized & timely

22. Marketing Automation for Associations
Source: 2014 Lehman Reports™ Association Technology study

23. Marketing Automation for Associations
Source: 2014 Lehman Reports™ Association Technology study

24. Benefits of Marketing Automation
Marketing
Automation
Nurture
Relationships
Align Teams
Integrated
Systems
Increased
Efficiency
Measure
Effectiveness

25. Uses of Marketing Automation
Source: 2014 Lehman Reports™ Association Technology study

26. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Content and Inbound Marketing
Highest growth
and most
effective models
are in the
overlaps

27. Higher Logic
The Leading Enterprise Community Platform for Associations
Rob Kaighn- Director of Partnerships

28. Market Use of Private
Communities
• Results from Lehman 2014 Technology Study
• 35% of associations with at least $2M in budget
have a private community
• Increase of 10% from last year
• ~60% of remaining are looking to purchase or are
evaluating
• Over 50% will have purchased by end of 2016
• Moving from Email List Services

29. Association Views on Private
Communities
• Results from Lehman 2014 Technology Study
• Over 60% say leadership in their Association view
the community as helping the association meet
strategic goals
• Most feel it has strengthened engagement with
members
• Most also feel it provides benefits beyond those
of email list services

30. Why?
• It’s all about Engagement
• Engagement with peers is why people join
• Lack of engagement is why they leave
• Engaged members are promoters

31. Membership Growth
7000
8000
9000
10000
11000
12000
13000
14000

32. Community Functions Use
• Results from Lehman 2014 Technology Study
• Discussions, Library, Profiles
• Engagement Scoring not used
• AMS Integration is Key
• Not just pulling data
• Write back engagement
• Engagement Data
• Scores
• Actionable Business Intelligence

33. © Lehman Associations, LLC 2015
Content and Inbound Marketing
Highest growth
and most
effective models
are in the
overlaps

34. Brightfind
Formerly the Web Technology
Division of Syscom Services
A specialized digital design and
web development agency
Creating web sites for member-based organizations
for 18 years
Specialize in organizations with deep, rich, complex
content
Design, User Experience, Web Strategy, Development,
CMS Implementation, Integration, Experience Insight
Sitecore, Ektron, EPiServer

35. Increases Discovery time and effort
• Mobile first thinking
• Wireframe the experience for desktop,
tablet, and smartphone (and more!)
• Device-specific Analytics
Responsive Design
❶
❷
Increases Front-End (FE) development costs
• Increases QA time
• Doubled our FE staff
Responsive AND Adaptive
• Context
• Targeting
• UX – not just the device
Default development pattern
• Bootstrap
• This too will change
• Google will add a “mobile-friendly”
ranking factor on April 21st
❸
❹

36. Focus on UX – User Experience
“If you have no intuitive sense
of design, then call yourself an
‘information architect’ and only
use Helvetica.”
- David Carson

37. Search – its different for Mobil
• Mobile results must be faster
• Fewer facets
• Fewer results? (paging is harder)
• “Best Bets” is even more important
Focus on UX - User Experience
❶
❷
Focus on Micro Interactions
• How did that button make you feel?
Cross-over of creative and technical
• Creative design HAS to think about the user’s
interaction, not just the visual
Shifting effort from back-end to front-end
• BE – used to be 2/3 of the project effort
• FE – used to be less than ¼ of the project effort
• FE – is now at least ½ of the project effort
• BE – is now less than 1/3 of the project effort
❸
❹

38. Content Marketing and
Marketing Automation
“Great Content is the best sales
tool in the world.”
- Marcus Sheridan
“Marketing technology budgets will surpass IT
technology budgets in 2017”
- The Future of Digital Marketing, MONDO

39. Testing for Results
• What REALLY works
• A/B and Multi-variant testing
Content Marketing and
Marketing Automation
❶
❷
Marketing Analytics
• Data driven approach to decision-making
• Is your message being heard?
• Do your products sell on the web?
• Most effective way to sell on the web?
Inbound Marketing
• Email integration
• Landing pages
• Integrated Analytics
• Integrated with CRM/AMS
Digital Experience Marketing
• No more CMS, just DMS, DEM
• Marketing to the Persona
• Marketing to the Individual (Beware!)
❸
❹

40. Systems Integration
“Where’s my jetpack?”
- Frank Klassen

41. Others
• Job Boards
• Learning Management Systems
• Advanced Meeting Registration
Systems Integration
❶
❷
Marketing Automation
• Email Marketing
• Inbound and Targeting
• Contextual and Individual
Social Integration
• Authentication
• Content
• Search
CRM/AMS
• Why aren’t we here yet (jetpack/Cronkite)
• Trend away from AMS as the transactional
hub
• Connectors are essential
❸
❹

42. Continuous Improvement
“Excellent firms don't believe in
excellence – only in constant
improvement and constant
change.”
- Tom Peters

43. Lack of Continuous Improvement
• Technology changes fast
• People don’t realize what works/doesn’t
work until they use it
• Expectations are constantly changing
• Lack of in-house expertise
Continuous Improvement
❶
❷
Enter the valley of disenchantment
• Within 6-12 months
• Despair for the last 1-2 years
• Why does this occur?
Everyone is happy at launch
• Organization customers
• Organization team
• Development partner
• Software provider
Redesign Cycle is a broken paradigm
• Associations redesign (rebuild!) every 3-4
years
• New technologies, new partners
❸
❹

44. Continuous Improvement
Your organization must be willing to not only keep
the content up-to-date, but also the User Experience
up-to-date. If you consistently test, change, analyze –
you will have happy customers throughout the
redesign cycle, and your website investment
(software, infrastructure, implementation) will last
much longer.

45. Thank You!
Tom Lehman
www.lehmanreports.com
tom@lehmanconsulting.com
703.373.7550
Lori Ely
www.informz.com
ely@informz.com
888.371.31842
Rob Kaighn
www.higherlogic.com
rkaighn@higherlogic.com
866.670.1402
Frank Klassen
www.brightfind.com
frank@brightfind.com
301.768-1800