Your work as an association leader is important. Day in, day out, you’re supporting your members through education, advocacy, and offering them a shoulder to lean on. That, in turn, helps your members excel in the transformational work they do. You kept it up, even when things got tough over the last couple years.
Fortunately, there has been marked improvement in membership numbers and engagement this year according to Marketing General Incorporated’s 2022 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report. Unfortunately, that same report showed some challenges, particularly around communicating value to members.
Two of the top reasons for not renewing memberships are a perceived lack of value and simply forgetting. Both are problems we can help with. 42Chat makes an SMS-based A.I. chatbot especially for associations like yours. It’s called AssociationBot, an on-the-nose name that speaks to how specialized this event bot is for your organization. Let’s explore a couple ways that AssociationBot can support you.
Reach Your Members More Often (With Less Staff Time) Through Automation
The most-loved feature of AssociationBot is that it can answer common questions instantly with 99% accuracy. Think of how much time you and your staff spend answering questions like:
- When is the annual conference?
- Where can I find the latest newsletter?
- Who is the board president this year?
The information is available on your website and your event app, and you’ve pushed it out by email, social, and every other channel, but members still ask you because they want a quick answer and it’ll take too long to look it up. Now imagine that instead of calling or emailing your Member Services Manager, they pull up your custom-branded AssociationBot in their cell phone contacts and send the question as a text message. Literally a second later, they have their answer.
Or maybe the member has changed jobs and wants to update their profile. AssociationBot can automate that too. The member texts “Update my profile” and instantly gets a link to the editor where they can make those changes, right from their cell phone.
Through the magic of Conversational A.I., you get happier members and more productive staff all at the same time. Think of AssociationBot like your members’ personal concierge.
Offer a Communication Channel That Members Will Actually Want to Read
If “Why won’t they read?” is a familiar refrain in your office, you’re not alone. Modern attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and that attention is getting split between lots of communication channels.
One of the channels with the greatest engagement is SMS. Think about it: you don’t get many texts and when you do, it’s usually short and from someone you care enough about to have in your contacts. That’s why text has a 98%+ open rate. By providing value first (through answering questions), your AssociationBot will keep living in your members’ contact lists and your members are highly likely to read a text that you send them.
What might these texts say? Good question. They might be a link to a free webinar, a reminder to renew their membership, or an announcement of tickets going on sale for your annual conference. Year-round audience engagement of your conference attendees is possible with AssociationBot or its sister product, ConferenceBot. The key is to limit the number of messages and keep them high-value so you stay well out of spam territory.
Learn More at the American Society of Association Executives Annual Meeting
42Chat is proud to sponsor the 2022 American Society of Association Executives Annual Meeting. Come see us in Booth #1242 for a one-on-one chat about how AssociationBot and ConferenceBot can help you engage your members and provide a superior membership experience.
Got an Upcoming Event? Experience a ConferenceBot as a Guest in This Graphic Novel.
