The Secret to Member Engagement: Part III

Want to know the secret to member engagement?

The key to member engagement is listening to your members. On the importance of listening, author Doug Larson once said: “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.”

In the first part of our series, we explored the importance of listening to your members in order to leverage their feedback for maximum engagement. In the second part of our series, we explored 7 applicable tactics for listening. In this third and final part of our series, we will explore how you can listen to members at scale and automatically implement their feedback in real time.

Listening to members at scale with AI-powered software

You know the old saying: actions speak louder than words. Here’s an example of that in real life. A year ago, a member checked off four different interests on a form you sent out. However, for the last several months, unbeknownst to you, they’ve been primarily reading articles about a completely different topic.

Here’s another one: Your team made an assumption based on survey data and board discussions that older members are concerned only with management issues. However, in reality, many of them are focused on “upskilling.” They need to learn about a certain new technology so they can remain relevant and employed. Again, you had no idea.

You would know about their interests if you could observe what they’re doing—if you could “listen” to their behavior. Well, now you can.

Automated, AI-powered newsletter technology

New tools make this type of listening easier. Software powered by AI, like rasa.io, observes and tracks online behavior. It “listens” and learns about a member’s interests by tracking the links they click, and refines what it sends in future emails based on what it learns.

Personalized listening and communication is the purpose of rasa.io and the reason why our organization exists. But unlike the other listening methods described above, rasa.io is practically hands-off. Each daily newsbrief email is tailored for the individual subscriber according to their interests and done 100% automatically by the AI.

rasa.io’s AI “brain” personalizes content for each daily newsbrief from a list of news sources, plus you can add your own content too. Because members soon realize the relevancy of their daily newsbrief, they’re more likely to open those emails and, therefore, see your content too.

If your organization isn’t able to produce enough content on your own, providing a curated selection of content based on a member’s interest is undoubtedly one of the most valuable membership benefits you can provide.

What you can learn from listening to members

Listening to members—by using one of the seven methods described above or by using AI-powered software—provides valuable information. But with rasa.io, this data is provided in real-time. You can spot emerging interests and issues immediately instead of hearing about them eight months later on a survey.

You can also gain insight by tracking topic trends overall or by membership segment. You can put this new information to work when making decisions about:

  • Online or in-person educational programs
  • Content strategy for digital or print
  • Board and committee meeting agendas

In many associations, the membership value curve is skewed. Only a minority of members can afford to go to events or spend time volunteering. They’re the ones who have traditionally experienced the most membership value. But many members don’t have the budget or time to get that same value. With a personalized daily newsbrief, everyone has a fair shot at experiencing the value of membership—and your association continually learns how to provide even more value to them.

Listening to members with rasa.io

By now we have outlined the importance of listening to members, but we all know that we share one, limiting constraint: time. rasa.io AI-powered tools allow you to automatically adapt the content in your newsletters to individual member preferences, without having to lift a finger. 

Our users love to brag about the growth of their businesses.

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