Is keeping up with technology trends on your association’s radar? If not, it should be. As your association grows and evolves, its needs change. Meanwhile, technological advances aren’t standing still for your association. They’re evolving, too. Failing to keep up with technology may cause your organization to fall behind in its ability to deliver a great member experience.
Keeping up with member expectations
One of the key reasons to keep up with the latest technology is to ensure you deliver the experience your members have come to expect. In the State of the Connected Customer report, Salesforce found that consumer expectations have reached an all-time high.
Consider these statistics from the report:
- 73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations.
- 88% of customers state the experience a company provides is as important as a product or service.
- 62% of customers expect companies to anticipate their needs.
These findings highlight an important point—we’ve all come to expect highly personalized experiences, such as those provided by Amazon and Netflix. As for-profit companies offer these types of experiences, your members expect the same in more areas of their lives – including their experience with your association.
You must meet and ideally exceed member expectations. Otherwise, there’s a good chance their membership will lapse as they take their business elsewhere.
But are associations keeping pace with their members’ expectations? Some organizations aren’t leveraging the latest technology, making it difficult to be intentional in their member outreach campaigns.
Three technology trends associations should be following
To ensure a personalized member experience at your association, prioritize these three technology trends:
1. System integration
Consider this finding from the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer research: Seventy percent of customers consider connected experiences – such as seamless handoffs between departments, and contextualized engagement based on earlier interactions – as very important for winning their business.
Those same consumers who are looking for a connected experience are also your members and prospective members. Delivering the experience your members have come to expect starts with integrated technology systems.
Integrating your systems delivers more than just efficiency and convenience; it eliminates data silos and reduces the risk of data redundancies. By combining the technology you rely on for membership management, learning management, event management, and career services, you can support a superior member experience.
Choose Nimble AMS because it integrates seamlessly with the Momentive family of products, including career software, learning management software, and events management software. Configure Nimble AMS with access to the Salesforce AppExchange and implement Nimble Fuse for even more external applications.
2. Artificial intelligence (AI)
According to the Momentive Software Association Trends Study, 63% of pros say that their IT budget will increase next year, and of those 63% already planning to spend more, 38% plan to prioritize AI investments.
AI has changed the way we interact with technology in our everyday lives. Just order something from Amazon, and you’ll receive recommendations on the next item Amazon wants you to purchase. Do you send texts via Siri? Your iPhone is leveraging AI to enhance your user experience.
Using artificial intelligence at your association
Getting started with AI is well within reach for associations, as well. Using the Salesforce platform-based Nimble AMS, which leverages the Salesforce Einstein AI technology, associations can become smarter, more predictive, and more in tune with what members need, want, and expect. Associations can use AI technology to do things like:
- Create an Amazon-like shopping experience. Recommend new purchases based on past behaviors. Feature “what other members like you purchased” to increase non-dues revenues.
- Help members find answers through personalized content. Predict the answers members are looking for and provide that information proactively.
- Automate aspects of member service by answering common questions. Offer the ability to renew memberships via a chatbot to provide immediate response 24/7 and free up staff time.
- Use predictive analytics to determine which event location will bring in the highest number of registrations.
- Use data on past behaviors to predict whether a member is likely to renew, and then intervene before the membership is lost.
3. Security and trust
Security may not seem like a technology trend. However, having cutting-edge security helps protect your member data and reduces the risk to your association. It also helps you to establish trust with your members.
Enhancing the security of your association
As your association grows and collects personal information about your members, fueling personalized communications, you simply can’t afford not to protect your member data. Here are five ways your association management software (AMS) can protect your member data and reduce risk:
- Transparency. Your AMS should provide you with insight, information, and documentation on its system performance and security to promote trust and confidence in its service.
- Data security. To prevent unauthorized access, your AMS should support data security best practices, including two-factor authentication, login IP ranges, adjustable session timeout thresholds, custom domains, and the latest authentication and encryption protocols, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), for browser encryption.
- Comprehensive user permissions. Your system should allow only your organization to access its data and enable your administrator to restrict access, so that employees can view and edit only the data they are authorized to access in the system, based on their role within your organization.
- Data recovery. To safeguard your data, your AMS should protect your data from simple data storage errors, catastrophic failures, and everything in between.
- Compliance. The most secure AMS systems maintain compliance certifications and attestations to validate their security and integrity.
Your ability to embrace the latest technology depends heavily on your AMS. One of the best ways to prepare for and incorporate technology trends is to use innovative software like Nimble AMS.
The industry-leading software offers continuous delivery, so the product includes and supports the latest and greatest features. In addition, Nimble AMS offers a framework-first approach, which ensures it’s adaptable, taking advantage of new technology innovations.
