It’s all about the benefits, baby

With apologies to Puff Daddy, in any business but especially associations and nonprofits…it’s all about the benefits.

I think on the association membership side we “know” this, yet a great many of the materials and websites we see are not truly benefit-oriented. We need to remember that the first step to joining is that membership (or any product) solves a problem or provides pleasure–we need or want it.

I know, marketing 101 you’ll say. But what have you mailed lately? Does your copy talk about how big and authoritative the society is? How much it has accomplished? How cited the journal is? Then it may not be spinning these as benefits to the member. The most “selling” word in advertising is NOT “free”, as many claim….it is “you”.

YOU are connected to over 15,000 colleagues…YOU have the benefit of our achievements in advocacy…YOU can trust this authoritative journal. You could be just a few turns of a phrase away from higher response rates.

Many organizations mistakenly present themselves in the same compartmentalization by which they manage operations. Trust me, for the customer there is only one organization.

When is the last time you called a service company and were sent to another department, and another? Or searched in the grocery store aisles for a product you knew was there but they categorized it differently than you do? (My favorite examples for this are canned milk, B&M brown bread, and Crosse&Blackwell mincemeat…try it some time for a laugh.)

This happens to members all the time. It doesn’t help that nonprofit administration varies from company to company, so anyone who is a member of multiple organizations does not inherently have an easier time knowing who is in charge of their member record or how to find out about upcoming calls for papers.

So for the time period that you are thinking about your member value proposition, you need to leave the silos behind and think like a stranger. What are all the benefits you would enjoy if only you were a member? Would you hear about educational and grant opportunities first? Even if these are not member-only benefits, shouldn’t that connection get the information out to members earlier? Of course it should. So that is another benefit.

This is why I recommend that before you feel you must add more benefits, you review, with fresh eyes and some neutral friends, how you currently present the ones you have.

On the fundraising side, whether you have a donor/member model or your association has a foundation that members may donate to, you are still going to have to present some benefits. As generous as Bill Gates may be, he’s still going to look at getting the most bang for his buck.

And that means more than a tax deduction.

This is where the accomplishments of your organization or foundation really can turn into benefits for the donor:

45 new wells were dug in rural Africa with our donor’s help last year.

5,453 adults began the road to literacy last year, and another 3,000 mastered their GED after years in the program.

Lives are saved…changed…enriched.

With many foundations, the security of a profession is a benefit. Scholarships ensure that 300 high school students will explore chemistry in a real lab this summer…this matters to passionate chemistry professionals.

But the benefits of a donation have to be emotionally important, important enough to become a priority for my limited charitable dollars.

A blog for big ideas

As you probably know, my title is Fearless Leader for Bigger Better Marketing. But the blog is titled Bigger Better Marketer, because the kind of people we work with are the ones who are always pushing the envelope to think even bigger, be more creative, get better response.  Now they have their own blog.

We’re constantly sharing ideas with others in our network of non-profit marketers, so it seemed like time to open the virtual floor so more folks could dance together on it. As a side benefit, with social networking and collaborative tools being a topic of interest, this also gives the digital immigrants amongst us a chance to get their feet wet. Our feet wet, I should say.

I’m 52, and distinctly remember the day I threw my body over my manual typewriter as a young copywriter, because someone wanted to give me an IBM Selectric. (Remember those? Imagine paying $1,000 for a typewriter… in the 1970s.) OK, IBM got wise and got into computers, and I got wise and got Web 2.0.

To launch this ideashare, I’m posting a shot of a great piece by Bigger Better Marketer Nancy Olson and her team at Fabricators & Manufacturers Association, International.  You’d have to hear her story of the multiple sources of inspiration, but the result is a clever way to be in front of your members all year:

1. The calendar delivers in a CD case, enabling it to stand up and display the current month along with an artful industry image.
2. The back of each sheet has a coupon good only during that month. What a great concept!
3. The member receives the good feeling of getting something for nothing from your organization…and wow, coupons too. That is the kind of halo effect that lasts a long time and can impact retention.

This is a high-class piece all around. Thanks for sharing it, Nancy!

If you have tales of renewal & retention premiums and tests, share them with colleagues here.

All my best,

Leigh