Effective Membership Surveys for Every #Association

Member feedback is important, and every organization should find innovative ways to obtain it.
One of the simplest (and most used) formats is conducting a member survey. Here are a few tips to creating an effective survey for your membership:

Be clear about your purpose:

• Start the process by clearly defining what you want to achieve and what you are trying to learn. If you cannot define the objective, your members will not understand its purpose.
• Be as specific as possible. If you are looking for feedback regarding a specific program, or product offering, do not ask questions that relate to anything else.
• Determine how this will affect your organization. Start at the end – when you have the results, what will this change within your organization?
• Consult the right people. If you are in Marketing and Communications, and the results of the survey affects what your Conference Department is doing, ensure that they have a say in what questions should be asked.

Give members a reason to respond:

• As much as possible, personalize your survey invitations. Marketing automation solutions allow you to customize a message, including the member’s name, company name, customized survey links, and any other information that you have on file. Include it; they will feel you are writing directly to them.
• Include the reason(s) why you are asking for participation. What will the responses change within your organization? What has made you feel that this survey is warranted?
• If you can, offer them an incentive to respond. Surveys deployed with an incentive tend to be more successful than others. It can be small, like sending a five dollar gift card for Starbucks to respondents, or offering a small discount on a product of interest to your industry, like benchmarking studies, whitepapers, etc.

Test, Test, Test:

• Never deploy a survey without testing.Send a test to yourself to ensure that it represents your organizations brand, from a visual and messaging standpoint. Also, take the survey yourself to ensure that any answers that are considered “required” are programmed as such. This will also allow you to determine that any skip logic programmed functions properly.
• Send a test to other staff members internally. They will likely find things overlooked, and you can tweak the questions and skip logic based on their feedback. It may also bring to light a question that needs to be added.
• Consider testing the survey with select members with whom you have a good rapport, such as volunteers on a Communications Committee. Members will usually look at things differently than staff. The more you test, the more likely you are to avoid mishaps.

Need more tips?  Click here to download the entire list!

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Asking the Courageous Questions

You know you’re doing something right when your member survey achieves a 70% response rate.
At a time when most association members are overworked and many of them feel over-surveyed, most marketers are satisfied if they can wring cogent answers out of 20% of the people who receive a well-crafted questionnaire. A much higher response rate is possible, but it’s indicative that something much bigger and even more important is going on within the association.

Beyond ‘Smile Sheet’ Questionnaires

A couple of months ago, Greenfield Services conducted a member survey for a small Ontario association that was asking some courageous questions about its structure, its purpose, and its future. Its board had had some tough conversations and worked out a series of options for the future—from status quo, to significant change, to closing the doors.

After the association leadership had developed a half-dozen or so scenarios for the future, it was time to consult the membership. And that meant going beyond the standard, “smile sheet”-style questionnaires that asked maddeningly superficial questions about respondents’ general satisfaction with the products, programs, or conferences they were receiving.

The survey text made it clear that there were some tough options on the table.

A complete shut-down was not one of them. But leadership made it clear that just about everything else was on the line: they wanted to know what it would take to deliver excellent value for the membership dollars they collected.

And they invited their community to select the top three options for the organization’s future.

And then, the responses began rolling in. The overwhelming success of a vitally important survey was this association’s payback for a history of strong member communications.

Over the last year, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of year-round contact to turn your organization into a magnet for member interest and participation. But this is the other half of the story—when you build strong relationships, people will respond in your hour of need.

Explaining the Strategy

The content of your member conversations is just as important as their frequency. At the July, 2013 Summer Summit organized by the Trillium Chapter of the Canadian Society of Association Executives (CSAE), associations consultant Meredith Low had some interesting comments on the crucial connection between organizational strategy and implementation. She advised that:

• It’s necessary and appropriate for strategy to be developed by senior management and volunteer board members.
• But that strategy will only deliver results if a strong implementation and communication plan builds understanding, buy-in, and active participation on the part of members and front-line staff.

Many decades ago, long before modern associations, electronic communications, and ever-present e-surveys, American naturalist Henry David Thoreau advised:

"Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now, put the foundations under them."

You might have thought Thoreau was talking about a charitable foundation, preferably one with deep pockets. But in 2013 (and for the foreseeable future), the real foundation of success is member engagement. And in the end, that goes back to how and how often you ask the courageous questions.

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Re-evaluating event evaluations

Meredith Low provided this guest post.  She is a management consultant, focusing on helping organizations and companies understand how, when, and where to grow in the context of fast-changing environments. Her work with associations includes leading strategic and tactical planning, performing assessments to position conferences and meetings for growth and durability, and assessing the needs of members and other stakeholders.

Given the enormous amount of work that goes into organizing a major event, the evaluation form may seem like a relatively minor task.

Let me argue that, instead, they are actually kind of a big deal.

Think about what evaluations represent. If people take the trouble of filling in an evaluation form for an event, they are granting you some of their precious time and attention, indicating enough engagement – with the current event, possibly with future events – to bother telling you their opinions.

What’s in it for them?

Me, I’ll take any survey and fill in any evaluation form that gets put in front of me. Why? Because I want to know how the questions are asked. I suspect many if not most event organizers are the same – there’s professional interest, and they also identify with the organizers and want to be supportive.

But most people aren’t event organizers. They don’t get the same information out of the evaluation as an organizer would. So there’s less in it for them than you might think. The evaluation should be viewed as another communication touchpoint with whoever is filling it in – typically delegate or participants, but also exhibitors, sponsors, or others.

So then why are so many evaluations organized in a way that’s all about the organizers, and not about the person providing the information?

How many times have you filled in evaluation forms that were all about the logistics – the venue, or specifics of particular sessions? If you’re like me, that happens fairly frequently. I have to squint to remember details that aren’t important to me.

On the other hand, how many evaluation forms have you completed where it increased your engagement with the event? If you’re like me, not that often.

Re-evaluating evaluation

Overall, evaluation of the event should be about whether it met your objectives for holding it. (If you don’t have those clearly identified, you should.) For each objective, you should have a method of measuring whether it was met. Evaluation forms can be one way of doing that.

But you should also know the objectives of the different stakeholders involved in your conference. When you ask them for an evaluation, it should be based on their objectives, their perspectives, not yours. (If you don’t understand what those interests are, that’s a bigger problem.) The better you understand their objectives, the more intelligently you’ll be able to find out whether you met them.

So, some thoughts to challenge the evaluation process:

• Centre any evaluation form on what that person can reasonably be expected to comment on. Spend the most time on questions that you can’t get the answers to any other way.
• Design your questions carefully and intelligently, because you don’t want to change them often – that way you can get year-over-year consistency in answers. 
• Do offer people the chance to provide free-form comments. If nothing comes back, that’s fine. But if there’s some unsurfaced issue out there, it may well bubble up in those comments. 
• Take steps to increase response rates – Adrian Segar has some great suggestions. Some conferences make it mandatory to complete an evaluation form if they are providing continuing education credits. 
• …but if you are only getting low response rates, you should seriously consider throwing out everything except the freeform quotes. Really. Don’t show that data to anyone. Those responses are not representative of the people you are trying to understand, and it’s very difficult for any of us to un-see a graph. 
• Consider timing in terms of what you’re asking about. If you want impressions of each session or day of a long conference, the more immediate the better. If you want to know what stood out for them, you can ask later (even weeks later), but make sure you frame the questions that way, too. If you want to know about outcomes – if they applied learnings from the conference, or whether they made a sale, or if they made a connection that turned out to be meaningful, etc., that might be later still – up to months later. Note, though, that attribution of success to an event is very tricky, so again you want to word the questions – and interpret the results – carefully. 

Taking a more client-centric approach to evaluations can yield much richer and more actionable data to help you improve your event to the direct benefit of those you want to engage. It’s a great opportunity to connect – seize it!


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Effective Associations: Your Online Brand is Your Magnet

The association world is at the centre of a shift in marketing philosophies that works in favour of organizations that genuinely want to listen to their members, learn from what they hear, and deliver better, more targeted services.

The trend is called inbound marketing, and it’s creating new expectations for the way organizations of all kinds communicate with their members, customers, and stakeholders. The new marketing approach is about magnets, not darts: Rather than hunting key contacts down, you attract them by offering irresistible value.

Building an Online Profile

Nowhere is this change more visible than in the communication tools associations use to attract, engage, and retain their members.

• Optimize Your Presence: Your website and mobile platform have to be optimized to draw members’ attention and stand out against a din of competing content and messaging. Your sites should be easy to find and a pleasure to navigate. And you have to use the right analytics to understand who’s visiting your site and what information they find most useful once they get there.
• Get Social: While the large majority of Canadian associations are engaged with social media, and most of them are satisfied with their results so far, the majority reported last year that 10% of their members or fewer were participating in their social sites. To boost your presence on social media, you’ll want to build a campaign that uses compelling content to draw them to your website.
• Keep Asking Questions: The most effective associations conduct regular surveys to take the pulse of their members, spot emerging trends and issues, and show that they genuinely want to deliver the best possible services and value.

Make the First Move

Inbound marketing is about making the first move. When you reach out with something your members need and value, it needn't and shouldn't carry an obvious sales message: your immediate goal is to earn their trust, confidence, and appreciation. For most of us, time is the scarcest commodity of all, and if we find a reliable, convenient path to the information and resources we need, we aren't likely to forget it.

As my colleague Doreen Ashton Wagner told hospitality executives in a blog post last year: “With inbound marketing, you get back the attention and engagement of your target audience—and, eventually, their buying power - by giving away something they need and want in place of a standard, outbound sales pitch. Offer them knowledge. Point them to resources. And make it clear that you ask nothing in return, that the conversation is its own reward.”

For associations that really have their members’ best interests at heart, that strategy shouldn't be a hard sell. But it can and should be a gateway to stronger, more meaningful member relationships that make everyone more resilient at a time of rapid change.

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Effective Associations: Using Member Surveys to Open a Conversation

If only you had asked…

Those are the words you never want to hear when you’re talking to members about the services or opportunities they would have liked to see. Or when you’re asking former members why they never renewed.

The right series of questions is one of the simplest, most powerful tools for turning your member database into your best source of strategic intelligence. If you know what members need and want, you have a far better chance of delivering it. If they've spotted a new opportunity, you’ll want to tap into it. If they've got their eye on a trend that could be threat to your sector, you’ll want to know about it.

And at the most basic level of all, if they can see that you care enough to ask those questions, they’ll be more likely to pay attention when it’s time to renew.

The Art and the Science

An effective member survey is part art, part science. The best surveys:

• Have a clear purpose and focus on a specific set of programs, services, or issues
• Give members a compelling reason to respond, backed up by even a small incentive if possible (a $5 gift card is enough to boost participation rates)
• Involve a first announcement and at least two reminders (as long as you take care not to keep promoting to members who've already responded)
• Have been field-tested before they’re deployed
• Are built on survey tools that make it easy to track individual responses
• Are distributed by multiple methods, from e-blasts to social media to sample telephone outreach.

Striking the Right Balance

Associations have to value their members’ time as well as their opinions. That means striking a fine balance by asking enough questions, frequently enough to take the pulse of your membership, without making people feel they've been surveyed to death. But the right survey strategy will keep members engaged and deliver the unmistakable message that they matter—which really is the cornerstone of the relationship you want to build with them.

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Leadership in the Toughest of Times

When associations fall on hard times, their staff and volunteer leadership may have to make the toughest of decisions: whether to transform the organization into something new, shrink operations to the brink of irrelevance, or sell off the assets and close the doors.

The conversations are bound to be difficult, and there may not be an obvious “right” answer. But one thing is crystal clear: A moment of crisis does call for smart, effective, sensitive leadership.
Shelly Alcorn, author of the Association Subculture blog, covers this territory in the last of five posts on associations in peril.

“We may not necessarily be out of sponsors, members, or even hope,” she writes. But  “the organization faces a potential death spiral—lurching from cycle to cycle, paying what bills they can, and myopically focusing on meeting short term obligations.”

She continues: “New programs may be necessary but out of reach because of staff layoffs or lack of investment capital on hand. As cash continues to tighten, choices become narrower and the ability to provide value becomes a practical impossibility...”

Shelly is describing a moment of decision that will make or break any organization that experiences it. We’ve seen some associations come through the fire and emerge stronger, but not all have fared as well. Consider these scenarios, and decide which is the better recipe for success:

• Association #1 understands that cash is short and prospects are poor. The board of directors goes through a strategic planning process that produces 14 scenarios for the future. To collect input and build buy-in, the board decides to circulate the 14 options to members, then make some tough decisions after all the feedback is in.
• Association #2 has the same moment of realization that something has to change, and soon. The board reaches out to members with a clear statement of the problem, a recap of the organization’s core values, a checklist of program priorities that could guide the next five years of operation, and a request that members indicate which items matter most to them—and why. Based on the response, the board builds three scenarios for future operations, then digs more deeply to decide whether any or all of them would keep the organization viable.

Both approaches recognize the seriousness of the situation and seek member input on next steps. But in the second scenario, the board takes a leadership role and translates members’ priorities into an action plan—if it turns out that any course of action will bring the organization back from the brink.

Here’s hoping that this post does not describe your association’s current position. But if it does, now is the time for your board and executive staff to take the lead.

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Asking the Right Questions

A colleague once told me that he never tires of Stephen Leacock’s (humourist, author, political scientist) description of the brave knight who “flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.”

Unfortunately, for associations at risk, that’s often the temptation. When executives sense a problem, or run into a full-fledged crisis, there’s an almost irresistible urge to do something, anything, to make the pain go away.

And once that mindset takes hold, we may not want to be confused or delayed by a proper interpretation of the facts.

In the third of her five-part series on associations at risk, blogger Shelly Alcorn talks about the denial that can set in when an organization’s best-laid plans begin going awry.

“Even if your organizational leadership drank the Kool-aid and invested a tremendous amount of time and money into ventures that appear to be going wrong, there may still be time to fix the situation if they can confront the facts,” she writes. “When discussing the future of your association, it is wise to make sure issues are framed correctly and all parties are conducting honest assessments of the potential risks involved.”

Which is why Alcorn points to the risk of being too selective in gathering and interpreting the data and market intelligence that are the necessary cornerstone of any business decision.

“Leaders can invest a significant amount of energy in finding data to support their own conclusions,” she says. But “pollsters know the difference between getting actual numbers and getting numbers that support a particular position—it all depends on which question you ask.”
But here’s the good news: This is one problem that is easy enough to solve. Here are some simple steps to gather reliable data you can count on:

1. Be honest with yourself and your team about the risks your organization faces and the biases you’ve acquired as a result.
2. If you’re gathering data, ask a professional pollster or research team to develop the questions. Or…
3. …if you’re conducting the research in-house, ask an independent professional to review your survey.
4. When the survey results come back, ask two or three team members to help interpret the data. If you can, involve outside advisors in the conversation. And if there are disagreements…value them! The decisions you reach will be exactly as good as the process of discussion and deliberation by which you reach them.

Your strategy decisions matter, and that’s reason enough to avoid selective interpretation of critical research. But in an era of social media, the stakes are even higher. In days gone by, if executives drew incomplete conclusions from their data, they often had time to reconsider. Today, your community is watching on social media—and if your analysis is incomplete, they may catch it before you do.

That’s just one more reason to set the right direction the first time. Stephen Leacock’s brave knight was probably pretty tired by the time he finished his day, and 75 years later, we’re still talking about him.

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The Data to Make Your Decision

When I run across an interesting new blog, I devour it like a good book, and that’s what happened when I discovered Shelly Alcorn’s Association Subculture.

As I read Shelly’s five-part series on associations at risk, I kept thinking of conversations I’d had - or, sometimes, quiet observations I’d made - in my work with some of my favourite organizations. And I saw more than a few questions that went along with the answers in the Pulse Report that Greenfield published last fall to document some of the major issues facing Canada’s associations.

One of the most important themes - and one of the riskiest for organizations that lose track of it - is the need to ground decisions in the best available data. It’s a simple rule that organizations can forget when they get over-confident, and when that happens, disaster may be just around the corner.

“A confident organization exudes a certain sense of capability and attention to detail,” Shelly writes in the first of her five posts. “Hubris goes a step further, where capability becomes unassailable and attention to detail either all-consuming or irrelevant, depending on the temperament of the board in question.”

Your executives or managers may be losing touch with their data if they've fallen into the habit of:

• Assuming that their intuitions, instincts, or brainstorms - brilliant as they may be - can translate directly into action, with no research or validation
• Assuming that their way is the only right way
• Making decisions without seeking input from members, sponsors, colleagues, or other stakeholders
• Missing out on the golden opportunity to listen to the wider community via social media
• Failing to explain major decisions.

It isn't that you can or should consult endlessly on every small decision or detail: people are busier than ever, and survey fatigue is a very real concern. But you must strike a careful balance by taking a pulse when you need to, then moving ahead with confidence when you have enough information to choose a direction.

The good news is that the tools to gather that information - from online surveys to social media management and analytics - are more sophisticated and accessible than ever. But whether you do your own research, call for professional assistance, or do a bit of both, you should always pause to ask the right questions to guide your most important decisions and strategies.

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Getting It Right: A Member Survey That Worked

Survey fatigue is a risk for any association that wants to understand its audience, but this is the story of an organization that did all the right things when it needed information and advice from its members.

Earlier this year, the Canadian Association for Laboratory Accreditation (CALA) reached out to its members to find out whether it should invest the time, money, and effort to develop a national conference. CALA engaged Greenfield Services to conduct the research. Here’s what made this survey the most successful we’ve ever worked on:

• The Announcement: In its quarterly newsletter, CALA announced the survey and let members know they’d be hearing from the third-party organization that was conducting the research.

• Professional Tools:  CALA had us develop the survey questions and distribute an invitation to participate.

• The Platform: An online format made the survey easier for participants to complete, and for the research team to analyse.

• The Follow-Up: Members who missed the survey, or missed some questions, received a series of follow-up calls encouraging them to participate.

• The Report: A detailed report gave the CALA management team and Board of Directors the strategic intelligence they needed to make a decision.

The CALA survey achieved a blockbuster response rate of more than 50% . Members wanted to share their input because CALA did all the right things to position the research: they made it clear that they had a bold, new idea that might benefit their members, but they needed those members’ advice before they could proceed. The survey did reveal a solid base of support for a new event, and CALA is now planning its first national conference for 2014.

This case study will give you details and data on the process we undertook for CALA and the mix of online and telephone services that made the survey such a smashing success.

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Beating Survey Fatigue: How Much is Just Enough?

The best associations are serious about listening to their members, and listening usually means producing surveys. But here’s the tough question: How do you generate enough research to understand your members’ needs and wants, without giving them a bad case of survey fatigue?

When I talk to association executives about their member research, they usually rhyme off a familiar list: the annual satisfaction survey, a follow-up after every conference, event, or networking opportunity, possibly a needs assessment every two or three years. If your organization produces more than two events per year, that’s a lot of surveying, and without a healthy dose of advance planning, your research program may not be performing as well as it could.

The best way to maximize member participation in your survey program is to plan the series in advance. You don’t have to decide the specific questions, but you should lay out your goals for each set of data, and space the surveys at regular intervals.

Here are six tips to help you along the way:

1. Plan your surveys in time to start your fiscal year. Talk to all the departments involved, to make sure you gather the information they need to keep your members satisfied.

2. Reach out to your members before launching a major survey to let them know it’s coming and why it’s important to participate. You won’t have time to phone them all, but consider announcements on your website, over your private member network, and in your newsletter. Tell them what you’re looking for and what you will do with the information you gather.

3. Take a close look at whether you can combine questions or whole surveys to reduce the load on members.

4. Be careful about survey timing. Try to send one every few months, to give your members a break from providing their feedback.

5. Share your results, in as much detail as possible! For bonus points, tell members what you’re doing as a result of the information you gathered. You can distribute survey findings as a downloadable resource attached to your e-newsletter, or send out a special email to thank people for participating. Either way, surveys are a great source of current, compelling content that can help you keep your members engaged.

6. If you can offer an incentive for survey participants, even a small one, you’ll probably get a higher response rate in return.

What are your favourite tips for making surveys shine and combatting survey fatigue?

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How are your numbers?

A great meeting can be defined by many things – one of the most important factors (and the one that most organizations are concerned about) is ensuring that your attendance at your meeting continues to grow.

As a planner, what can you do to ensure that you are achieving attendance targets?
One way is to keep a close eye on what your members want.  This means surveying your membership regularly.  To get a complete picture, survey those who have recently attended your annual meeting (in order to determine their satisfaction level), and those who do not attend/have not attended recently (to find out why and what would change their mind).

What questions should you ask?

While some questions need to be different in the initial part of the survey, others can be very similar to enable you to compare responses.

Ask about a suitable location:  This can be done either by free form or selection boxes (recommended).  Include both top-tier & second-tier cities as options.  Start by looking at the cities you have held your annual meeting in the past – but ensure to include an “other” option – with a free form for the contact to input their selection.

Find out about the budget:  Registration fees, hotel room rates, do you know what your prospective attendees are willing to pay?  It’s easy to assume that the lower the rates the better, but find out what their preferences are… offer ranges, ask what services or amenities might be important such as complimentary access to fitness facilities, wireless internet, parking, etc.

Dig into the content:  People attend annual meetings to find out what is new in their field, to receive their continuing education credits, etc.  Are there topics that they want to hear about, speakers they want to hear from, etc. that you are not aware of?  Be sure to ask!

If they are members and are not attending your AGM, you might want to know what other associations they belong to where they are attending conferences, etc.  What is that association doing differently?

Inquire about areas of concern outside the educational component:  Attendees logically look at the conference program for education, but they often consider what overall “experience” they will get by attending the event in a particular city.  What activities or attractions appeal to your audience?  How do you keep them entertained?  What would they like to see?  Surveying them is a great way to find out!

Asking your membership for feedback is great; they will feel that they have a voice and that you are taking their feedback seriously.

But don’t stop there.  Many associations have a list of contacts who are not members but are in the profession.  Survey them too, as it may help you find out why they are not attending.  Not only will this give you ways to improve your AGM, but it may give you insight on why they are not currently members and how to make them members in the near future.