Social CRM for Associations What Association Executives Should Know About Applying Social Media to Membership Management by Lindy Dreyer and Maddie Grant, CAE

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Social CRM for Associations What association executives should know about applying social media to membership management By Lindy Dreyer and Maddie Grant, CAE

CONTENTS

1 Are you ready for Social CRM? 3 What is Social CRM? 7 Basics of a Social CRM Practice 10 6 Key Social CRM Technologies 14 Conclusion and Next Steps

ARE YOU READY FOR SOCIAL CRM?

ver the last three years, we’ve watched association executives grapple with social media—both the tools, and more importantly, the business implications. O The progression has been amazing. The first stage was fear. The thought of losing control of communications channels, and the thought of public criticism was paralyzing for a time. The next stage was acceptance. Even as association executives accepted that social media would be a growing part of the work of the organization, they still struggled with questions of how to use social media tools effectively. So the next stage was experimentation—from public social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, to private social networks, not to mention blogs and microblogs like Twitter, media sites like YouTube and Flickr, and a myriad of other tools.

Experimentation challenged staff skills, resources, business processes, and our ability to act collaboratively both internally A rose by any and externally. Experimentation also other name… challenged our leadership abilities. We realized that social media was going to When it comes to the data change us, and change the way we work. management tools that associations That has led us to our current stage— use, you may be used to different impact. We are now looking for ways to nomenclature. Does your association apply social media strategically to give our have an AMS (Association work as an organization greater impact.That Management System)? An MMS means purposefully plugging social media (Membership Management interactions into our business processes as a Software)? Maybe you already means to reach our objectives. think of it as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system)? Social Customer Relationship Or maybe you have a system that Management (Social CRM) refers you just refer to as the Membership both to a business strategy for managing Database. Some of the bells and customer relationships in the age of social whistles might be different, but it media and the evolving technology that really doesn’t matter what you call helps organizations do this. The concept it—the goal and objectives are still started in the corporate world, born out of the same. And it’s less about the the need to apply social media strategically tools than the philosophies and to business processes. The term Social CRM business processes driving the continues to evolve, and can mean different people using the tools. things to different people. This white paper will deconstruct Social CRM into its basic parts and apply the concept to association management. “ We are now looking for ways to apply social media strategically to Whether you’re ready to adopt Social CRM practices now, or you’re thinking ahead for give our work as an organization your organization’s future, we hope this greater impact.” paper will help you imagine new possibilities as you move to plug social media into the daily work of managing your membership.

efore we jump too far ahead, Adding a Social Twist let’s define traditional customer Social CRM is a CRM strategy that B relationship management (CRM). acknowledges and capitalizes on your Wikipedia has an excellent definition of members’ empowerment through social CRM. media and other social technologies. Social CRM accounts for member engagement Customer Relationship as an integral part of the CRM cycle. Paul Management (CRM) Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed A widely-implemented strategy for of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for managing a company’s interactions with the 21st Century, offers this authoritative customers, clients and sales prospects. definition of Social CRM. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business Social CRM processes—principally sales activities, A philosophy and a business strategy, but also those for marketing, customer supported by a technology platform, service, and technical support. The business rules, workflow, processes, overall goals are to find, attract, and win and social characteristics, designed to new clients, nurture and retain those engage the customer in a collaborative the company already has, entice former conversation in order to provide clients back into the fold, and reduce the mutually beneficial value in a trusted and costs of marketing and client service.1 transparent business environment. It’s the company’s [programmatic] response The goals of CRM are analogous to every to the customer’s ownership of the association’s goals of member recruitment, conversation.2 member retention, member services, and marketing. Your association might have other goals that align with CRM as well— attendee marketing, exhibit and sponsorship Social CRM accounts for member sales, advertising sales, and other product “ marketing. So even if the term CRM is engagement as an integral part of unfamiliar, associations are definitely applying the CRM cycle. ” CRM strategies.

1. Wikipedia, Customer Relationship Management, 2. Paul Greenberg, “Time to Put A Stake in The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_ Ground on Social CRM,” ZDNet, July 6, 2009 management (February 24, 2011). (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/crm/time-to-put-a-stake- in-the-ground-on-social-crm/829). 3 Share • www.socialfish.org ©2011 SocialFish What is Social CRM?

For associations, adding a social twist will 3. Also supported by business rules, challenge us on a number of levels. Let’s workflow, processes, and social break down Paul’s definition and analyze the characteristics issues: Member communications and touch points that were once linear and predictable, are 1. Social CRM is a philosophy and a now multi-channel, two-way, and peer-to- business strategy peer. Things got unpredictable. And messy. The most common misunderstanding of Associations need to rethink the daily Social CRM is that it is a set of tools. It’s work of managing member relationships to not just about the technology. Technology accommodate the new channels members plays a supporting role. Above all else, use to communicate with each other and Social CRM is a way of thinking and doing. with the organization. This is the one part of a Social CRM practice that is completely 2. ...supported by a technology in the hands of association executives. platform Association executives who are adopting Social Granted, the supporting role of CRM practices should focus 80% of their technology is important. Associations efforts on changing work habits, and 20% of have a suite of technology platforms their efforts on changing technology and tools. that support the relationship between members and the organization—your 4. ...designed to engage the customer in Association Management System (AMS) a collaborative conversation or your database if you don’t have an This is a different way of thinking about your AMS, your web Content Management members and customers. As opposed to System (CMS), your email marketing designing processes to push them to buy tools, your internal email system, your or renew, Social CRM practitioners design intranet, your community platform if you processes to push members and customers have one for members and volunteers. to engage. By focusing on engaging members Not to mention the connections and customers, you are increasing the odds you’ve made through social media tools that they will join, renew, and purchase—and like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, if they don’t, you can better understand why and other public sites. The technology not. This works well in a world of messy platforms we use will either help us or interactions, where a member relies on his hinder us as we work toward adopting or her own personal network when making Social CRM practices. buying decisions, and ignores traditional sales, marketing, and advertising tactics. For Social CRM to be truly effective, your members must be ready and willing to hold up their side of the bargain, and participate in the conversation.

5. ...in order to provide mutually Why Change? beneficial value We keep coming back to the idea that Associations exist to provide value, we need to change the way we work. and much of that value is derived from That change will affect everyone. Staff at the hard work of our members and every level, in every department will have stakeholders who want nothing more to collaborate and compromise—more than to give back to the industry or people will need to take responsibility profession. Social CRM is an extension for the way social media impacts their of that value exchange. It drives not just piece of association business. Even the business outcomes, but also mission social media practitioners may need to outcomes of the organization. It gives change their habits to ensure their work is us the opportunity to personalize our properly captured and measured. No more communications based on what each shortcuts. No more changing tools for the member really cares about. It also sake of changing tools. gives us a means to better understand Why is this worth doing? the value of the work we do, based on a steady stream of feedback from • Members are more sophisticated, the conversation. Social CRM practices and have higher expectations for our will enable associations to push timely, responsiveness online. personalized content to members • Even the most niche associations and prospects, and pull feedback and are competing with hundreds, if not knowledge resources that members share thousands of online information sources back into the organization. for the attention of members. • The philosophy of engaging members 6. ...in a trusted and transparent aligns with our missions. business environment. • People are turning more and more to Trust and transparency are both a their social networks when making buying prerequisite and an outcome of well- decisions. Thus member engagement is designed Social CRM practices. The driving transactions. more we are willing to share with our And there is one more especially important members, the more they will be willing reason. This change is worthwhile because to share with us. But openness has its the only way to coordinate, capture, analyze, challenges and drawbacks. Social CRM will and make decisions based on the full force associations to be more intentional picture of member engagement is to be about what information they share versus systematic in our approach to the processes what information they keep private. and technology we use to accomplish our social media work.

Social CRM demands the participation of 3. Outreach and lead generation staff from nearly every department. In fact, Membership and marketing collaborate this inclusive, holistic approach is a defining to build lists and design member characteristic of the Social CRM philosophy. recruitment campaigns. Marketing designs With that in mind, each department should campaigns for products, services, and take responsibility for the slice of the pie that events. Communications coordinates suits their skill set. Consider how associations with government relations, publications, might map the work of the four basic areas and other departments to coordinate of a social CRM practice. (See page 7.) participation in public conversations on blogs and Twitter. 1. Social media monitoring and responding 4. Community management Communications department monitors Component relations, customer and assigns the appropriate people to service, the executive team, and many respond in public social spaces. They even other staff people should be involved. train responders how to do their job. Many associations will choose to hire a Publications and education will build and community manager to lead the charge. curate content around trending topics. Depending on the association’s structure, the community manager could sit in 2. Social profile mapping many different departments, especially Membership works to gather data, pull membership, communications, or in additional profile information, and government relations. Some associations analyze connectedness against renewal might choose to have multiple community rates. Marketing takes the lead on growing managers in different departments who outposts, identifying influencers, and collaborate. developing word-of-mouth marketing programs.

“The only way to coordinate, capture, analyze, and make decisions based on the full picture of member engagement is to be systematic in our approach to the processes and technology we use to accomplish our social media work.”

ow that we’ve defined Social CRM, an @reply or a direct message from the main let’s tie all of this back to actual association Twitter account. N work. For the purposes of this white paper, let’s look at four areas: • Analyze trending topics, filtered by groups you are tracking in your database. For 1. Social media monitoring and responding example, you could have trending topics 2. Social profile mapping for members-only, or trending topics for 3. Outreach and lead generation member prospects. Build content around 4. Community management trending topics.

In this section, we’ll imagine a number • Track the association brand and industry of daily processes and projects that will keywords across the web, and respond when contribute to a Social CRM practice. appropriate. Hopefully you’re already trying to do some of this. Eventually, the goal will be to • Track important industry websites, and streamline these tasks with the help of good less prominent sites that mention the work habits and great technology. organization frequently.

Social media monitoring • Create curated monitoring reports to share and responding with key leaders in the organization, so that The work of monitoring and responding everyone shares a level of awareness about is the most basic social media work. Many conversations happening in social spaces. associations have someone doing this work using a variety of tools and independent Social profile mapping processes. The work looks a little different Social profile mapping is the process of when it’s integrated into an organization’s recording a contact’s social media data— Social CRM practice. Here’s what we mean: Twitter account, blog feed, Facebook profile, LinkedIn account, Flickr account, or some • Record and track social media combination of any of these and other social interactions alongside email and member sites. Taking this a step further, some social sites service interactions. (like Twitter) allow you to map the relationships between members. So you would be able • Triage inquiries, assign the appropriate to record that Lindy is following Maddie and person in the organization to respond, Elizabeth, and Maddie is following Lindy and and enable them to respond directly Elizabeth, but Elizabeth is following Maddie through social media channels. For and not Lindy. Social profile mapping is a big example answer a Twitter inquiry with job, and it creates some interesting possibilities.

7 Share • www.socialfish.org ©2011 SocialFish Basics of a Social CRM practice Here’s what the work might look like: “Remember, you don’t have to do it all. Instead, you’ll want to gradually • Record a member’s social media data in introduce this work over time the database. This can be requested on ” the membership form, entered manually Outreach and lead generation over time, or added using a social A big part of Social CRM is identifying discovery service. (See Social Discovery potential new members and customers. on page 11.) This work is vital if you hope When you’re engaging members in public to integrate monitoring filtered by your spaces, there are a lot of opportunities to database. identify people who are not yet a part of the association, but should be. Here’s what • Grow your official outposts—the pages, we mean: groups, or accounts that your organization owns on public social networking sites • Build a list of people following your like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others. social media sites who are not members. Track members in your database who Design a member recruitment process are on Facebook, but haven’t connected for them. with your Page, who are on LinkedIn but haven’t joined your Group, and who are • Build a list of people who are influential on Twitter, but haven’t followed the asso- in the industry, but who are not members. ciation. Then get them to connect to you. Find ways to involve them in the association, maybe as authors or speakers. • Build a better member profile. Fill in key demographic data points from public • Build a list of people who are connected information available on member’s public to many of your members in public social social profiles. Again, a social discovery spaces, like Twitter, but are not members. service can help accomplish this. Design a member recruitment process for them. • Map each member’s social connections. Analyze member connectedness • Participate in public conversations. For against renewal rates to see if there is a example, comment on prominent blogs, predictable correlation. participate in industry Twitter chats, accept invitations into member-created • Identify members with large networks social sites. Think of this as an extension and influence within your membership. of your member relations, public relations, Design word-of-mouth marketing or government relations, depending on programs that involve your influencers in the topic of the conversation. a mutually beneficial relationship.

• Design campaigns for membership, • Build a list of at-risk members based on events, and other association offerings the map of social connections you’ve that are appropriate for your social media made. (Those who are not connected audiences. Track the results. to other members are the ones at-risk.) Reach out to them to see if there is some “ Association executives who are way they’d like to get more engaged. adopting Social CRM practices • Facilitate and nurture member should focus 80% of their efforts on interactions. Many associations will make changing work habits, and 20% of the member-only section of their website their efforts on changing technology a social work space. Ideally, interactions in and tools. that space will also be a part of the Social ” CRM practice.

Community management • Involve members in decision-making When we refer to community management in new ways. Associations will learn to in this context, we are talking about use their Social CRM practice to solicit deepening relationships with members. This ideas and build consensus at all levels is the work of actually engaging members, of the membership. You’ll be gathering making them feel like they are a part of and analyzing feedback from many more the organization, and motivating them to voices. MyStarbucksIdea1 is an example take action. This work can happen both on website designed to enable this type of your own website or community platform, work in a corporate environment. or on public social networking platforms. Here’s how that work fits into a Social CRM Now that you’ve come this far, you can practice. probably brainstorm many more ways to take advantage of this marriage between • Empower more staff to connect with process and people, data and technology. members through social media channels, Remember, you don’t have to do it all. and record those interactions so there Instead, you’ll want to gradually introduce is continuity for the member, should the this work over time—beginning with the staff person leave. work that can have the biggest impact with the least pain for the people trying to do the work.

echnology can also play a big part it easy to track mentions over time, and in easing the pain of adopting Social curate a report for your executives. Social T CRM practices. You’ll still need to do media monitoring should be integrated the work to imagine and build good work with your AMS system. On the corporate habits, but many parts of the work can side, Saleforce, a leading CRM system, is be automated and streamlined to some now integrating with Radian6. In a perfect degree. world, we’d like to see social media monitoring that recognizes members, and There are thousands of tools out there that can filter by member mentions only. We label themselves as Social CRM. It seems no haven’t seen it yet. two tools do the same thing, and they fall into a number of categories. For simplicity— Social Media Monitoring Tools because this stuff is anything BUT simple— • Google Reader and Google Analytics we’ve narrowed the list of technologies • Lithium Social Media Monitoring that contribute to Social CRM down to • Radian6 6 that we feel are most applicable to associations right now. We’ve even named a few companies you may have heard about Social Media Management that fall under each category. Many of these Systems (SMMS) companies work across several categories. Sometimes referred to as social media We did the best we could, keeping in mind marketing tools, or campaign management that our goal was to simplify. Here goes: tools, social media management systems are designed to streamline the process 1. Social Media Monitoring of posting and responding through social 2. Social Media Management/ media channels. These tools often have Marketing Systems (SMMS) monitoring capabilities as well. But the 3. Social Discovery real value of an SMMS is the ability to 4. Email Systems enable multiple users for official association 5. Communities accounts, assign follow up duties, manage 6. Association Management Systems posting work flows and schedule posts according to an editorial calendar. Social Media Monitoring Tools in this category are designed to filter Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) the web. Depending on the tool, you can • Hootsuite filter by brand mentions, keywords, specific • Objective Marketer websites, and even sentiment in some cases. • Spredfast The more sophisticated tools also make

Social Discovery author, they can see that author’s latest blog Tools in this category make it easy to find post. They might realize that points from the members’ social media profiles and map post would make a good addition to the relationships between members. Most of article and mention it, earning important these services take the email address in social brownie points at the same time. your database and compare it against public social media profile data associated with Email Marketing Services that email address. Social discovery has • Constant Contact been causing controversy in the news—the • Exact Target amount of information you can uncover • Mailchimp is astounding, and the privacy issues that • Marketo brings up are serious. But used responsibly, social discovery can give you a much more Email Add-ons holistic view of your members, and help you • Xobni serve them better. • Rapportive Social Discovery Services “ Social CRM refers both to a business • Fliptop strategy for managing customer • JitterJam relationships in the age of social • Small Act media and the evolving technology Email Marketing Services that helps organizations do this. Email is such an important part of CRM, ” that we couldn’t leave it out of this Communities discussion of Social CRM. Tools in this Tools in this category help create social category help you connect with members connections on your website. This category and customers through email. This category could actually be broken into three parts: could be broken into two pieces—email Content Management Systems (CMS), marketing services, and enterprise email Community Platforms, and Social Sign On add-ons (meaning extensions to your staff’s services. work email). On the email marketing side, our wish would be to make it easy for your Content Management Systems often have marketing team to segment lists based on a member-only section that gives you a social discovery data. On the enterprise lot of information about your members email side, we’d like all staff to be able to and their browsing habits. More and more, see social discovery data in context as they these member-only sections are adding send an email. For example, if someone social features. Some CMSs have robust, from the publications staff is emailing an customizable community features that

often come with additional licensing or Communities (CMS) development fees. • Drupal • Ektron Community Platforms offer an alternative • Sharepoint to the typical member-only section. These • Wordpress platforms are developed to enable peer- to-peer communication, group forming, Communities (White label platforms with document sharing and more. Community AMS integrations) platforms have been very popular in the • Higher Logic association market, and there are many • MemberFuse players in the space. For the purposes of • Socious this Social CRM white paper, we’ll narrow • ThePort the list to market leaders with AMS Please see our white paper on community integrations. platforms for more. http://www.socialfish.org/whitepaper Social Sign On is a technology that enables a website to connect to social platforms Communities (Social Sign On) like Facebook, Twitter, Google, or LinkedIn • Gigya among others. The idea is that when a • Janrain member (or potential member) comes to your site, they use their login from one of Association Management Systems these other platforms, and authorize an This is a familiar category to many exchange of information. In that way you association executives. The AMS is a can automate some level of social discovery powerful member database tool that tracks for that person. You can also show them transactions and more. It’s similar to CRM members in your database that they are tools like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics already connected to through their social CRM, with a membership management graph. For example, I go to your site for the twist. We’d like to see the AMS market first time. Realizing that your association is take a leadership role in developing Social right up my alley, I create a web profile. I CRM solutions for associations. Just like the choose to connect to your website using associations they serve, the AMS needs to my LinkedIn credentials. You preload my evolve, or be left behind. These systems member profile and show me that 15 of must capture and account for social media my LinkedIn connections are also members interactions—and then make sense of the of your association. Feeling good about avalanche of data those interactions provide. my decision, I give you my credit card As the central repository of membership information and become a member on the data, we see the AMS as a critical foundation spot. Sounds pretty good, right? for the work of a Social CRM practice.

AMS (Market Leaders) What about our other technology • Avectra systems? • Aptify When you consider all of the other • TMA Resources systems that we left out of this list— • iMIS learning management, event registration, • MemberClicks expo management, job boards, accounting • NimbleUser (built on Salesforce platform) and ecommerce, help desk systems, • ProTech (built on Microsoft Dynamics business intelligence dashboards—you can CRM platform) imagine how complex this stuff can get. Please see this list maintained by our friend But again, if you look at your organization’s and colleague Wes Trochlil. http://www. work habits first, you can find places where effectivedatabase.com/AMSVendors.shtml it makes sense to streamline, and make your technology decisions accordingly.

Avectra Social CRM for Associations

Avectra (who helped pay for this paper) is That’s the theory part. The technology part working to build all 6 Key Social Media of social media seems very complicated right Technologies into netFORUM. Meanwhile, now, but eventually, it should become the we’re working with them on an ambitious easy part. In March of 2011, Avectra took project to explore the implications of the first step toward their version of a Social Social CRM for associations. We’ve been CRM for Associations. At this point, they’ve consulting with them on Social CRM trends added monitoring, reply capabilities, social and applications, and we’re inviting you to discovery, and community management participate in our conversations around this capabilities. They are also working on deep subject. We are doing a blog series on the reporting and lead scoring. We expect Avectra blog, where we encourage you to other AMS companies will be fast followers. join us in debating these ideas: we’re hosting We believe this is what our market needs, some in-person discussions (please contact especially as associations become more us if you are interested in participating!) certain of their social media objectives and we’ll be presenting a session at ASAE’s and the role social media plays in their Annual Meeting in August of 2011. This membership initiatives. As these capabilities white paper is the first in a series of papers begin to be added into the tools associations we’ve planned to map how associations can are already using, association executives adopt a more holistic Social CRM model. will be in a better position to focus on the

process changes we all need to make.

ven though we are all cautious in the face of change, and we all E have internal and external hurdles to overcome, associations have a major advantage over corporate Social CRM http://www.socialfish.org practitioners. Most big consumer brands 202-713-5343 are not used to having real relationships with customers. But associations are. It could be argued that all association work Lindy Dreyer is meant to engage members and deepen [email protected] their relationship with the organization. The http://twitter.com/lindydreyer work of Social CRM feels different, but the mindset is a natural extension of the mission. Maddie Grant, CAE [email protected] Associations are still doing a lot of http://twitter.com/maddiegrant experimenting with social media, and it’s no surprise that few association professionals © 2011 SocialFish have been able to focus sufficiently on Please share this and quote from it freely, just deeper social media work—deciding what remember to link back to this, the original information to capture and how to analyze source. it and apply it to business decisions. What concerns all of us, especially in these early Thank you to Avectra for their days, is finding the time to give this work support of this white paper. the attention it requires. Not to mention building (or hiring) the social media expertise to work through the process www.avectra.com changes and technology implementation. http://twitter.com/avectra

Associations are changing, and so is the The costs of writing, designing and producing technology that supports us. As you begin this white paper were shared between SocialFish and Avectra, in order to be able adopting Social CRM strategies, apply the to provide this as a free resource to the business maxim, “go slow to go fast.” Taking association community. After all, there is no the time now to rethink the way you work charge for awesomesauce. will take a lot of patience and persistence. But eventually, you’ll have an infrastructure in place that will enable you to focus on what you want to do with social media and less on how you’re going to do it.