Millennials will represent 40% of the total working population by 2020. If you haven’t already, it may be time review your association’s mission, communications, programs, and events to make sure you’re meeting the needs of this generation. But what do these young professionals really want anyway?
During this webinar, Ted Dann, Business Development Representative (and Millennial!) at WebLink International will share how you may need to reassess your current membership strategy, and will give you 40 new, creative ideas for attracting, engaging and retaining your youngest members.
During the webinar, attendees will learn:
- The steps needed to evaluate and audit your current messaging and programs.
- Proven strategies for growing your organization through the millennial generation.
- How to meet the needs of a cross-generational membership.
- 40 awesome ideas for engaging millennials that you can begin implementing right away.
2. ABOUT WEBLINK
• Leading SaaS AMS Company
• Over 720 Association Customers; 5,500
Users; Supporting 650K Members
• Established in 1996
• Based in Indianapolis, Indiana
• 60 Employees
• 94% Customer Retention Rate
• 96% Average Daily Satisfaction Rating
5. WebLink Connect™
Association Management
Software Solution
One web-based centralized
database
Prospects, members, non-
members and all reps in
same system
Financials, events, email,
committees, website,
reporting
8. Presentation Overview
1. Evaluate
2. Realign
3. 40 Out of the Box Ideas to Engage
Millennials
Make sure to tweet your questions and
share your thoughts and ideas using
#weblink
11. Revisit Your Goals
Examine your past goals
Millennial marketing goals may
include:
– Historical millennial event attendance
– Social shares related to YP events
– Millennial fan base growth on social
networks
Revisit
Your
Goals
12. Reexamine Your Target
Audience
An effective marketing and
communications strategy is built upon
well-constructed member profiles and
include:
– Demographic data (age, gender, income,
amount of education)
– Psychographic data (attitudes, interests,
values, opinions, lifestyle)
Reexam
ine
Target
Audienc
e
16. Meet the Millennial
• Largest generation in the U.S.
• Cause oriented – Political, ethical,
genuine and authentic
• Strongly influenced by peers
• Seek adventure and experience
• Treat Assets (time, money, etc.) as
having equal value
• Technology
• Teamwork makes the dream work
attitude
17. Take an Inventory
Evaluate your digital presence
What digital and social platforms
are you utilizing?
Assess whether or not you are
participating on the right web
channels
Take an
Inventor
y
18. Evaluate Your Messaging
Which types of messages (texts, blog
posts, video, webinars, etc.) perform the
best when communication with
millennials?
Do your words and content resonate with
your audience?
What is the level of engagement of your
millennial audience? How often are they
sharing your material?
Evaluat
e Your
Messagi
ng
19. Measure Your Performance
Identify the right measurement tools to measure
your goals. For example:
– If your goal was to acquire new members or
increase event attendance, use association
management software to track your progress.
– If you’re seeking an increase in website traffic to
certain pages or content, use Google Analytics to
monitor your progress. Additionally, tools such as
Facebook Insights allow you to track the behavior
of specific demographics who engage in specific
types of content.
– You can use project-specific landing pages to track
which members are downloading specific pieces of
content.
Measure
Your
Performa
nce
21. Revamp Millennial
Engagement
Millennial immersion simplified:
1. Realign your general focus
2. Create a welcoming environment
3. Focus on front end growth activities
22. In With the Old
The Singular Approach
– Young Professionals Programs (i.e., a program which
designed to nurture Young Professionals as a
segmented group)
Young professionals aren’t being seen as
“serious” members in the eyes of tenured
professionals
23. In With The New
Create experiences that direct organizational
focus to immerses millennials in:
– The overall goal of the organization
– Professional recognition and development within the
industry
Create an environment that is equally as inviting
to young professionals as it is to tenured
members
24. Set SMART Goals
Always remember to set goals that are
specific, measurable, attainable,
relevant and time-bound
1. Increase millennial new member growth
by 25% over the next 3 months.
2. Increase millennial member social
engagement across all platforms by 50%
over the next 3 months.
3. Increase millennial member attendance
at the annual bonfire by 50% in 2015.
25. Things to Keep in Mind
Don’t over complicate
Ask
Inform and educate
Promote leadership
Encourage participation
Use “gamification”
Engage
26. Analyze & Adjust
Even great organizations need constantly tweak
their processes and the best make changes to
their initiatives while they are going through with
them
35. Create Leadership + Learning
Opportunities
Create the opportunity for
your millennial members
to collaborate, continue
their education and be
community leaders
45. Master Something New!
Learning doesn’t always have to
feel boring or forced
Give millennials the chance to
learn something just for fun
Host events focused on the
enhancement of lifestyle skills
Before we dive into the 40 ways that you can use to engage young professionals, you first need to evaluate your existing strategy.
This can be done in 5 simple steps and will give you clear direction in terms of what you need to do to realign your strategy to effectively engage millennials and keep them coming back for more.
First things first, you need to revisit your goals.
Examine your past goals (if you don’t have any yet, this will be the first thing you want to do!)
Are you hitting your projections? Do your current goals align with your organization’s performance?
Revise if necessary, making sure to incorporate newly identified objectives
An Effective Strategy will target a specific group of individuals..
Use free tools such as Google Analytics Demographic Report – Check out how to be the Smartest Person in Your Association
Facebook Insights
Twitter Analytics
LinkedIn Analytics
to help you understand the behavior of your target audience
Neatly 80 million Millennials – surpassing the baby boomers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2014/12/29/5-traits-that-define-the-80-million-millennial-customers-coming-your-way/
Millennials engage with causes to help other people, not institutions.
Millennials support issues rather than organizations.
Millennials prefer to perform smaller actions before fully committing to a cause.
Millennials are influenced by the decisions and behaviors of their peers.
Millennials treat all their assets (time, money, network, etc.) as having equal value.
Millennials need to experience an organization’s work without having to be on site.
Analytics
If your digital marketing message is in line with your customer’s expectations, you’ll see high levels of engagement with your branded materials, as well as a high number of social shares as people pass your content on to others. If you aren’t yet seeing these results, this could indicate a mismatch between your company’s messaging and your customers’ interests.
After you have evaluated your existing millennial engagement strategy and set new goals that meet your new objectives (event attendance, increased new millennials membership, increased millennial engagement, etc.)
A Singular Approach?
In this context, a “Singular Approach” would entail going after Young Professionals with just a stereotypical Young Professional Program. This creates segments in your association and promotes tenure based recognition rather than merit. We believe this to be a negative because tenure doesn’t indicate experience.
Every organization is different – some have business based membership, some have individual based membership
Trying to continue the ENGAGEMENT, it is not so much about the membership..
Some members simply cut the check for the membership – when Millennials don’t always have the money to do that - they want engagement
Jumping from A to C instead of A to B
A being potential members, B being growth activities, C is a new membership level.
Problems with this singular approach:
Young professionals aren't experiencing a value proposition of being seen as serious members of their profession in the eyes of tenured professionals and vice versa.
It’s not just about acquiring new millennial members, it’s about engaging them, retaining, and keep them coming back for more.
This is not a program, it’s an immersion. Give the millennials the opportunity to commit themselves to your mission
Earlier we talked about revaluating your strategy.
Based on your analysis, revamp existing/set new SMART goals that adhere to your organization’s primary objectives.
Some examples inlcude….
Don’t over complicate the “millennial”
Don’t be afraid to reach out and simply ASK for ideas
Build activities designed to inform and educate young professionals about your association and what it can do for their personal and professional lives
Incorporate young professional voices into decision making through the creation of committees
Use “gamification” to create rewards or recognition for achieving particular milestones
You are not creating a YP Program, you are creating a strategy to engage young professionals.
Great question just came in! Gamification is essentially point scoring, and in this context creates merit recognition to other areas of activity, typically it is used as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.
Now that we have evaluated and realigned our strategy we need to ANALYZE and ADJUST. Did you achieve your goals? What could you have done differently? What did you learn?
According to a survey conducted by the American Press Institute, Social networks are an extraordinarily important part of Millennials’ digital lives, in part because social networks have become much more than a way to connect about personal matters.
In fact, 88% of those surveyed get news from Facebook, with 57 percent doing it at least once per day and 44 percent doing it several times per day.
http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/millennials-social-media/
According to Nielsen: 85% of Millennials aged 18-24 own mobile devices
Utilize group messaging apps to send your millennial members updates about upcoming events and professional development opportunities
The more events they participate in –they get points and can increase their level of participation
It gives them an incentive to come to events AND spread the word to their peers about upcoming events
Summit
Summit Plug!
September 30 – October 2, LAS VEGAS
CAE Credits, Industry Experts, Fun, Networking, Idea Sharing, Training
For example, you could host an Instagram Photo Challenge, encouraging members to post photos that pertain to a specific topic each day of the week using a specific hashtag. Each day, select the best photo for a prize!
I love it when people do this to something I share with individuals…..Make your members voices heard. If your millennial members share a great piece of content or image relevant to your organization, repost that material and give them credit.
Why use hashtags?
It spreads the word and builds awareness, so create a hashtag unique to your program to create a sense of community, promote events, etc.
Create committees for Yps in your association – Community Service, Marketing, etc.
Allow young professionals themselves to run the show, incorporate them into the decision making process, give them the opportunity to take on a leadership role
This will not only benefit your organization, but it will also help your grow your millennial engagement.
Bike/Wine event
Bike/Wine event
Trash pick up, gardening,
Create a leadership committee within your young professional’s group and allow them to develop strategic objectives to enhance the local community….