By Brian Kell
Necessity is truly the mother of invention, as Marty Brochstein learned late last year. Desperate for fresh copy to fill his monthly member newsletter, the senior vice president of the Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association decided to survey his members with a few quick questions about what they expected in the year ahead.
The results of the survey afforded a fascinating snapshot of the industry. With pie charts generated by SurveyMonkey and salient observations from respondents, the story ran over four pages in the newsletter. It also provided LIMA's public relations firm a news story—76 percent of the companies that responded expected to grow—that it could pitch to the media.
Brochstein described his experience with this and other member surveys during an NYSAE Communications and Marketing Special Interest Group (SIG) held November 13 at LIMA's headquarters in the Empire State Building. The purpose of this SIG, which meets the second Wednesday of every month, from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., is to bring communications and marketing professionals to share some of their secrets of success and to discuss common challenges.
The November meeting was the group's third since the fall, each focusing on a single topic. The first was a discussion in which members shared effective email techniques—everything from ways to avoid the dreaded spam folder to strategies regarding effective subject lines. The second, which was devoted to search engine marketing, included a presentation by Jesse Eisenberg, manager of client strategy at Elite SEM, followed by a discussion among the attendees. The next meeting will be held on January 8, when the topic will be using social media effectively.
During the November meeting, Ariana Simmons discussed the pivotal role surveys have played at ALPFA, an association dedicated to developing Latino leaders, where she is chapter operations manager. "We've changed our programming and events based heavily on what we learned through membership surveys," she says. "We learned, for instance, while our college-age members were happy to attend evening events, our older members preferred breakfast or lunchtime meetings, and while younger members were more interested in content, our more established members wanted less content, more networking."
Sometimes, however, noted Lydia Neumann, director of the American Thoracic Society Foundation, noted the message from market research isn't definitive. Neumann told the group about her experience with focus groups testing messages to encourage donations to support the Foundation's lung research awards program. "There wasn't a single persuasive message that resonated with the members of the three focus groups we convened," she explained. "We did, though, learn that some messages were more compelling across all three groups—donors, lapsed donors, and never donors."
Neumann's colleague, Jennifer Ian, who is director of membership at the American Thoracic Society, noted that one of the most important reasons uncovered in a survey of international members not renewing was that they had intended to but had forgotten. "We also learned that a fairly high percentage of those surveyed didn't realize that their membership had even lapsed," said Ian, who noted that the majority of those survey said they would recommend membership to their colleagues.
The observation that some of the respondents didn't realize their membership has expired resonated with the other members of the SIG, who emphasized the importance of demonstrating value and engaging members—something that market research can enhance.
Among the other aspects of effective market research and its benefits noted during the meeting were:
- Generating data on the industry is itself a value to many members;
- Survey results can establish an association as an authoritative voice within the industry;
- When surveying members keep everything short, including subject lines and number of questions;
- Add a sense of urgency by asking members to respond within a brief period of time;
- When conducting focus groups, make sure the facilitator is a neutral party and well prepared with a sequence of questions to guide the conversation;
- An ideal number of focus group participants is eight to 10; and
- Recognize that the focus group observations cannot be projected on to the entire membership, but only those who share the demographics/characteristics of those who made up the focus group.
Brian Kell, co-chair of NYSAE's Communications and Marketing SIG, is senior director of communications and marketing, The American Thoracic Society, 25 Broadway, New York, NY 10004; 212-315-6442; www.thoracic.org.