Last Updated: February 16, 2024



Everyone wants to stand out from the crowded waters of content marketing. Competition is fierce, and it becomes more challenging to engage your new members using available content.

Personalized content is a great way to deliver the most relevant message to your members through the right channel. This is the reason why 88% of marketers claim that their clients want customized content. According to another study, 51% of the organizations got a 300% increase in ROI that leaned toward personalization in all possible means of communication.

Let’s explore the 11 smart ways content can be tailored to create a unique member experience.

Key Takeaways

• Personalized content helps deliver relevant messages to members through the right channels.
• It's crucial to gather and analyze data about your members to offer relevant, personalized content, enhancing member engagement and satisfaction.
• By segmenting members into different groups based on their preferences and behaviors, you can create more targeted and effective communication strategies.
• Tailored emails and social media ads can significantly boost engagement by addressing the specific interests and needs of your members.
• Offering member-only content and utilizing advanced AI technologies can create a unique and immersive experience, encouraging long-term membership commitment.

What is Content Personalization?

Content personalization is a common practice that helps organizations and associations to
deliver exclusive experiences to their members. It uses member personas and data analytics to build a unique experience between your organization and members.
It is also referred to as one-to-one marketing because each content type (including emails, and digital communities) is tailored to members.

The goal of personalization is to meet the members' needs more effectively, making interactions faster and easier, and increasing overall satisfaction and retention rates.

You can establish your brand awareness, drive engagement, and increase member loyalty using content personalization. Knowing your members’ needs and preferences will help you better connect with them and improve your future campaigns.

Read more: 8 Ways to Use Content to Acquire and Engage Your Members
 

What are the Benefits of Personalization for Membership Organizations

All Membership organizations thrive on engaging their members effectively. Here are some reasons why personalizing your content can help you build a thriving community:

• Enhanced Member Engagement: Personalization makes members feel valued and understood. By receiving content and offers that align with their interests and needs, members are more likely to engage with your organization.
• Increased Member Retention: Tailored experiences can lead to higher satisfaction levels, making members more likely to renew their memberships. Personalized communication helps in building stronger, long-lasting relationships.
• Improved Communication Efficiency: You can reduce information overload by tailoring communications to member preferences and behavior. This leads to more effective communication, as members receive only relevant information.
• Data-Driven Insights: Personalization requires data collection and analysis. This data can provide valuable insights into member preferences and behavior, aiding in strategic decision-making.
• Enhanced Member Recruitment: It can make your marketing efforts more effective. Prospective members are more likely to be attracted to an organization that seems to understand and cater to their specific interests and needs.
• Better Member Experience: Overall, personalization contributes to a more positive member experience. Happy members are the best advocates for your organization, often leading to word-of-mouth referrals.

What are Content Personalization Tools?

Content personalization tools are software solutions that are designed to tailor digital content to the individual preferences, interests, and behavior of your members (both current and prospects).

These tools play a crucial role in enhancing user experience, engagement, and satisfaction in various digital platforms like websites, apps, and email marketing campaigns.

Here are some content personalization tools that you can consider:

1. Glue Up AI Copilot

Glue Up AI Copilot is the First Global AI-powered Engagement Management Cloud that helps you empower your community and forge deep connections with your members.

The intelligent writing assistant can generate emails, surveys, and event content for you based on your prompts.

Designed specifically for community use, this communication platform features a tone and writing style that reflect the characteristics of member organizations.

The tool is embedded within Glue Up’s AMS and is available in the respective modules. For further information on the product and how to use it, you can check out this article.

2. Adobe Target

Adobe Target is another content personalization tool that allows for the testing and customization of content across websites and apps.

It uses AI and machine learning to automate targeting and deliver real-time personalization. You can use it for A/B testing, multivariate testing, and automated personalization.

3. Optimizely

Optimizely is mainly known for its experimentation and A/B testing capabilities.

Optimizely also provides personalization features that enable you to tailor experiences based on user data and behavior.

If you want to improve personalization on your membership site and enhance your members’ digital experience, you can use this software.

4. HubSpot

HubSpot offers inbound marketing tools as well as personalization features, particularly for content management and marketing automation.

It is ideal for small to medium-sized organizations for personalized marketing campaigns and content management.

How to Deliver Personalized Content?

Now that you understand what personalized content means, it's time to deliver the right experiences for your members.

1. Gather Member Data

To personalize content, you need to understand better your target audience and what they expect from your memberships. Defining their needs, preferences, and interests is a must for delivering customized content.

While tracking and analyzing your data, figure out their demographics, location, patterns, spending power, and what devices and browsers your customers use. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to gather data from your members. You can create surveys or opinion polls to collect their feedback.

Read more: 4 Effective Strategies to Gather Member Feedback for Associations

Another way to track engagement is via digital communities. If you have a private online member community for your members, you can analyze their engagement, interests, and issues to improve your services.

You can also benefit from Google Analytics and social listening tools to learn more about your audience and obtain valuable data to deliver personalized content.

2. Use Segmentation

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After gathering data, analyze it and segment it into groups.

Using segmentation is essential for content personalization, and you can do it by different parameters: the more criteria, the better the digital member experience.

Read more: How to Improve Digital Member Experience Using Association Management Software?

You can segment the audience by the following metrics:

Demographic Data and Interests

Segment your members based on their age, gender, median income, and other demographics, then analyze the trends others have found. A number of studies have revealed what different demographic groups expect from businesses. Use that data to create segments for personalization.

Once you have segmented them based on their demographics, ask yourself the following questions:

• What marketing plans should be developed for different groups based on their needs and marketing responses?
• How many customized content marketing plans do I need to create to satisfy all my members' demands?

Engagement Score

Demographic segmentation is an important step forward. However, adding engagement scores can take it to a whole new level.

Members start their journey on the front line, participating in small and easy ways such as opening emails and liking posts. The idea is to motivate them to climb the engagement ladder and develop that true emotional connection with you.

Many organizations use this ladder as a tool for visualizing their marketing plans for different groups of members. This is because you can't expect members to leap directly to the top, but to climb the levels one at a time, deepening their relationship with each step.

An effective CRM can be a valuable tool in this situation. It can track members' points as each interaction accumulates. After reaching a certain engagement threshold, the CRM will move them to their new marketing group. As they progress, they will receive new messages to help them move forward.

The best thing about CRM is that you can observe members becoming more engaged. As you send personalized messages to those with lower scores, you'll see them interact more and their scores improve.

You can also monitor your competitors and figure out how they do for the same audience. The SEO competitor analysis tool made by SE Ranking is an excellent solution to learn more about their strategies and find their content gaps to stand out from the crowd and meet their expectations.

3. Create Interactive Quizzes

Interactive quizzes are an excellent content marketing tool for effectively personalizing content. Thanks to their entertaining nature, people use them as pleasant things to do.

Take this way to your advantage to promote your content. You can use free tools like Canva to create fun and personalized quizzes to increase engagement and conversions. You can also integrate the results with the Glue Up CRM to get a consolidated report.

4. Use IP Geolocation API

Using IP Geolocation API is a great way to get valuable and accurate customer data such as country, language, internet provider, currency, and many more. For example, some potential members from another country are interested in your organization’s services.

While scrolling your website, they need their target language, currency, and other regionalized options to simplify the signup process.

The IP Geolocation API allows you to send personalized content, run targeted advertising, and build a better user experience for those who want to sign up by automatically filling in the signup forms.

Choosing the suitable IP Geolocation API such as IPwhois helps deliver accurate data and easily integrate it as per your preferences to make a great impression on your potential members.

5. Use Gamification

The use of personalization along with gamification can enhance the membership experience, and show them content that meets their needs and interests. It is no wonder that many companies also create interactive games to collect data about their target members.

Different interactive elements are taken from games, such as leaderboards, playable ads, progress bars, badges, and many more. Using these elements can engage your members in a fun experience and encourage them to take action.

Read more: Boost Attendee Engagement at Virtual Events With Event Gamification

Using gamification marketing campaigns, you can gather valuable data, add new members to your email lists, and deliver personalized membership benefits including discounts and offers.

6. Send Personalized Emails

Once you collect valuable data about your audience, you can use it and surprise them with tailor-made messages. Using personalization makes your members feel selective attention and focus on their needs and interests. The better you understand their preferences, the more personalized emails you can send.

If you build location-based startup credibility, you can use this data and include your audience’s location in your email. Include the recipient’s name in the subject line and the body to add a more personal touch.

You can deliver personalized discounts based on your audience’s history and a personalized image to achieve great results. These emails shouldn’t require complex data mining or shortcodes and conjure feelings of individuality and exclusivity.

Read more: 8 Email Marketing Strategies to Engage Association Members

7. Give Drip Content to Your New Members

Creating content for new members using the drip method is a great way to educate and engage them on a long-term basis.

Dripping content is a method of releasing content to your membership site users in parts. Your members receive content bit by bit over time so that they can access the entire library at their leisure.

This content is available to members on a pre-set schedule based on different personas or needs, and you can deliver personalized content that relates to members’ needs or interests. Examples of such content include courses and training materials that you can make available on your membership site or online community.

You should publish this content on a schedule instead of all at once to give them enough time to digest information and take action.

8. Create Retargeted Ads on Social Media

Retargeting is a great way to send targeted ads to people who’ve already interacted with your organization.

Let’s say your potential members visited your membership pricing page without signing up. There is still a good chance to recapture their attention using retargeting ads on social media.

You can also collect member contact information from your CRM and create a list to deliver retargeted ads on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. You can boost posts to reach your potential members and suggest similar content based on their browsing history.

You can also deliver recommendations based on the activity of other members to make them feel personal.

9. Support One-on-One Engagement

One-on-one marketing uses tools like social media to interact with individual members to build relationships with members and increase brand awareness. If you want to deliver a personalized experience to your social media audience, some platforms can help you better interact with them.

“It’s essential to use particular tools. You can get the most out of social monitoring tools to quickly catch relevant mentions and respond to them,” said Sam Meenasian from Business Insurance USA. Another way is to use social CRM to personalize your communications in real time. You can improve customer service and use their details to enhance your communications.

10. Add Members-Only Perks to Your Website

It is a great idea to create member-only perks and make them visible on your blog posts, guides, or other pages only for your members.

You can create premium content for that section that will allow them to benefit from little perks, especially if they don’t know about that. Here are some extra things you can do:

• Add limited-time offers to your blog posts or guides.
• Give additional helpful tips or ideas to your guides.
• Include extra links to your valuable resources.
• Provide a coupon code or bonus offer on a page related to your member-only discounts.

Notice that you should inform logged-out members about hidden valuable content on website pages, or you can just add it to your website and let them discover it.

Thanks to personalization, adding these members-only perks will make them feel exceptional and dedicated. Show that you can care about your members by offering exclusive bonuses for each one toward your website or store.

11. Use the power of AR and VR technologies

Today, many companies use AR and VR technologies to take the member experience to the next level. They both drive great innovation in member engagement and experience.

There is for sure that no technology can replace the physical touch and testing of products and chat with shop assistants. But using the power of Artificial Intelligence, VR, and AR can boost overall member service and replicate the in-store experience for those who aren’t reluctant to visit the store.

With chatbots, you can easily automate personalization, interact with new members, answer their questions, and convert them into potential members. You can also implement AR and VR in your marketing strategy to promote your products and create a memorable experience.

Bonus Tip: Use Association Management Software (AMS)

Association Management Software helps you deliver customized member experience by leveraging the behavioral data from your members' profiles.

An excellent example is sending customized emails to members based on their interests and demographics. You can share content based on their interests, show them local events, or offer them discounts at retail stores.

An AMS can also help you in sending a follow up emails to your prospect members which further helps you acquiring new members as well. For more information regarding the software, get a free consultation here. 

Real-World Examples of Content Personalization

1. American Marketing Association (AMA)

AMA is the leading example when it comes to improving member engagement using content personalization.

AMA segments its members based on industry, job title, and interests. After that, they send targeted emails containing content relevant to each segment.

Additionally, AMA uses a recommendation engine on its website to suggest articles, webinars, and other resources based on a member's past browsing behavior.

2. The Marketing Society of Kenya

The Marketing Society of Kenya improved its member experience by using Glue Up's AMS software.

The campaign feature (specifically the merge tags), helped them personalize emails for their members, increasing email opens and conversions. They also increased event engagement by sending out effective event invite campaigns from the software.

2. National Retail Federation (NRF)

NRF offers online courses and certifications for its members. They use personalization to create unique learning paths for each member based on their individual needs and goals.

NRF also recommends events to its members based on their industry, location, and interests.

3. Boston Chamber of Commerce

The Boston Chamber of Commerce offers a member directory that allows members to connect based on their shared interests and industries. The Chamber also promotes events to its members based on their individual needs and goals.