Insights

Most marketers are starting to realize the potential of video marketing. More than 500 million hours of YouTube videos are watched every day, and it’s been estimated that by 2019, more than 80 percent of all internet traffic will be for video. Video presents information faster and more intuitively than written content, and thanks to modern, lightning-fast internet speeds, streaming is easier and more reliable. Fortunately, there are some approachable ideas that can be handled even by amateurs, and have enough power to attract an initial audience: Tutorial Videos Tutorials have been a popular content archetype for years, and for good reason. People often rely on …

The old saying the “content is king” is true, but there’s no reason your content needs to be 100% text. By producing video content, you can reach a large audience with a fraction as much search competition as you’d face by optimizing for Google. Many marketers shy away from creating video content for one simple reason: it has a reputation for being expensive to produce. The reality is that producing great video content can be surprisingly cheap! In fact, once you add in the cost of ranking the content and reaching an audience, creating video content can often be cheaper …

Nonprofit organizations depend on two resources to fulfill their missions. One, of course, is money. The other resource – just as vital but perhaps even more scarce – is leadership. The dearth of strong leadership is only going to get worse as the nonprofit sector expands and baby boom executives retire. Over the next decade, it is estimated that nonprofits will need to find some 640,000 new executives, nearly two and a half times the number currently employed. To meet the growing demand for talent and new leaders, the nonprofit sector has little choice but to think and act in …

Being a leader can be a rewarding experience but it also means facing a host of anticipated and unexpected challenges. Learning how to respond to these challenges will help you grow and mature as a leader. As you learn to deal with difficult situations, you will hone your leadership skills. Don’t be discouraged — becoming an effective leader takes time and patience, which is even more true for Executive Directors with limited resources. Below are six qualities that you’ll want to hone if you’re aiming to succeed in the non-profit and association world as a stellar Executive Director: Authenticity. People …

More engagement equals more renewals, right? Maybe not. It turns out that some members don’t want to become more engaged, but if you understand what those members do want, you can keep them satisfied and renewing year after year. Knowing that engagement leads to retention, we exert a great amount of energy into getting members more engaged so they become more likely to renew. This works to get some members more involved, but others remain frustratingly aloof. Yet, we see some of those members continue to renew anyway, little engaged as they are. (“Mailbox members,” as they’re called.) Why? Well, …

Membership recruitment is a never-ending project. Every year, members leave your association—they retire, change jobs or professions, go out of business, lose their professional development budget, or just vanish for unknown reasons. As members go out the back door, you have to keep new ones coming in the front. What strategies will guide your plan for recruiting these new members? And what tactics will you use to achieve your recruitment goals? The easy way out is recycling membership recruitment tactics of the past. But the most successful associations do it differently. They encourage staff and volunteers to bring their creativity …

Email marketing is a tricky business. Do it right and you could have friends for life. But do it wrong and you could push away even your most loyal members. Yikes. To help you avoid the latter, we’ve put together a list of four email marketing tips that every association professional should know. Check it out! Create a compelling subject line You know that old expression, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression?” Well, that couldn’t be more true of association email marketing. When it comes to email marketing, you only get a few seconds to …

Once you’ve put time and money into creating great content, you need to drive traffic to it by testing out a variety of distribution channels, including social media, SEO, and ad networks. All of them can direct some traffic to your site, but if you want to get guaranteed, consistent traffic, focus your efforts on email. While social media and SEO have their benefits, email newsletters provide the most value because email delivers the highest click-through rate, and it’s the channel that converts the most people. In fact, 93% of B2B marketers reported using email to distribute their content in CMI/ …

On this date in 1970, Earth Day was celebrated for the very first time. Since then, people all over the world take part in honoring the Earth on this annual holiday. Today, the Van Petten Group team took some time to show our support for protecting the environment, and we hope you do too! Here are a few ways your association can celebrate Earth Day: Switch up your commute for the day. If you are lucky enough to live fairly close to your association’s office, bike to work! One less passenger off the road for 1 day can save over …