I've worked with several Membership Organizations throughout the years, all on their digital presence. Let's be clear - EVERYTHING IS DIGITAL. If you're a membership organization, you have NOTHING without a solid website, social media, email marketing, and now Voice apps on Alexa and Google Assistant.
And that's the front end, client-facing marketing side.
I haven't even gotten onto my soapbox about the backend admin, back office part yet.
I'm about to put some Management firms and Tech companies on blast, let's start with Memberclicks. Memberclicks is a ridiculously horrible proprietary software system, sold to Membership Management Firms as an all-in-one solution for membership websites, database management, member communications via forums, directories, email marketing and more.
Punchline: it doesn't work. You can't add features, their support sucks, and you feel like you're stuck in the dark ages. Oh, and the design blows chunks and doesn't convert.
Next up, MemberSuite and Higher Logic. Two separate organizations that don't integrate with one-another, yet weirdly at least a dozen membership organizations that I've worked directly with have noted that they need both in order to function. WHAT?
This is silly, people. Especially when the solution I've implemented more than a dozen times works way better, it's called WordPress + MemberPress + either BuddyPress or BuddyBoss, in this case, BuddyPress. Oh, and Mailchimp + Gravity Forms.
I worked with ISAConnection.org, the Association of Learning Providers, to not only redesign their website to increase member engagement by 35%, but also help them manage their own content, event registration forms, email marketing tagging and automation, and more - including pivoting to a virtual conference in 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
And of course, with more than 500 million people on Alexa and Google Assistant combined, this website is also voice activated using The Voice Designer WordPress plug-in.
If you're debating on a solution for your Membership organization, and feeling the pain of proprietary software systems and support out there, I highly encourage you to look into WordPress and MemberPress, and email me at paul@datadriven.design.
