Association
Avoid These Pitfalls in Your Association’s Digital Project
Even with the best intentions and powerful technology, association digital transformation efforts can go wrong.
Accurate data is the key to better decision making, increased member engagement, higher staff morale, and more.
Clean data isn't just a buzzword, it’s the foundation of your organization’s effective stewardship. To be truly useful, your data must be accurate, complete, up-to-date, consistent, and free from duplicates and inconsistencies. This won’t happen overnight, but these benefits will show why clean data is worth prioritizing.
Why Clean Data Matters for Associations:
Better Decision-Making
Clean data removes uncertainty. With accurate, trustworthy data, your executive team can make confident, well-informed business decisions. Bonus points if you have dynamic dashboards that make it easy to see trends in member acquisition, engagement, and retention.
Ideally, you've established a Single Source of Truth (SSoT) for your association. An SSoT brings all interactions with your members, donors and supporters together in one database. It includes:
- Joins
- Renewals
- Purchases
- Event registrations
- Publications
- Donations
- Professional education
- And more
This helps you learn from every member interaction and easily access real-time data.
Go from data silos to a Single Source of Truth
Operational Efficiency
Clean data ensures your systems and processes run smoothly. Data inaccuracies and inconsistencies lead to delays and wasted resources. When data is clean, workflows are streamlined, and teams can focus on high-value tasks rather than fixing data errors.
Example: The National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) were burdened with data silos. NACDD staff had to manually reconcile data, which made for inconsistent and unreliable member data. Since establishing a Single Source of Truth and focusing on clean data, they've reduced manual tasks by over 50% and save 20-30 hours per week. Now they have automated data integrity checks and real-time reporting. Read more about how NACDD simplified operations and improved data accuracy.
Complimentary Guide
The Data Wrangler's Playbook
Your data is one of your most valuable assets. But do you have an expert (or team of experts) specifically tasked with keeping it clean, up-to-date, and reliable?
We define a Data Wrangler, help you identify your biggest data challenges, and lay out the 10-step plan to tame your data.
Member Personalization and Engagement
To deliver a personalized member experience through your website/engagement portal, email communications, and social media, you need to start with clean data. It’s essential for delivering highly targeted campaigns. You can tailor content based on rules or personas and even offer predictive content that guides members to the next step.
When you have a complete view of your members’ total engagement, your staff can use this to deepen relationships and deliver exceptional service and support.
Higher Level of Staff Trust and Morale
Data discrepancies between your departments or systems can cause confusion and mistrust. Clean data fosters a culture of trust, enabling alignment across your various teams.
You no longer worry about manually re-entering data from one application to another, or applications not talking to one another.
Preparing for Emerging Technologies
The importance of clean data goes beyond your current needs. Utilizing a single source of reliable data positions your organization to take advantage of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and predictive analysis that can greatly impact your organization’s future.
Related article from the iMIS Blog: What the AI-Enabled Association of the Future Looks Like
How to Clean Up Your Association's Member Data
As we all know, clean data can be harder than it sounds. Get started with our free guide, The Data Wrangler's Playbook. You'll be ready to put a plan into place to turn data chaos into strategic success.
This guide will help you:
- Define the critical role of a Data Wrangler. This important role will drive better decision-making, enhance operational efficiency, and minimize risk.
- Identify and conquer your association's biggest data challenges.
- Lay out the 10-step plan to clean your association's data and keep it fresh going forward.
