We’ve broken it all down for you. We'll cover ✓ what an EMS is, ✓ how it differs from an AMS, ✓ and the top 10 things you can achieve with an EMS.
An Engagement Management System is a cloud-based member management platform. Because an EMS is purposely designed for associations, there's no costly integration or expensive programming. Everything you need for a 360° view of your membership is built right into this association software.
By avoiding customizations, an EMS costs less to own and operate year-over-year. It also easily integrates with best-of-breed solutions without compromising the upgrade path.
An EMS is purpose-built with:
We get this question a lot. Here's a breakdown:
An EMS is association software that combines real-time database management and web publishing into a single platform. It’s purpose-built for associations and features:
More traditional association software, such as Association Management Systems (AMS), were originally designed simply to manage contacts and perform transactions.
The AMS model left other functionality to be handled by third-party applications, which often created data silos because the functionality was not built in. These apps are also often not designed for member-centric organizations, which results in excessive customization to manage even the most basic association tasks.
(Source: 2024 Membership Performance Benchmark Report by iMIS)
We’ve compiled our Top 10 list of what you can achieve with an Engagement Management System:
With an EMS, you have one data source you can rely on — with no data silos. This SSoT brings all interactions with your members together in one database to provide a 360° view of:
The reliability, scalability, and flexibility that only an SSoT can deliver is essential for member-centric organizations.
Learn how to create an unforgettable member experience with The Ultimate Guide to Association Software.
With an EMS, you can use data-driven strategies to optimize the entire member journey. You'll enhance joining, onboarding, mentoring, product sales, event attendance, renewal, and more.
You can then use what you’ve learned to enhance and personalize the member experience by:
To meet your members’ ever-changing requirements, you need to use data to inform your decisions. In other words, your organization needs to be data-driven.
A purpose-built Engagement Management System provides a Single Source of Truth with a real-time, 360° view of your members. Use this robust business intelligence to:
An Engagement Management System is designed to leverage all of your data to create a personalized member experience and showcase the value of membership.
When you have a complete view of your members’ total engagement, your staff can deepen relationships and better deliver on the elements of your value proposition that are most meaningful to them.
Customizations can exponentially increase time, complexity, training, and maintenance costs of your system. With an EMS, just about everything you need comes standard because it was designed for associations right out of the box.
It offers purpose-built core platform functionality, exceptional departmental modules, and the flexibility/scalability of tight integrations with best-of-breed third-party applications.
And you won’t have to worry about upgrades and maintenance with an EMS. Upgrades are automatically performed to ensure your system remains up-to-date and operating at peak performance.
An EMS can manage the complicated billing and pricing scenarios that many member-centric organizations now require — with unlimited billing cycles. The right EMS system can:
(Source: 2024 Membership Performance Benchmark Report by iMIS)
When you have an Engagement Management System coupled with best-of-breed applications, you have a wealth of non-dues/non-membership fee revenue opportunities, including:
Some solutions on the market talk about integrating to thousands of applications. But when you drill down, you learn that most of these won’t work for member-centric organizations.
While most association functionality is already built-in, the right EMS will also tightly integrate with best-of-breed applications designed for associations. This includes connectors and bridges with Single Sign-On (SSO).
With these strong integration options, you have unlimited options to meet your organization’s specific needs without IT support.
Chances are you need to go through IT or consultants whenever you need to update your database, website, or dashboards. Not with an EMS. An Engagement Management System puts the control back in your hands so your staff can:
The right EMS will offer “No Code Integrations”, so you won’t need IT help to connect with the most popular applications on the market.
Workflows can help you increase member engagement and staff productivity by automating communications and manual tasks. An EMS can help you:
An Engagement Management System (EMS) offers a comprehensive suite of tools to meet the unique challenges of today's associations. You'll improve operations, engage members, and make better decisions with data-driven insights.
An EMS stands out because it was designed from the start for member-centric organizations. Without complex customizations, you'll manage member engagement, dashboards, data analysis, and more in a single platform. Embracing an EMS will help you position your association to thrive in 2024 and beyond.