An engagement management system (EMS) streamlines membership management and engagement. Learn how an EMS combines the functionality of an AMS, CRM, and CMS.
Whether you’re running an association, nonprofit, or union, member engagement is the engine that drives your learning, networking, advocacy, and retention efforts. But keeping up with today’s expectations for personalization and digital convenience can be overwhelming.
That’s where an engagement management system (EMS) comes in. An EMS is more than just a tracking tool—it helps you create dynamic, personalized digital experiences that keep members coming back, participating, and renewing.
In this guide, we’ll break down the core functions of an EMS and explain how it differs from a traditional association management system (AMS). You’ll learn how the right EMS can help you increase retention, grow revenue, and deliver more value to your members.
An engagement management system (EMS) is a cloud-based membership management solution purpose-built to meet the needs of associations and other membership-based organizations.
It brings together the essential digital tools needed to manage and deepen member relationships in a single, unified system. Essentially, an EMS is comprised of:
By combining these tools into one platform, an EMS helps your organization boost member engagement, centralize data, reduce time spent switching between tools, and deliver consistent member experiences across channels.
As the world’s only EMS, iMIS has helped more than 4,000 organizations unlock a 360-degree view of their members to supercharge engagement, provide personalized experiences, and tailor their membership program to fit their exact needs and goals.
An EMS equips membership organizations with a robust suite of tools that power every stage of the member journey from initial contact to lifelong engagement. Specifically, an EMS includes features, dashboards, and tools for:
To see first-hand how adopting an EMS can revolutionize the way your organization operates and provides value to members, watch this brief video about the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association’s journey with iMIS:
As the video highlights, transitioning to an engagement management system like iMIS can reduce your staff’s processes from weeks to just a few hours.
If you’ve used an AMS, you know it can handle the basics: memberships, events, and so on. While AMS platforms are built for handling administration tasks, engagement management systems are designed for digital transformation—a goal that 41% of organizations are actively pursuing.
So, what exactly makes an EMS stand out? Let’s explore the key elements that distinguish an engagement management system from association management software.
A traditional AMS primarily manages contacts and performs transactions. These solutions often leave out other functionalities such as learning management software (LMS) integration, job boards, email communications, and website integration. Because of this, associations have to turn to third-party applications and break up the member experience across multiple platforms.
An EMS facilitates and records all member engagement in a single place. It can indicate whether a member:
With all of this information in a central hub, your staff can target web content to each member based on their experiences and interests. Plus, it can guide future communications by targeting the right message to the right person based on previous engagement. For example, the EMS can send different communications based on whether someone opened a conference promotion, ignored an email, or already registered.
By tracking engagement in one place, you can identify highly engaged members and companies and those that are at risk of lapsing. Depending on individual engagement scores, you can prioritize which members to reach out to.
In our most recent Membership Performance Benchmark Report, membership organizations indicated that improving member engagement is currently their top goal. An easy way to do that is by letting members interact with your organization when and how they prefer. Whether they’re looking to register for an event or explore your latest resources, they should be able to do so while sitting at home after dinner, lounging on their cell phone or tablet.
With online engagement more important than ever, your system, events, training, and website must all work together. An engagement management system allows you to do just that. By simply logging into their member portal, members can:
The added ease and convenience provided by an EMS increases the chances that members will want to continue interacting with your organization year after year.
An EMS is built to manage every aspect of your engagement with members. It fuses your database management and website into a single system so that you can provide a personalized experience across all member-facing systems. This means that members can easily access your website resources, current news, webinars, training and certifications, and upcoming events.
Since all your engagement—even from external integrated systems—is located in a single system, you can tailor each member’s experience to meet their expectations and provide individualized value.
Additionally, engagement dashboards and other reporting capabilities allow you to monitor your organization’s performance and continually improve your processes to deliver the right information at the right time. For example, check out this mockup of a membership organization’s dashboard within the iMIS EMS:
At a glance, they can see important membership metrics, such as the total number of members and regions where members are located, guiding their outreach and engagement efforts.
With an EMS, you can access all of the data at your organization’s disposal in one place, in real time. After all, you need to be responsive to member needs and personalize content to fit their expectations. In doing so, you’ll heighten how valuable members perceive their membership to be and retain their investment in your organization.
An engagement management system provides an instant 360-degree view of your members by recording every:
By leveraging your EMS’s data, your organization can turn relevant member engagement measurements into an iterative process of improvement.
Learn how iMIS can help you streamline processes, automate mundane tasks, unlock new opportunities, and grow your business.
An EMS is designed to illuminate, consolidate, educate, and above all, to engage. Unlike a static AMS, a modern EMS concentrates all data into a single view by collapsing the distance between your organization’s system and how it interacts with dynamic websites.
By adopting an EMS, you can turn member interactions into a seamless web experience, providing personalized attention to each member and adapting their experiences based on their activities in the portal. Ultimately, this means your organization can tap into stronger tools and features to engage and retain members.
For more information on upgrading your technology and leveraging tools to enhance the member experience, check out these additional resources:
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