The key role of communication for clubs and members' associations📣

Communication is the foundation on which modern businesses thrive. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, illustrated this perfectly in his book "Hit Refresh" 📚by highlighting the vital importance of internal communication in aligning a multinational company with its mission and vision. He demonstrated that the use of digital communication tools💻 is crucial for strengthening corporate culture and employee engagement, as well as being indispensable for strategic decision-making.

Although Microsoft is not a club, it is instructive for all organizations, including clubs and associations, to draw lessons from an industry giant such as Microsoft. Clubs, while operating differently, also require effective internal communication to align all members with the club's vision, reinforce the club culture, and foster member engagement. It is in this context that we will explore the importance of communication for clubs and how a solution like Smart Membership can help optimize this communication. 🎯


Communication and Marketing in Clubs 📢


For clubs, communication and marketing are essential to attract new members, retain existing ones, and promote events and activities. Effective communication helps keep members informed and engaged, while well-executed marketing attracts new members and creates a positive club image within the community. Additionally, effective communication showcases the added value that the club brings to its members, highlights club events and activities, and fosters a strong sense of belonging.


Why Differentiate Between External and Internal Communication?🤔

In this article, we will differentiate between internal and external communication, as they involve different audiences. External communication is directed towards individuals outside the club, such as prospects or sponsors, aiming to build the club's brand image. It includes activities like marketing, public relations, and advertising.

On the other hand, we have internal communication, which is intended for employees and current club members, facilitating communication through newsletters, exclusive event announcements, club updates, and various other news. 

Both types of communication significantly contribute to the success of a club and must be managed effectively and strategically.




The Ideal Tool for You 🛠️


In this section of our article, we will explore together 15 features of the Smart Membership solution that will concretely help your club gain real competitive advantages. 


Smart Membership is a solution specially designed to meet the unique needs of clubs and associations. It enables both optimized and efficient management of members and their benefits by our teams. 💪🏆


We have selected 8 features for external communication and 7 features for internal communication. If you want to have a comprehensive view of all the features offered by Smart Membership , it is advisable to sign up for a une séance démo gratuite et en ligne.


Smart Membership for External Communication


1. Marketing Campaign Automation 📈

Smart Membership transforms the way clubs and associations manage their marketing campaigns through advanced automation and precise segmentation of your database. Imagine being able to address targeted communication to all individuals who have participated in your events 🎟️ but are not yet members, encouraging them to join your club 🤝.  This is what you can observe in the screenshot below, where the campaign called "Non-members offers plan" targets individuals registered for my events but are not members.


This is an excellent way for your sales teams to find relevant leads. As seen in the image above, you can also set activities based on your audience's behavior. In this example, we have planned a second communication in our campaign that will be sent 3 days after the opening of the first communication. This is one of the many possibilities that Smart Membership allows Smart Membership.

With Marketing Automation features, you can create automated marketing campaigns, define your target audience with specific criteria, and schedule workflow activities triggered based on the actions of the target audience.

Of course, analytics allow you to track the performance of these activities, giving you a clear overview of the effectiveness of your campaigns.


2. Social Media Marketing 📱

Managing social media accounts becomes a breeze with Smart Membership. Create and schedule your posts, analyze the effectiveness of your content, target your audience with precision, and manage all interactions from a single centralized platform. 


This allows you to stay connected with your community and engage your prospects more effectively. Smart Membership enhances your social media marketing strategy by allowing you to interact directly with your social networks and generate leads from your online interactions. 

You can schedule your posts in advance and broadcast them simultaneously across most of your networks, ensuring a constant presence and extended reach. As you can see below, you can easily schedule post publications on a designated calendar.

Thanks to this feature, there's no need to write the content of your posts the day before the publication, and no need for reminders.

Here are the social media platforms covered by our solution:

  • Facebook 📘
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin 🖇️
  • Twitter 🐦
  • Youtube 🎥
  • Website🌐


3. Lead Management via CRM 🎯

Smart Membership optimizes lead management through an integrated CRM that helps convert leads into members. Our CRM allows you to collect leads, track customer interactions, automate sales processes, and analyze data for informed decision-making. Create a pipeline for each of your teams, composed of the necessary steps to conclude a deal.


Centralize and schedule every interaction, easily set reminders for regular follow-ups, and advance your opportunities until they are converted into actual sales. Activities and tasks are automatically reassigned to the next level in case of absence, ensuring that no opportunity is lost. 🔄📊

Moreover, directly create a form for your prospects from your website that automatically generates an opportunity in your pipeline. With a mobile-friendly interface and seamless integration with other modules, Smart Membership is a powerful tool for the growth of your club. 📱🚀


4. Email Marketing 📧🎨

Smart Membership provides you with the necessary tools to design personalized emails and newsletters that captivate your audience and enhance member engagement. For your communications, you can choose between using pre-built email templates and creating new email templates that you can fully design according to your tastes and brand image. Email editing is done by adding entirely customizable blocks, as shown in the GIF on the right..


Such customization will set your club apart, make your communications attractive, and strengthen your brand image.

You can also create mailing lists, design emails with professional templates, schedule your campaigns, and analyze performance to optimize your communications 📊. You can integrate your email campaigns with the CRM for centralized management of your marketing efforts.


5. SMS & WhatsApp Marketing📱💬

With Smart Membership, communicate quickly and personally with your clients and prospects via SMS and WhatsApp. Create personalized messages, schedule campaigns, and analyze performance for a direct and effective communication strategy.

The SMS & WhatsApp Marketing modules allow you to manage your mobile marketing campaigns, integrate WhatsApp for seamless communication, and send quotes, sales orders, and any other type of communication directly via WhatsApp, offering an enhanced customer experience and a competitive advantage 🚀. Here are some examples of message templates you can use for your WhatsApp communications.


6. Event Management 📅🎟️

Plan and manage your events with ease using Smart Membership.🎈 Automate registration confirmations, automatic reminders, and customize the registration form for an optimal experience.

Keep an overview of all your events and their statuses...


... but also on your calendar...

... not to mention the activities needed for organization and their responsible...


.... and many more surprises.

With Smart Membership, publish your events on your website, manage the order of tickets, handle invitations and promotions directly from our tool. Integrate event tickets into quote templates for streamlined and professional event management. 🎉


7. Video Conferences and Phone Calls 📞💻

Smart Membership facilitates the organization of video conferences and phone calls with external users, integrating VoIP services (internet calls) for smooth communication that relieves you from usual phone constraints.

Manage your phone calls directly from the interface, record call information for better tracking, and schedule activities for effective management of your customer interactions. 📊


8. Online Visitor Management 🌐👥

Your website is your showcase, and it's always interesting to have an idea of the traffic on your site. Smart Membership provides an overview of visitors to your website and allows you to contact them directly. Use a Live Chat system to qualify leads and manage interactions with visitors for an innovative user experience 🆕. In the following example, visitor 278 is currently on my homepage, and by simply pressing the "Chat" button, I can initiate a conversation. 

For each visitor, you can trace their journey and optimize the user experience of your website by drawing the right lessons.

With Smart Membership, track the geographical location of visitors and keep track of all visitors for optimal monitoring, efficient assistance, and an overview of your website traffic. 📈🌍



Smart Membership for Internal Communication


Certainly, all the features mentioned above also facilitate communication with your members. However, let's now review the features specifically useful for managing your members on a daily basis and the internal communication of your club.


1. Integrated Email Communication 📧

The Smart Membership solution offers the integrated email communication feature, allowing direct and effective communication with members directly from their profiles. 

Here, I am communicating with Jesse, an active member of my club, directly from his profile in Smart Membership.


This feature centralizes all communications, making it easy to track and manage interactions. It also avoids repetitive and unnecessary communications, fostering personalized communication based on specific member information. Furthermore, this feature improves team efficiency while simplifying the communication process.


2. Participative Blog 📝

Smart Membership 's participative blog feature allows members to actively contribute to the club's blog content, strengthening their engagement and sense of belonging. This feature facilitates personalized communication and efficient content management while enriching the blog with various perspectives.

We have enabled the co-construction of blog articles with an editing and validation flow by the club, ensuring control over the published content.


3. Custom Member Portal 🔐

Provide a unique experience for each type of member by restricting access to certain pages of your website to specific member groups.

Smart Membership 's custom member portal feature enhances the experience of each member by offering exclusive access to specific content on your website. This customization, based on membership level, provides resources and benefits tailored to each member group, thereby reinforcing their sense of belonging and commitment to the club. 

For example, below you can observe the difference between an unknown visitor to your site and a "Gold" member. 🥇

View of the site for a Gold member:


View of the site for a non-Gold member (for example, unknown visitors, prospects, Silver members, ...): 



Once a prospect is converted into a member, access to benefits is automatically granted.

Additionally, the management of this feature is simple and flexible, allowing modification of content access based on the club's needs. The custom member portal is a key digital tool to enhance membership value and maximize member engagement. 🔑


4. Advanced Event Management 🎉📅

Organize public events, reserved for your members, or for a subsection of your members. In the example below, we have created a conference accessible only to Gold members. All individuals who are not Gold members will not have the opportunity to register or even see this event.


For events you decide to leave public, you can easily configure specific tickets for your members or certain member types. This straightforward segmentation of your events allows you to effectively target your audience, making your communication more relevant and creating more value for your members.

In the example below, we have configured free VIP tickets for our Gold members and paid tickets for non-members.


Moreover, to enhance communication with your members, you have the option to send fully customizable surveys before and after an event to gather participant desires and feedback.


5. Renewal 🔁

Keep an eye on the life cycle of your subscriptions. When a member's subscription is about to expire, several options are available: automatically renew their subscription, contact them, meet them, move them to the next level, etc. 

You can always see the subscriptions that are expiring in the month, for example, to always prepare for renewal under the best conditions.

Smart Membership adapts to your renewal strategy.


6. In-Depth Member Knowledge 🔍👤

Smart Membership allows you to centralize all useful information about your members, such as their industry, events they have attended, their age, etc. This deep, centralized, and easily accessible knowledge of your members is essential for personalizing the relationship with each member and building a privileged and trusting relationship.


7. Benefits Configuration 💰🎁

With Smart Membership, you can define a series of exclusive benefits to which your members will have access. These benefits can be modified based on your different subscription types. We have previously seen events and their tickets, exclusive pages of your site; you can also define price lists (systematic discount) for your members on your products and shops. We are currently developing new types of benefits.

In summary, Smart Membership  is a comprehensive and powerful tool that adapts to your club or association's existing processes 

It is not about disrupting how you manage your organization but supporting you in increasing your productivity and growth. 📈 🚀


Vertical Solution✅

Smart Membership is a vertical solution, meaning that we have designed an ERP based on Odoo specifically tailored to the club sector.  


With Smart Membership, you not only benefit from interconnectivity between all different standard modules but also a plethora of exclusive and specific features brought by Smart Membershipseamlessly integrating into the Odoo ecosystem.


Join a Free Online Demo📅

At Idealis, we are aware of the importance of communication, whether external or internal, and the advantage it represents for clubs. That's why we are planning free discovery sessions for Smart Membership. 

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These sessions will be held online or in person according to your preference. Feel free to take some time to participate in a free Smart Membership demo session. It's an excellent opportunity for you to see these tools in action and understand how they can benefit your club. You will have the chance to ask questions, see concrete examples of usage, and get an idea of the ease of use of these tools.


Conclusion🎯

In conclusion, Smart Membership is much more than just a communication tool. It is a comprehensive ERP solution that can transform how your club communicates and markets its activities. With its assistance, you can reach a broader audience, engage your members more sustainably, and manage your communication and marketing activities in a more efficient and organized manner. So, why wait?

If you know a club manager, share this article with them.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via this form. We will be delighted to engage in a conversation with you. 👇

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