AI has the ability to change all of our lives for the better — if it’s used correctly. But a lot of us are finding that it’s just being used as an excuse to expect people to do a lot more work.
And this reality is particularly pronounced for the marketing teams at small associations.
Kayla Goodall is the manager of membership operations for WALA, the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association. She explains her role like this:
“We’re a small team of five, so, like many small associations, I wear a lot of different hats. I do all of our renewals, invoicing, a bit of accounting. I assist with marketing — and anything and everything to do within our management software, Novi.”
WALA serves around 2,300 members, so there’s never a lack of work for the five.
And like other small associations, WALA had relied on outside consultants to help carry the load. But sometimes it’s even more work to explain to those outside the organization what it’s all about.
Kayla says, “We previously worked with a third-party consultant that specialized in our members' field, so marketing directly towards assisted living facilities. And this didn’t always equate to being a good solution for an association, because we’re different.”
And then there’s the element of trust. You might have an excellent relationship with your agency, but that doesn’t mean that you just have to take their word that it’s working.
“With our consultants, we never really had the ability to track conversions or have a clear understanding of what our return on investment was,” Kayla says. “So it was difficult to secure funding with the board when you don't have numbers to share with them.”
And in the fast paced environment of association and nonprofit marketing, waiting to schedule meetings before making changes was usually too little too late.
Kayla says, “We previously had to wait to schedule meetings with them, and it could be weeks until we had a sit-down. And then by the time you're making those changes, it's irrelevant. The event had passed, or the renewal was off the table.”
Putting two and two together
It felt like a match made in heaven when Kayla ran into the Feathr team at the Novi Summit in 2024. She knew that her team needed more agency in the process, and so they jumped feet first into Feathr.
There were a lot of things that brought WALA to Feathr, but Kayla’s frustration waiting for someone else was up there on the list: “It's hard to have control over the results when you give the driver's seat over to someone else.”
And now that Kayla was making the calls, her first step was linking up WALA’s email campaigns with their digital ads.
“We had always handled our email in-house,” Kayla said. “We had a look that we wanted, so we owned it. And then our consultants handled the digital marketing. So the limitation was the lack of cohesion between the two. The digital advertising would look totally different from what we were doing in email.”
But today she works in a platform that does it all — email, digital advertising, and social media marketing in one place while seamlessly integrating with the member data in Novi. Being able to stay in one place allows Kayla greater efficiency, but more importantly, it’s boosting results.
Kayla says, “When we combine emailing with retargeting and social media marketing, it's a really good return on investment. We also use lookalike campaigns and geofencing — that we would not have had the ability to do before — to target new members or event attendees and grow our audience.”
Gone are the days of waiting for someone else to make a change. Now it’s all a click away.
Kayla says, “In Novi, we use the NPS system, and it's really helpful to get honest feedback. Recently, I got a few hints that some of our smaller providers were feeling a bit left out. So we were able to shift and tailor some marketing specifically to them, keeping them engaged and letting them know what we're doing for them.”
In the past, that information would likely lead nowhere because the time to adjust would be so great that the problem would have already become obsolete — and not in the way you want.
“We have the ability to quickly switch things up in Feathr,” Kayla says. “See where your money is, start things, stop things. If you start something and it's not doing what you want, you can just stop it, change it, try it again, try something new.”
A little help goes a long way
Jumping into something new can always be nerve-wracking. The consultants had always led on digital marketing, so WALA didn’t want to drop the ball right after picking it up. That’s why they started off with managed services.
Kayla says, “Being a really small team, we have to be intentional about what we're doing and make sure it counts. So when we decided to make the jump to Feathr, we added managed services. Their team basically managed our large annual conference for the first year, and it felt like a safety net and really helped us out to start.”
WALA was sure that this was going to be an internal process long term, but they wanted to shorten the learning curve and get some proven strategies in place that they could manage on their own later.
“It bought us some time to learn the software more intimately, see what all it can do, and also have templates in hand going forward,” Kayla says. “So that was super helpful because we just don't have a ton of time or staff to do work like that. But once we made that leap to Feathr, and had that initial help with services, things became easier for us.”
It doesn’t count until it’s counted
Even if things worked before, it was often hard to know why because the numbers simply weren’t there. The difference with Feathr was that they were tracking every single ticket sale or email click through.
“Feathr’s analytics have made our board reporting a lot more robust,” Kayla says. “Being able to go to them and show them exactly what we've spent and how much that's generated makes it a lot easier when we're having budget meetings.”
But those insights aren’t only helpful for the board. The real-time data allows her team to invest more in the campaigns that are performing and adjust the ones that aren’t meeting expectations.
By doing everything in Feathr, WALA’s able to see the big picture, and then immediately jump into the details.
Kayla said, “Basically, we do all of our marketing with Feathr, so we don't have anything on the outside. It pretty much does everything. We were also able to get rid of Constant Contact, so that was a big money saver. We just kind of went full in with Feathr.”
Association marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all sort of task. Some teams need more software solutions, and some need fewer. But Kayla has advice that fits for all of us:
“I would just say pick one thing and get started. It's easy to keep doing things the way they've always been done. It's difficult to learn a new system, it's difficult to switch your system and do all the work — but once you do it, it pays off, and it becomes easier to do everything else.”
Change is scary, but it’s also good when you’re in the driver’s seat, and you have the right destination in mind.
