Pros & Cons of All-In-One Membership Platforms - Membership Marketing 101
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Rob: Hi, everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Digital Drop. I'm joined today by our CEO, Nej and we want to discuss the topic of the pros and cons of choosing an all-in-one membership platform. So, Nej, I just want to put the question to you to describe what a membership platform is and what the benefits would be if you were a membership organisation to choose one of them.
Nej: Yeah, so the so-called volume one membership platforms are- it's essentially a piece of software that provides the entire kind of core tech stack the membership organisation might need. It's something that's typically positioned as a one-stop shop for all the technological needs of a membership organisation in regards to managing their members, managing customer data, automation and workflows within the organisation. But realistically, what they usually are is either bespoke pieces of software or bespoke layers of functionality that have been developed on top of some mainstream foundation software. Something like Microsoft Dynamics or whatever, whereby there's been the configuration that's been developed and licensed- so the product in its own right. Within that configuration, the majority of the needs of a typical membership organisation have kind of been pre-configured and set up there for making it an easier deployment within an organisation with fewer custom development or configuration required.
Rob: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Typically, what's the alternative to choosing one of these?
Nej: The alternative is going down what I would refer to as a best-of-breed approach and that's having a mainstream, real independent CRM system that's integrated with a CMS system. Other systems provide things like single-sign and functionality learning management tools and so on but generally we refer to it as a best-of-breed approach.
Rob: I mean, we've worked with a lot of membership organisations over the past few years and you know we've had organisations coming because we were on these sort of all-in-one membership platforms. Some organisations who are considering them as part of a digital transformation process- is there any sort of size and scale of a membership organisation that you see using these platforms or they might be beneficial for?
Nej: Well, we see- there's a large variety of membership organisations out there, especially in terms of scale. You've got some membership organisations that are run by a handful of individuals within that organisation that might have one to two people handling marketing communications to organisations that have entire teams handling these particular departmental functions. We've seen these membership platforms in a variety of organisations but I think, in some organisations, they've provided some benefits and are being seen as a leap forward but in many cases, they've become the limiting factor of an organisation, progressing as far as our digital strategy is concerned.
Rob: When you say a limiting factor- oh sorry. When you say that they're good for an organization, what would be the characteristics of that membership organisation? What would it be?
Nej: Look, we've come across certain organisations that they're in catch-up mode that has a lot of- it can refer to as technological debt or that- very rudimentary in the way in which the organisation is run. They're failing to do some of the things that would be considered basic fundamentals in any organisation nowadays. We've come across organisations that don't even have real CRM solutions, that don't have the most simple tools that allow them to do things like automate membership renewals that have a single source of truth about- or a single 360-view of their members and the interactions that a particular member has had with that organisation. That then makes it very difficult to do anything in order to provide better engagement with membership audiences. So, in cases where organisations are really not even doing the basics and they need to catch up, they need to just start doing things, the most fundamental things that any member would expect from an organisation they're paying a regular membership to. Going for an all-in-one solution might be a quick way of making a decision for getting something in place so that you can actually start doing the basics that you should be doing anyway.
Rob: I think when you talk about the basics as well, there's definitely a lot of membership organisations that we've come across that just aren't doing the basics right. That's become even more common obviously, since COVID when things have had to be more online, whether that be events and just handling membership data a bit better digitally.
Nej: COVID's definitely been a wake-up call and a catalyst for the industry. We have to remember some organisations that were able to continue operating to adapt to the situation to even increase engagement with their members because they had good digital foundations in place and have turned that whole period into a positive and added value to their members. And you've had some organisations that just came to a standstill, had a complete reduction.
Rob: It's taken time to get them up to speed.
Nej: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it's been a wake-up call that a digital maturity is no longer an option. It's something that every organisation, especially membership organisations across all verticals, it's something that needs to be taken seriously as a fundamental requirement that's gonna determine the longer-term survival of that organisation. You mentioned COVID. Well, post-COVID, if we look at more recent times, we're going through a time when a lot of people are experiencing financial difficulty. Every single month, people are going to be looking through those statements to see what items are a real necessity and what items aren't a necessity in this regular payment that you're making to a membership organisation to be a member of something. It's going to be one of the primary things that a lot of people are going to question. So, it's even more important to consistently have ways in which you're adding value and benefits to your members in order to retain that membership.
Rob: So, going back to the topic of who these platforms might be suitable for. You've touched on organisations that aren't doing the basics. What about the larger-scale membership organisations that might be doing things right at the moment but they're struggling with common challenges like data silos and poor integrations across best-of-breed tools.
Nej: So, I think before we delve into that, I think it's important to also understand the industry. Really, there are two kinds of directions you can go in. You can go in an all-in-one platform or you can go down choosing your own CMS, your own CRM, your own tools that are good at what- that are designed to provide the core function that they are there for and having an integration and a suite of these tools all working in a way where you still get that combined benefit and you still get that single point of truth that we refer to which is a 360-view of any particular member. The all-in-one systems, we need to really understand the limitations of these systems. It's not down to necessarily the technology. It's down to the organisations that provide that technology. Typically, I think every all-in-one membership system that we've come across has been a system that's been developed by an organisation or an agency that provides that software on a license basis and also, exclusively provides services around that software. You've got one organisation that you become entirely dependent on for all of your- your digital foundation, for all of your digital needs. Now, what that means is that in the event that that organisation or that tool can't provide certain functionalities that you need and you need to get services from that organisation or wait for them to provide an update to that software for a particular need, you are entirely dependent on if and when that organisation provides that for you to be able to progress with what you're visualising. There is no choice of going and having your own in-house development team working with that proprietary software, let's say. There's no alternative to going to a different agency and asking them to work with this agency's tool.
Rob: So, if you've bought into it, you're pretty much stuck with it in a way?
Nej: Yeah. Absolutely. What it does is it's something that one of my pets hates, but it creates complete dependence of a client on that particular agency. At the same time, I think that the reason why agencies have developed this tool is that it becomes easier to sell. We know that membership- typically, individuals within membership organisations are quite risk-averse. They like to go down the safer route, they like to go down the tried and tested route. So, when you go into a sales scenario and you're selling technology to a membership organisation, the ability to say, well. All we do is membership organisations and this tool is developed specifically with the needs of a membership organisation look at all these other membership organisations that are using this tool. It makes it feel safe and makes it feel like the right choice. This is one of the biggest driving factors why these tools were developed because it's a way for the suppliers of those tools to get into an organisation, create that dependence and then ensure ongoing predictable revenue for as long as that organisation is utilising that tool. It becomes a big hurdle to move away from that tool.
Rob: At the end of the day, that's what a lot of agencies want to aspire to achieve, isn't it? Predictable revenue, in a way.
Nej: They do, and many times we've been asked and we've had ideas flowing internally. Hey, we're doing all of these same things for one organisation after the other. Why don't we build our own set of custom templates? Why don't we build our own suite of solutions and then reduce development time with the next implementation and we can license it. But I think as one of our core principles, we're all about quality and integrity and value. But when you talk about integrity, the geek within me can never be somebody who's gonna recommend bespoke customised solutions as the best way to move forward. Because what you have to take into account is if we go down a best-of-breed approach- so you've got a CRM that's- Microsoft Salesforce or some technology that's got an entire team, an organisation focusing on developing that technology to be the best customer relationship management system that you can have that's constantly looking at what the technological changes are in the market, what the changing needs are in the market and ensuring that their product is able to support that without an interest in winning services around that particular product. In most cases, you've got teams of hundreds of engineers continually working for the betterment of that particular tool. On the other hand, you've got an agency that's selling professional services that have got considerably smaller numbers of developers that are available, that are trying to be a CRM provider, that is trying to be a CMS provider, trying to be a marketing automation tool, that tried to be a billing tool, that trying to be a workflow system, a single sign-on system. It becomes impossible for them to compete and keep up with the needs of the market.
Rob: So, it's interesting because as a membership organisation using a tool like that, you would think that you're not taking a risk because it's perfected for the membership sector and stuff like that. But in the reality, you'd take a big risk in terms of your choice and flexibility afterwards, whether that be not getting the right services that you need, or not having the right technical expertise to adapt the tool to your needs whereas if you go down the best-of-breed approach, you can pretty much choose whatever the agency you want, really.
Nej: You have Independence, so in almost every scenario when we've come across an all-in-one system, it's been from the successful membership organisations that are growing and looking to improve the services they offer, the products that they offer to their members that are looking to improve engagement and stay ahead of the curve as far as these technological opportunities allow. The limiting factor has been dependent on an all-in-one system and more often than not, the system's not the problem, it's the agency providing services around that. It's been that frustration where it literally
doesn't matter how much you invest in your internal marketing team if you've got that- it's almost like a chokehold on how far you can go. It's a hard stop that they have these creative ideas but they can't implement them because it's going to take X amount of months for this agency to get back and to do that for them. There's nothing they can do about it because redoing everything and completely doing a digital transformation is out of scope and out of budget for that year and not something that's under the cards. And then you see the knock-on effects of that. You see digital marketing teams and communications teams and membership engagement teams that have just completely become demotivated. They lose their creativity, they lose their passion to actually, be creative because-
Rob: They stop trying though because they just feel like they can't get anything done because you haven't got the right-
Nej: Exactly. They give up before they've even started because so many times, they've had these creative initiatives and not been able to deliver on them and then ultimately, they then start coming up with initiatives that evade the technology that they've got in place. I mean, just yesterday we had a workshop with an organisation we're not going to name for the purpose of this podcast. But what did we see? We saw a core website and then we saw several alternative websites that have been built on things like WordPress and so on because it was determined to just be the quickest and simplest way of getting something out there than working with this technology in place.
Rob: It's a very well-known licensed CMS which was restricting them.
Nej: Yeah. In that instance, yeah. In that instance, it was a very custom and bespoke implementation of that CMS that was a limiting factor.
Rob: So, going back to the technology a bit- what's interesting as well is when you actually look under the hood of some of the and it sounds like we're bashing these all-in-one membership platforms but we've already touched on the fact that they are right for a certain level of a membership organisation, just not right for many of a certain size. But when you actually look under the hood of them, a lot of them are predominantly built upon existing technologies already. Aren't they so like, Dynamics and Umbraco and stuff like that.
Nej: Yeah, absolutely. They are positioned as our own technologies and proprietary software but almost always, they've got an underlying mainstream technology where they've just done customisation of it or almost created like a middleware layer on top.
Rob: Doing a bit in between, sort of thing.
Nej: Yeah. Then they sell it as a licensed product to get that recurring revenue. But yeah, they very rarely build this technology up from the ground up.
Rob: So, do you reckon- I know we obviously talk about Headless a lot, we spoke about it on a couple of podcasts now. Do you think that has a sort of comparable product in a way? Because they're built to bring together the best-of-breed tools in a way where you can manage it all from one place.
Nej: Comparable to what?
Rob: If you're looking at an all-in-one membership tool, would you compare that against the Headless platform, for example?
Nej: I think that-
Rob: Could you achieve the same things?
Nej: No, but the first thing to highlight here is I think the prevalence of Headless content management technology within the CMS space is a great example of why the world is increasingly moving towards a best-of-breed approach. Even CMS technologies that traditionally, started providing so much functionality started being almost a one-stop shop for all of these features which are marketing automation, social functionality, membership management and everything else.
Rob: Well, they made up a new name. The DXP.
Nej: Yeah, they've now renamed themselves to digital experience platforms. But you know the whole emergence of Headless and the success of the Headless CMS shows that the world has almost chosen and recognised the best way is almost to stay in your lane, to pick technologies that focus on what they do and connect them with other technologies that are masters of what they do. A lot of these mainstream tools now have- or almost-the-box integrations with each other because the vendors have recognised that this is an emerging trend as well. It's become increasingly feasible and affordable because the Cloud model and SaaS licensing mean that all of a sudden, you're not having to spend a six-figure sum just to acquire a bit of software and at the outset of your project, you can almost pay as you go. A lot of these best-of-breeds Headless platforms have very low entry points, so smaller organisations. Before, there was a cost argument, right? Why buy six or six products when you can have everything with one of our products. But now, that cost has become comparable because you're only paying for the utilisation of how much you're utilizing each one of those tools.
Rob: There's the obvious benefit as well. Let's say you outgrow the CRM side of it. You can basically just get rid of that and plug a new one straight into your overall architecture pretty easily with the Headless approach, as we've experienced with some of our clients.
Nej: Yeah, with the best-of-breed approach, that's definitely one benefit. As in, you can upgrade any singular element of your tech stack without disrupting the operation of your digital suite, let's say, of your digital product. Not only that but for each one of those tools, you've typically got thousands of professional services providers, agencies and development partners who you can call upon to help you with the ongoing development implementation migration of those technologies.
Rob: So, potentially that route is less risky. I'm assuming it might require a bit more development setup consultancy at the start, but you're going to get probably better tools than you would by going to the-
Nej: Yeah, it requires a little bit more ownership, let's say, and proactive initiative from the membership organisations. A little bit of understanding of what does what and a little bit of foresight into where you actually want to be a few years down the line. But I would say it's categorically, the less risky way. I would also say, in almost all scenarios, if you're dealing with projects of any sort of scale, it's by far the better approach. I'm not reluctant in saying that increasingly, there are fewer and fewer use-case scenarios where I would say that an all-in-one platform, the one-stop shop is actually the right way to go.
Rob: Yeah, that makes sense. My final question, if you're a membership organisation and you're going through a bit of a digital transformation process at the moment and you're considering multiple avenues, whether that be an all-in-one platform, Headless, a traditional sort of DXP which is still very well utilised in the sector, what would be your advice to someone looking into that?
Nej: Okay. Two core bits of advice are don't think about what you need now, think about what you need three to five years down the line. Because every digital project and digital transformation, it's not an event. It's a journey. Thinking long-term about what kinds of features you're going to want to enable, and what kinds of functionalities you're going to want to have. A few years down the line at least is fundamental in being able to identify a solution that's going to be scalable and future-proof for your organisation. The other key bit of advice that I would give to anybody is don't let technology drive the definition of your requirements. So, what we see more often than we should is organisations pick a technology because of the great salesmanship of their sellers.
Rob: Good marketing as well.
Nej: Yeah, or a buzzword or because they heard that trade show that these guys have achieved whatever with this technology and then they proceed to mould their requirements and specification around how it'll fit into that technology and so on. I'd say that this is a way to set yourself up for limitations and failures. The requirement should always be driven by what does your organisation need to achieve? From a user's perspective- so we're talking about external users, your members and people that are going to interact with your organisation through your digital shop window. What journeys do you want them to have, what experience do you want them to have through the digital journeys. Also, your internal users. How do you want to streamline the amount of effort involved in setting up a campaign, creating a new event, targeting a certain segment of your audience for that event or getting insights about your membership so that you can brainstorm on various campaigns and initiatives that you want to do. Define your requirements based on your user needs and what user journeys and experiences will be and then after that, whether you do it yourself or whether you consult with an agency like us, there are going to be multiple technological choices that enable you in achieving and fulfilling your requirements. The decision at that point will be based on what are the potentially suitable choices, what are the real-life constraints of your organisation in terms of budget, in terms of skill set, in terms of time frames. Then, there will be a clear identifier of a suitable short list of tools that you can use, at which point, you should then go ahead and select the tool. So, that's the way in which this decision should be made. You should always choose technology later, and understand requirements first. That makes sense, yeah?
Rob: I think that rounded it off very well. That's pretty much everything from me, is there anything else you want to add to that or-
Nej: No. Look, if in doubt, speak to experts. Don't be lured by the salesmanship of any one vendor or agency. Remember, it's software. You can get the software to do anything, including making your toast in the morning. The software should never be the driving factor and any organisation that tells you this is the only way in which you can fulfil your objectives is usually by trying to push yourself down a route that's accommodating them, not necessarily in your best interest. Apart from that, I think it's pretty clear where our preference lies.
Rob: Oh, it's good and I think you'll have answered a lot of questions for anyone looking at all-in-one platforms at the moment or other technology stacks to run the membership organisation. Thanks for your comments, Nej. It's been a good discussion. If anyone's got any questions, feel free to drop us a message and like, share and subscribe to our channel and we'll see you on the next episode of the Digital Drop.
Nej: Thank you to the viewer that actually posed this question. We've had all of our ideas come from the questions and feedback we get from our audience, so any things you'd like us to discuss or share our opinion on, please keep coming with the questions and the feedback. We appreciate it, it's what drives our agendas for these discussions.