Understanding the CRM: Essential Tools for Managing Member Relationships

The CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is the heart of your association’s operations, helping you track, communicate with, and nurture relationships with members, stakeholders, and organisations.

Here’s an overview of the key features available in your CRM (via the WordPress dashboard):

Dashboard & Reporting #

• Dashboard: Quick overview of recent CRM activity and performance.
• Reporting: Access detailed reports on emails, campaigns, contacts, engagement, and funnels.

Contact Management #

• Contacts: View and manage all individual contact records. See history, tags, notes, and activity logs.
• Companies: Manage organisation profiles linked to contacts (great for corporate or institutional memberships).
• Appointments: Schedule and manage meeting times with members directly through their contact records.

Tags & Segmentation #

• Tags: Create, manage, and assign tags to segment contacts by interests, membership type, engagement status, etc.
  • Example: Member - Active, Event - Attended, Sponsor, Board, etc.

Email Marketing & Engagement #

• Emails: Create email templates used in broadcasts, campaigns, and automations.
• Campaigns: Manage your automated email sequences and campaigns. Useful for onboarding, renewals, and re-engagement.
• Broadcasts: Send one-off emails to a targeted segment (e.g. event announcements, newsletter, reminders).

Automations & Journeys #

• Flows: Visual builder for setting up automations (e.g., welcome email → tag applied → delay → follow-up email).
• Pipelines: Track progress of contacts through different stages (e.g., application → onboarding → member → renewal).
• Events Notifications: Automate follow-ups and reminders for event registration, attendance, and feedback.

Calendars & Scheduling #

• Calendars: Manage and view appointment calendars and internal activity timelines.
• Appointments: (Linked with Calendars) to streamline booking and availability management.

Advanced Tools #

• Superlinks: Create links that apply tags or update contact data when clicked — useful for tracking email engagement or preferences.
• Tools: Access import/export tools, contact management utilities, and advanced CRM functions.

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Summary: Why This Matters #

Your CRM is more than a contact database — it powers personalised communication, automation, event follow-ups, onboarding journeys, renewal reminders, and member support.

When used effectively, it helps:

• Improve retention
• Reduce admin time
• Personalise member experience
• Provide data-driven insights
• Keep communications timely and relevant

Please note: As admins, you will handle data entry and updates in the CRM on an ongoing basis. This includes maintaining accurate and up-to-date member records. Regular data hygiene practices, such as deduplication, merging and data cleansing, should be performed to maintain data integrity.