The Five Promises of Personalization
How to Leverage Member Understanding to Create Deep Belonging
Summary
For as long as I remember, there have been prognostications about personalized marketing and personalized learning. I’ve worked at multiple universities and two associations and I always heard about the promise and potential, but never really saw it successfully implemented in action and at scale.
With the rapid escalation of AI, personalization is now becoming commonplace in our everyday lives. We, like our members, have the same high expectations for personalized experiences that they receive from Netflix, Amazon, or Spotify. According to the software company Forj, “personalization is table stakes.” While I agree with this assessment, I also think personalization is much easier said than done.
This is an article about the Five Promises of Personalization, a framework from the book Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI by Mark Abraham and David C. Edelman. I apply their model to provide a strategic grounding for associations to deliver meaningful, individualized yet human-centered member experiences at scale.
I lead the product community®, a product development learning community designed specifically for associations. Let’s compare ideas and build something great.
What is Personalization?
“To be done effectively, personalization must be a critical element of your organization's strategy.”
Mark Abraham + David C. Edelman
Personalization represents the practice of tailoring experiences, content, and services to meet the specific preferences and needs of individual customers, or in the case of associations, individual members. For associations, AI-powered member personalization leverages data and algorithms to deliver customized experiences for members, with the end goal of providing a more relevant member experience that resonates on a one-to-one level at scale.
Done effectively, personalization moves beyond mass marketing strategies to more nuanced tactics that focus on understanding and predicting member behavior, making members feel understood as individuals (and as members of a thriving community). When asked to define personalization, consumers associate it with positive experiences of being made to feel special, responding positively when brands demonstrate their investment in the relationship, not just the transaction.
Like most strategic choices or emergent trends, personalization is not a silver bullet. It’s much more than AI-driven software. It’s an investment in people with a strong dose of human intervention. Properly implemented, it’s the seed for a powerful and ongoing community.
The Five Promises of Personalization
“Your customers are your North Star. Listen to their feedback, adapt to their needs, and never lose sight of the value you’re providing. If you’re not solving their problems, someone else will.”
Guy Kawasaki
Abraham’s and Edelman’s Five Promises framework positions personalization not as a transactional approach to reaching customers, but one that is human-centered and strengthened by relationships.
The five promises are: Empower Me (understand each customer's needs and how best to meet them), Know Me (win customers' trust and permission to use their data to improve their experience), Reach Me (reach out to the right customer, in the right channel, at the right time), Show Me (tailor unique content to be relevant to each customer, enabled by generative AI), and Delight Me (design new ways of working and ensure continuous improvement, so a customer's experience feels magical). Let's explore how each promise applies to associations.
Promise 1: Empower Me - Understanding Member Needs
The Promise: Understand each member's needs and how best to meet them.
For Associations: This means moving beyond broad member categories to truly understand individual career stages, professional goals, learning preferences, and engagement patterns. Use your association management software (AMS) to collect and analyze data about your members' career stages, interests, and behaviors to provide them with the personalized benefits they're seeking.
Example Applications:
Career-Stage Personalization: The 2023 Association Trends Study by Momentive Software demonstrates that job opportunities and help with career advancement is particularly important to members who are in the early stages of their careers. This is an entree to create diverse member journeys for emerging professionals, mid-career members, and senior executives.
Industry Specialization: Segment members by industry verticals and tailor content, events, and networking opportunities to their specific sector challenges.
Learning Style Adaptation: Offer content in multiple formats (videos, articles, podcasts, interactive webinars) based on individual learning preferences.
Promise 2: Know Me - Building Trust and Data Permission
The Promise: Win members' trust and permission to use their data to improve their experience.
For Associations: Associations need transparent data practices while demonstrating clear value in exchange for member information. Make sure your members know you have data security precautions in place and explain how the information you collect will be used for a better and more personalized experience; your members, in turn, are more likely to trust you.
Example Applications:
Preference Centers: Provide a preference center, an online portal that gives members an easy way to control what communications they receive from your organization and how often they receive them, while giving you another way to gather more of the data you need to improve member communications.
Value-Driven Data Collection: Clearly communicate how sharing professional interests, career goals, and engagement preferences will result in more relevant events, content, and networking opportunities.
Progressive Profiling: Gradually collect member information over time through surveys, event registrations, and content consumption patterns rather than overwhelming new members with lengthy forms.
Promise 3: Reach Me - Right Member, Right Channel, Right Time
The Promise: Reach out to the right member, in the right channel, at the right time.
For Associations: This involves understanding each member's communication preferences and optimal engagement windows. With AI, you can send customized emails, mobile pushes, and ad messages to members based on dynamic factors like recent site activity, proximity to events, and even activity data from connected devices.
Example Applications:
Multi-Channel Orchestration: Coordinate messaging across email, mobile apps, social media, and in-person events to create consistent, timely touchpoints.
Event Proximity Marketing: Send location-based notifications about nearby networking events or chapter meetings to members who have opted in.
Behavioral Trigger Communications: Automatically send relevant resources when members download specific content, register for events, or engage with particular topics.
Promise 4: Show Me - Tailored Content and Recommendations
The Promise: Tailor unique content to be relevant to each member, enabled by generative AI.
For Associations: Use AI to offer member recommendations based on past data, highlighting customized learning materials, upcoming association events, or personalized career insights for each member.
Example Applications:
Intelligent Content Curation: Recommend articles, whitepapers, and research reports based on members' professional interests and past consumption patterns.
Event Recommendations: Suggest relevant conferences, webinars, and local chapter events based on member preferences, location, and career stage.
Networking Facilitation: Use AI to identify and suggest meaningful networking connections between members with complementary skills, shared interests, or similar career trajectories.
Learning Path Personalization: AI allows you to recommend relevant educational programs, events, and networking opportunities matched to each member's professional goals and interests, helping each person build their skills and advance their career through your association.
Promise 5: Delight Me - Magical Experiences Through Continuous Improvement
The Promise: Design new ways of working and ensure continuous improvement, so a member's experience feels magical.
For Associations: This means creating seamless, anticipatory experiences that exceed member expectations while continuously evolving based on feedback and changing needs.
Example Applications:
Predictive Member Services: Anticipate member needs, such as automatically suggesting certification renewals or career transition resources based on member lifecycle patterns.
Seamless Cross-Platform Experiences: Ensure member data and preferences flow seamlessly between your website, mobile app, events, and in-person interactions.
Proactive Member Success: Reach out to members who haven't engaged recently with personalized re-engagement campaigns featuring content specifically relevant to their interests and career stage.
The Five Promises framework helps to ground our personalization efforts. Though I believe in good software, I never think it alone can deliver everything we need. Adopting a framework combined with a marketing or learning strategy and a clear plan for building healthy community helps prepare us for success.
Getting Started
“People trust systems that promise order.”
Alvis Ng
A roadmap to personalization involves connecting data, mapping member journeys, continuous testing and refinement, and focusing on continuous improvement of the member experience. It is part art and part science. Beyond the aforementioned strategies and plans, here are some steps to get started.
Audit Your Current Data: Assess what member information you currently collect and identify gaps in understanding member preferences and behaviors.
Start Small with High-Impact Areas: Use content templates that automatically pull member data and other details straight from your AMS system into your content to streamline the personalization process.
Implement Progressive Personalization: Begin with email segmentation and basic content recommendations before advancing to AI-powered solutions.
Invest in Integration: Ensure your AMS, email platform, website, and mobile app can share member data to create unified experiences.
Train Your Team: Address challenges including ethics, technical requirements, overcoming bias, and integrating AI with human expertise.
It’s beyond the scope of this article, but I favor an integrative tech stack underscored by an ecosystem approach to technology, data, and business process. Working together across boundaries to adopt personalization as a strategic priority is really the only way to succeed.
As you make efforts to personalize the member experience, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide insight into member engagement and interest in your association. Namely, how personalization motivates members to stay connected meaningfully over time across product types and engagement opportunities.
Member Engagement Scores: Measure participation across multiple touch points (events, content consumption, community participation)
Retention Rates: Track renewal rates by member segment and personalization program participation
Content Performance: Analyze which personalized content generates the highest engagement and conversion rates
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Monitor member satisfaction and likelihood to recommend the association
We can't afford to ignore personalization. Members have come to expect personalized experiences, and even though your association's staff may be small, you're still competing for member attention with companies that create an expectation for personalization. However, we can do something that large tech firms cannot: build trust, relationships, and connections at the community level.
This takes strategy, curiosity, courage, and openness to trying new things.
The High Bar of Belonging
Never lose sight of the beginner’s mindset: always building, learning, and evolving. Stay curious and open, as if you’re just getting started. Resist the temptation to believe you have all the answers. In a world that’s constantly shifting, maintaining that sense of openness lets you adapt and innovate at a pace that keeps you ahead of the competition.
Marc Benioff
It’s important to understand, anticipate, and serve our members, but it’s even more important to push them outside the well-worn path of the traditional association. We’re not doing our jobs if we solely satisfy member wants and needs. We also have a responsibility to challenge members, to push them to embrace new ideas and meet new people.
McKinsey research shows that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions and 76% get frustrated when this doesn't happen. This represents a critical opportunity for associations: members who feel understood and valued through personalized experiences are more likely to renew, engage deeply, and advocate for your organization.
Of course, we need to remember that personalization isn’t for only meeting individual needs, but as a spark to help individuals make and sustain connections with their peers and to create and sustain indispensable community.
The Five Promises of Personalization provides associations with a strategic roadmap for transforming membership in a way that diversifies revenue, but also creates new opportunities for creating deep connection. By systematically implementing each promise, associations can build stronger, more valuable relationships that drive long-term growth and impact.
I lead the product community; we are a learning community because we believe great relationships help us create the value our members want. Remember, product-led growth fuels connection. Join the product community and flip your destiny.
About the Author
James Young is founder and chief learning officer of the product community®. Jim is an engaging trainer and leading thinker in the worlds of associations, learning communities, and product development. Prior to starting the product community®, Jim served as Chief Learning Officer at both the American College of Chest Physicians and the Society of College and University Planning. Please contact me for a conversation: james@productcommunity.us