Association Marketers: It's Time to Accelerate

This post is lengthy because there’s things weighing on my heart.

In 2025 I was out on maternity leave essentially from June until October. It wasn’t until November that I picked up my regular readings on AI, Association Trends, and Email Trends. I also started speaking again at conferences in November.

Here’s what I saw when I returned:

1. AI changed the landscape a lot in the 4 months I wasn’t paying attention to it. I felt drastically behind and felt a big urgency to get up to date.

2. Seeing the difference between associations using AI regularly & planning for the future, vs the ones who barely use it, is drastic. The ones using it & planning for the future of AI are drastically ahead of those not.

In my session at a conference in December, I planned to speak on advanced email strategies because I assumed by December 2026 most would be using AI on a regular basis and looking for deeper knowledge on how to use it to take email to the next level. I was wrong and my session nearly flopped.

As I continue to do 2 email audits a week, I’m finding myself repeating the same basic email best practices I’ve been educating on for years.

At another conference I had a great discussion with Rob Wenger, CEO of Higher Logic. I told him about my concern, and he affirmed he was seeing the same thing and was equally concerned. That’s why he’s doing so much public speaking on associations use of AI.

Here’s the gist: AI is accelerating everything. Email is the #1 way associations communicate with members, if your emails are in the past either your association is too, or you aren’t conveying how you are keeping up and looking to the future. Both are a problem.

This has been weighing on me because I love associations and all of the association marketers we have worked with through the years. I see your hard work and dedication to the profession. My goal is to support you in your work so you can become an email maven (aka expert) and support the success of your association.

Here is my ask to you: are you part of an association that’s really looking forward, or are stuck in the past/status quo?

If you are at an association that is stuck in the past or status quo

Please accelerate. When it comes to email, here are two things to get done asap:

1. Get your emails up to best practice, with design and content. Here’s our best practice guide to get you there.

   1. Want an audit that looks specifically on your emails and how they can improve? Book one here.
      

2. Create or update your new member Onboarding Campaigns. The way you onboard your members dictates a lot about the member experience and it has a big influence on retention rates.  

   1. Need help getting it done? We can do it for you, then train you on how to maintain and manage them from there on. Because we know it’s the creating part that’s the challenge.

 

If you are at an association that is looking forward

Are your email strategies keeping up, and what is next?

Here’s some things to consider:

1. Looking at your full email eco system, how is everything doing? Are you having regular honest conversations about what emails need to go, and what need to change?

   1. Your emails are a full eco system, if one newsletter is doing bad, it impacts everything. If you know what your members want, but your emails aren’t reflecting it. Time to change. Here’s our resources on combating sending too many emails & how to not kill your email list.
      

2. I’m always open for calls to talk freely about challenges and solutions. No sales pitch, just conversation because everything is changing and as marketers we have to keep moving and testing.
   

3. I provide audits and strategy sessions for overall email marketing, conference marketing, renewal marketing, email traffic control (we send too many emails!), talking to members like they are human, etc etc. Interested in an audit, a strategy session or custom training for your team to get everyone on the same page? Let’s chat. 

Truly, we are here to help. Email Maven is a team of former association executives that support association teams. Let me know how we can support you.