Case Study: AAIM Sets Sights on Membership Growth Goals with Salesforce

Overview

AAIM Employers’ Association has a long-standing tradition of supporting small and medium-sized businesses with a robust suite of training, HR Compliance, and advisory services. Since 1898, AAIM has provided valuable resources and currently serves over 2,200 businesses annually. The AAIM business network thrives because of the association’s dedication to understanding the evolving needs of its members and continually enhancing the value it brings to them, to drive membership growth.

In recent years, AAIM recognized that to keep pace with the changing business landscape and improve the overall member experience, it needed a more efficient way to manage its services while better understanding member engagement with AAIM services. AAIM needed a comprehensive solution to improve internal efficiencies while serving the membership more effectively and delivering enhanced value in its offerings or gaining insight on new offerings for the members. This vision ultimately led to a strategic collaboration with Galvin Technologies to create and launch a multi-year Salesforce development plan to support long-term membership growth.

The Challenge: Connecting with Members and Providing Value

AAIM faced a core challenge that many member-based organizations encounter, a clear picture of its membership needs and current engagement. It is vital for the association to understand how businesses engage with its services and identify areas where AAIM can provide even greater value. AAIM’s ability to track this engagement was limited due to the use of six different systems that were not integrated. These fragmented systems resulted in inefficiencies and made it difficult for AAIM to have a clear picture of member activities, preferences, and needs.

As AAIM’s Chief Financial Officer Brian Stremlau remarked, “As an association, our success is directly tied to the strength and engagement of our membership. We need to understand how members are utilizing AAIM’s services, which membership resources they are accessing, and how frequently they interact with AAIM.” The team at AAIM understands that deeper insight into member engagement is essential to improving retention, providing tailored services, and ultimately enhancing the overall member experience.

Lacking system integration and automation, staff spent nearly 500 hours annually on manual tasks like sending registration emails, marketing communications, and internal follow-up tasks and activities. These manual processes, as with most manual processes, are prone to errors which can lead to unintended consequences of degrading the member experience.

Embracing the mantra of “work smarter, not harder,” Stremlau, a former Salesforce administrator, outlined a series of projects to improve efficiency and insight into AAIM’s membership engagement. These objectives would lead to improved membership retention, increased member engagement, and enhance AAIM’s internal processes for its employees. Knowing they would need to augment Brian’s knowledge with a team that adds consulting depth and system expertise, AAIM turned to Galvin Technologies for partnership.

The Solution: Streamlining Operations and Enhancing Engagement

AAIM began work with Galvin in 2021 to launch its multi-year Salesforce development plan aimed at creating a more efficient and engaging experience for its members. The decision to invest in Salesforce was driven by the association’s desire to better understand engagement, streamline operations, and build strong relationships with its member businesses.

Key initiatives of the AAIM and Galvin Technologies partnership to drive membership growth include:

System Integration

AAIM integrated its operations into Salesforce, consolidating disparate systems and automating several processes. The association migrated from Great Plains to Accounting Seed, a native Salesforce application, and switched from Constant Contact to Salesforce’s Account Engagement platform (formerly Pardot) for more advanced marketing capabilities. By connecting these tools with its website and background check software, AAIM was able to centralize all member data in one place.

Custom Reporting for Engagement

Galvin Technologies helped AAIM develop custom reports that track member interactions and key business objectives using document generation in tandem with custom fields and declarative rollups to further centralize data for accurate and reliable reporting. What was once a manual operation that could take hours, AAIM staff can now generate an engagement report in under 60 seconds. These reports allow the team to quickly and efficiently assess how members are using AAIM’s services, enabling more meaningful conversations about membership growth goals and how the association can support them.

Member Empowerment through Training Access

In response to member demand for more flexible training options, Galvin Technologies implemented a coupon management system within Salesforce, allowing AAIM to offer the AAIM All Access Pass. This new offering enabled members to register for Live Online training at no additional cost after purchasing the pass. This new product, created to meet the changing business needs of remote workers, has driven a significant increase in training participation and provides members with a valuable, cost-effective resource for professional development.

Event Automation

Managing monthly roundtable events was another area where AAIM sought to improve efficiency. Leveraging the features and functionality of Salesforce Flows, Glavin and AAIM worked together to automate the roundtable registration process. This enhancement to the member experience allows a participating member to sign up online, receive reminders, add the event to their calendar, and receive follow-up emails without the need for intervention from AAIM staff. This automation significantly reduced manual work while ensuring that members receive reliable and timely communications related to their roundtable event participation.

Marketing Automation

Using Salesforce’s Account Engagement platform, AAIM was able to track and segment member interactions based on engagement levels, allowing the marketing team to create tailored campaigns for different groups of members. This automation made it easier to reach members with personalized content and drive greater awareness of the full range of services available to them.

The Results: Fostering a Stronger Member Relationship

The multi-year Salesforce development plan between AAIM and Galvin Technologies has resulted in several measurable benefits, further enhancing the value it provides to its members. Since launching the multi-faceted plan, AAIM has seen:

• A measurable retention rate of 95% among engaged members. Retention of members is the heartbeat of the association. AAIM’s ability to deepen its relationship with members by providing relevant, meaningful services is critical to achieving membership retention.
• A 30% increase in Live Online training participation, thanks to the introduction of the AAIM All Access Pass. This pass not only gave members more affordable access to essential training but also created a recuring revenue stream for the association, helping to sustain and grow its services offerings.
• A reduction of 40 hours of manual work per month through the roundtable event automation, allowing AAIM staff to focus on providing high-quality, personalized support to members rather than being bogged down by manual tasks.
• Improved engagement reporting enables the team to identify under-engaged members and better target outreach efforts to demonstrate the full value of membership.

While the numbers alone are impressive, AAIM’s true success lies in its ability to continuously enhance its members’ experience. As Brian Stremlau noted, “The biggest win is being able to sit down with a member and show them the value of what we offer.” These data-driven insights allow AAIM to approach each conversation with a deep understanding of how members use the association’s services and how they can derive the most value from their membership.

Looking Ahead: Continually Evolving to Meet Member Needs

AAIM’s journey with Salesforce is far from over. The association recently upgraded to Salesforce Unlimited Edition, which provides even greater capacity for data storage, a full sandbox development environment for testing, and more robust APIs. These upgrades ensure that AAIM will continue to innovate and expand its service offerings in response to its members’ evolving needs.

In the coming years, AAIM plans to leverage the new tools and capabilities within Salesforce to further strengthen its relationships with members and deliver even more personalized, value-driven services. By focusing on enhancing the member experience and providing solutions that empower businesses, AAIM demonstrates its ongoing commitment to helping its members thrive.

Target Your Membership Growth Goals with Galvin

Ready to improve your team’s capacity and elevate your member experience and increase membership growth? Galvin is an expert in assessing your unique organizational needs and paring the right approach, services and Salesforce solutions to drive efficiencies and uncover new opportunities.