Email alone can no longer carry an association's marketing strategy. In this candid conversation, Kayla Goodall from the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association (WALA) joined Novi and Feathr to share how her five-person team moved off a third-party agency, took control of their digital strategy, and started reaching new, highly relevant audiences online.
Email alone is not enough, you need a connected digital strategy
Email only reaches people who have already given you their address, leaving the top of the funnel untouched
Most people will not convert on the first website visit, so paid ads keep you top of mind year round, not just before an event or renewal push
Combining email with retargeting and social ads drives a much stronger return than running any single channel on its own
Reach new, relevant audiences where they already spend time
Geofencing serves ads to people inside (or recently inside) a physical location like a career fair, college campus, competitor event, or industry trade show
Affinity targeting layers third-party data like industry, demographics, and behavior to reach niche segments, narrowed with a geo filter so budget is not wasted
Retargeting is the easiest place to start because the audience is already warm and a few hundred dollars can drive meaningful results
Your Novi data is the foundation for smarter, more personal campaigns
Use Novi groups to segment by member type, behavior, or custom fields so a vendor never gets a message meant for a provider
Dynamic groups automatically add and remove people as they meet conditions, so registered attendees stop getting "register now" emails
Sync those segments to Feathr to run lookalike, retargeting, and email mapping campaigns, including re-engaging lapsed members when email is no longer an option
Real-time dashboards make it far easier to defend marketing spend to your board, because you can show exactly what was spent and what it produced
Start small and build momentum
Pick one thing: install a tracking pixel, launch a single retargeting campaign, segment your email list, or turn on NPS
Test creative constantly, since ads are a low-stakes way to A/B test messaging that can then carry into landing pages and emails
Personalization and segmentation, not bigger budgets, are what move the needle for small association teams
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