American Academy of Family Physicians

AAFP wanted to increase and retain membership. The website had been neglected for years and became an obvious channel to start with. To get people to the site, we also developed a membership drive email campaign targeting 3 audiences. This resulted in 30–40% open rates (+5–10% over healthcare benchmark), 3–5% CTRs (+50–75% lift vs. benchmark), projected 5–7% conversion rate for prospects, and 10–20% higher renewal rates.

• Audience: Medical students, resident physicians, current MD members

• Goals: Increase membership and boost renewals

• Objectives: Modernize the website for a better experience and professionalism

• Actions:

  • Performed an omnichannel audit on:

    • The massive website that contained content about their two well-known yearly conferences, access to their two journals, their foundation, 2 sub-websites, and access to their continuing medical education courses

    • Social media - both paid and organic

    • Podcast

  • I also gave content direction to copywriters for an email campaign targeting three audiences for their membership drive.

• Strengths: On the positive side, AAFP has very little competition, high brand recognition, and great access to potential leads through its events and close relationships with hospital departments across the country. They have also accumulated a lot of rich content for decades from members.

• Opportunities: The high brand recognition and lack of competition made it easy to neglect the website and treat it like more of an archive than a tool for building community. From stakeholder interviews, it became clear that most users were excited about the events and the excellent journals. The website was a place to do the business of paying dues, renewing membership, getting tickets to the events, accessing the journals, and taking CME courses. This is fine, but these business tasks did not require membership.

  The content for building community was already on the site. There were many articles by members. However, it was hard to find those that were covering topics of interest. When you did find content you wanted to read, it was often dense articles with little imagery or infographics and long paragraphs with light, small font. There was also a disconnect between what medical students needed and the reasons to renew.

  We needed to improve findability and create an email campaign that would spark interest in AAFP as a force of its own.

• Recommendations: 

• Make content easier to find
  Make the main navigation less redundant, clearer, and simpler.

• Make content more readable
  Use a more readable font, add images, headers, infographics, and shorter paragraphs to improve scannability.

• Add social proof
  Put in testimonials and pull out quotes from members who have gained real value from their membership.

• Send emails that understand user needs
  The targeted email campaign should address where these very different members are in their careers and the different ways the association works for them.

• Amplify the website content on the social media channels
  Post messages about new member articles and older, repurposed articles.

• Update old articles
  There is great content that needs a refresh. Update it and repost.

• Repurpose content for the podcast or videos

  The article topics may spin off great ideas for the podcast or videos.

• What I learned: Sometimes organizations that lack competition take their audiences for granted and parts of the business, especially marketing, can suffer. It’s always important to measure audience satisfaction by seeking feedback, measuring conversions, and studying the metrics of engagement on the website, social media, and other channels.

  Need a website overhaul? Schedule a discovery call with me.