In my experience, associations often undersell their actual ability to provide high level service to their members and customers. I often hear association staff say “We can’t compete against the huge budgets of giant for-profit companies.”

But I think it’s important that we keep in mind that even large companies will make very poor marketing and service decisions. Here’s a great example:

My brother received an email from one of his favorite outdoor recreation retail stores. The email was an offer for a shirt that he was interested in, so he clicked the “shop now” button in the email. This took him the company’s general website, not to the product he wanted. And no matter how much he searched, he couldn’t find the shirt that was actually offered in the email.

Of course, when he replied to the email, he got an auto-response that read: “This inbox is not monitored.”

So, no sale for them.

Associations can (and often do!) do better than this.

So don’t assume just because you don’t have a massive marketing and service budget that you can’t compete against the big guys. They don’t always know what they’re doing.