Shared interest groups are an incredible AMA member benefit
Published on 10/15/2004 under Potpourri
This column is probably going to sound like a paid political announcement, but I assure you, nobody at AMA put me up to it. For the last year or so, I’ve been watching free advice fly through cyberspace in the form of AMA Shared Interest Group (SIG) forums, and I just can’t contain my enthusiasm any more. These things are fantastic.
For those of you who’ve yet to experience them, it’s time to get with the program. AMA has created eight (soon to be 10) SIGs, and you can join any one of them absolutely free. Actually, you can join as many as you want, but additional memberships beyond the first group cost $20 per year--still an incredible bargain.
From the largest group with 4,846 members--Marketing Strategy and Planning--to the smallest group with only 312 members--Nonprofit Marketing--you will be amazed at the quantity and quality of information shared. Altogether, more than 13,400 AMA members belong to one or more SIG.
Both of my key interests, Brand Strategy (3,123 members) and Business-To-Business Marketing (2,152 members) provide daily submissions that inform, stimulate and sometimes amuse. Groups have also been organized for Healthcare Marketing, Higher Education Marketing, Services Marketing and Internet/e-Commerce. Research and Global Marketing are coming soon.
There are two ways to participate. You can simply read the e-mails that pop into your inbox and respond when you feel the urge, or you can ask the group a question and duck for cover.
One day recently I asked if anybody had a succinct definition of brand equity. Within 48 hours, I had more than a dozen good responses, including a very thoughtful 925-word reply from Nick Wreden, author of BrandFusion: How to forge your brand for the future. So you never know who’s watching.
I was especially interested in the thread of comments on the subject of “html vs. text e-newsletters.” More than 20 b-to-b group members weighed in on that subject, and their experiences were most helpful. For example, one member commented, “We used an html newsletter but found that more and more of our recipients’ e-mail servers were blocking html content and identifying messages as spam. We also learned that the factory settings for new Microsoft e-mail programs block images in e-mails, so recipients must choose to allow the download of images. If they don't, your nice html newsletter will have little red "X’s” where all of your images should be.
He went on to suggest a format combining html and text, with an invitation to click on a link that opens the newsletter in the recipient’s browser. Another member said he had to eliminate his beautiful header image in order to increase readership. Several others suggested a test where you use html for part of your list and text for the rest. They also recommended giving recipients the opportunity to choose which format is best if you’re going to be sending them messages on a regular basis.
Occasionally, someone will ask a naïve or unanswerable question, and it doesn’t take long for members to jump all over that. Usually this has to do with providing insufficient information, like the guy who was asking for help in setting a budget for a new program, but didn’t define what the objectives were, how big the audience was or how his company stacked up against the competition.
Still, several members of the group tried to walk him through the proper questions to ask. And that’s the really neat thing about these special interest groups. People are genuinely interested in helping each other. There’s very little selling going on, and virtually no pride of authorship. Oftentimes, someone will submit just a piece of a possible strategy and others will build on it.
That happened several weeks ago in a discussion on market segmentation. It started with a professor from a university in Mexico asking about market segmentation variables. One SIG member suggested purchase behavior criteria. Another recommended looking at buyer needs. Another said straightforward demographics.
One member cautioned about limiting the number of segments to something workable, like five or so. Another addressed ways to rank order the segments. Along the way, other people chimed in with specific observations about segmenting markets for specific situations.
When you added everything together, it was a long string of expert information that was probably worth thousands of dollars--certainly, enough to give the originating professor some classroom food for thought.
SIGs feature guest moderators who are often industry experts and noted authors. Recent guest moderators included Ben McConnell (
One B-to-B SIG group member recently shared his six-step process for getting the most out of SIG advice. It included pasting entries in a spreadsheet, adding his own comments in a separate column and routing the file to others in his company for the “smell test.” Maybe that gives you some clue as to the value people are placing on this program’s content.
It’s interesting to note that many SIG postings are archived by subject, author and month. AMA members can go to www.marketingpower.com/practitionersigs and research a wide variety of topics in a matter of minutes. All SIG submissions are “filtered,” meaning that a group chairman reads the entries before they’re posted.
AMA Shared Interest Groups have actually been around since February 2001. Practitioner SIGs grew out of academic SIGs with the help of Pat Goodrich, AMA’s director of professional development and Lynn Brown, who currently serves as associate program manager. If you have any suggestions for expanding or improving the program, drop Lynn an e-mail at lbrown@ama.org. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind hearing from a few thousand of you. (Just kidding, Lynn.)
And if you want to sign up for any of the existing SIGs, go to www.marketingpower.com/love/content. You’ll be very glad you did.