Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Amber Worthen, Founder and CEO of Email Maven. She’s an email strategist who’s spent years helping member organizations rethink how they connect with members through email. Most recently, she’s been exploring the effect of AI on email inboxes. Topics covered include:

• What is changing in the email landscape now that AI has come along?
• What’s under your control and what’s in the email recipients’ control.
• How traditional email metrics like opens, clicks, and deliverability are being impacted.
• The new goal for inbox targeting.
• A reality check for those who think sending more emails is the answer.
• The rising importance of segmenting and email preference options.
• Making data-driven decisions around email.
• Know your email platform.
• The power of engagement scoring, personas, and dynamic content.
• The 10 main things to future-proof your inboxes.
• Why it’s a good idea to test how AI is summarizing your newsletters.

Resources

Download the episode transcript.

Explore Email Maven's resources.

Check out Higher Logic's 2025-2026 Association Email Benchmark Report.

Watch Higher Logic's recent webinar, Relevance Wins: What 2026 Benchmarks Reveal About High Performing Emails.

In this episode of The Member Engagement Show, our guest is Andrew Hohman, Senior Implementation Advisor at Higher Logic. about the best practices for launching and sustaining successful online communities. We talk about identifying and addressing project risks and helping associations make their new communities successful. Topics covered include:

• What separates successful online communities from ones that struggle
• The importance of assigning at least one community "owner"
• The importance of tying community to your associations strategic goals
• Launch tips
• The decisions associations should make before launching a community
• Building momentum in the community
• Ways to support new community members
• Learning from your members, especially in the early days

Some Helpful Links

Member Engagement Show episode with Georgina Donahue

Higher Logic Association Community Benchmark Report

Higher Logic Association Email Benchmark Report

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Sarah Spinosa, Director of Product Marketing for Higher Logic. Sarah discusses value propositions for associations and how they can be activated, elevated, and improved. Topics covered include:

• Why the pressure to hone a clear value proposition is increasing
• Recognizing Members as consumers, with expectations influenced by their experience outside the association
• People aren't joining professional associations by default
• Ways associations can use product marketing principles to refine and define their value proposition
• Talking about outcomes, not just what you offer
• The importance of mapping value at different career stages
• The difference between professional and trade association value propositions
• The importance of knowing your members and knowing when their needs change
• Communicating the value proposition continuously, not just at sign-up
• Aligning internal stakeholders around the value proposition

Some helpful links:

Higher Logic 2026 Association Trends and Predictions webinar

MGI Membership Marketing Benchmark Report

Higher Logic Association Member Experience Report

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Terry Nawrot, co-founder and CEO of VideoRequest, a video creation, editing, and sharing platform. Terry talks about the many ways associations can use video and make video creation do-able. Topics covered include:

• What's changed in terms of how people prefer to consume video content?
• Who should "own" and be making video content in organizations?
• Leveraging existing association content for video.
• The value of getting information from human beings.
• Video as a strategy, not a one-off project.
• Video is a relationship, not a marketing, tool.
• The many ways associations can use video.
• Producing video using the resources you have available to you.
• The amazing things today's video tools can do.
• Myths and misconceptions about video.
• How to measure the performance of your videos.
• Does one video channel work any better for associations than another?

Learn how you can make video easy for your association:

Record, collect, and polish videos from staff or members and share them directly in your community or emails with Higher Logic Thrive Video, powered by VideoRequest.

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Erin Fuller, Global Head of Association Solutions for MCI Group in Geneva, Switzerland and Chief Strategy Officer for MCI USA. As we head into 2026, Erin discusses learnings from the MCI Association Engagement Index, tipping us off to the forces shaping associations in the year ahead. Topics include:

• The generational changes in association membership
• Global trends for associations
• Customized educational pathways
• The sub cohort of Gen Z called Gen Q
• Association-specific uses of AI more organizations can embrace
• Changes to events, continuing education, and credentialing
• How successful associations think about non-dues revenue
• How associations can expand into global markets
• Why associations should move from membership as a status to membership as a service

Helpful Links

MCI Association Engagement Index (Updated Data & 10-Year Retrospective Coming Soon!)

Higher Logic Association Member Experience Report

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Hillary Chambers, Manager of Global Meetings and Events for the Higher Education Users Group (HEUG), a leading global user community in higher education built on Higher Logic’s online community software. Hillary also leads planning and promotion for Higher Logic’s annual Super Forum conference. We talk about how to maximize engagement at every stage of the event lifecycle and how to apply some community strategies to successful event planning. Topics include:

• Have events fully bounced back post-Covid?
• Event timelines and planning for an event.
• Learning from attendee feedback.
• Distinguishing between a blip and a real trend in sentiment.
• Handling the awareness and communication process.
• Getting event ideas by listening to the community.
• Using community to find and foster speakers.
• Using video to communicate event information.
• The pain points faced in today’s event planning.
• The balance: making a live event a can’t-miss while not excluding virtual attendees.

Helpful Links

Christin Berry podcast episode on data

Super Forum 2026

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Georgina Donahue, Higher Logic’s Director of Community Innovation and AI Strategy. With over 10 years in community leadership (having started out as a community manager) Georgina shares her wealth of expertise in community leadership, and user-focused community advocacy. Topics covered include:

• How community is the engine that drives alignment between organizations and members.
• Tips for growing online communities, based on Georgina's experience taking a community she managed from 0 to 50,000 members.
• Key metrics for measuring the success of a community.
• How to get leadership buy-in for community
• Busy vs. meaningful engagement.
• Engagement myths…busted!
• Tips to drive the member journey, from onboarding to advocacy
• Selling the importance of community internally.
• Community and member engagement trends for the year ahead.
• A sneak peek from Kelly at some insights from the upcoming Member Engagement Report.

Helpful Links

Peggy Hoffman episode on community volunteering

Community Manager Toolkit

Today’s episode of The Member Engagement Show is a special presentation of a recent webinar covering the release of Higher Logic’s 2025 Association Community Benchmark Report: “From Data to Action.” Kelly and her guests Eileen Quinn and John Micah Yates, strategic advisors on the Higher Logic customer success team, walk through the results of the study and offer strategies to increase member participation and engagement. Topics include:

• Highlights from the report
• Strategies for increasing engagement in your online community
• Average community size, logins, and discussions
• The most common types of engagements
• What kinds of engagements are lagging
• Community digest open rates
• How many users make use of resource libraries
• If AI is pulling people away from online communities
• Login trends based on months of the year
• The inverse trend between size and participation
• The relationship between community age and engagement
• How automation rules impact engagement
• How gamification impacts engagement
• How volunteering, mentoring, and job boards impact engagement
• Tactics for growing communities
• Ways to increase discussion and contribution activity
• How much, if any, of your content should be gated
• Tips for avoiding over-emailing

Some Helpful Links:

Webinar Recording

2025 Association Community Benchmark Report

Podcast episode with Christin Berry of ASAE

Podcast episode with Karen Saverino of Smithbucklin