Imagine a new member navigates to your association website, clicks the "join now" button, and automatically receives a welcome email. A few hours later, he or she receives a personalized email highlighting key membership connections, such as local chapters or committees that might be of interest.

Now picture that your association's event director logs into the membership database and sees an interactive dashboard showcasing members who attended last year's annual meeting but who still haven't registered for this year's conference. Or visualize an automated communications tool that both notifies your board about upcoming meetings and serves as a collaborative workspace.

A CRM system provides everyone across your organization with access to the latest membership data, enabling staff to have personal and relevant interactions with constituents.

All of these examples illustrate ways of enabling people to work smarter and better—a necessity in today's world where association leaders are constantly pressured to do more with less time and resources. This also is where constituent relationship management (CRM) can help.

CRM is a category of integrated, data-driven solutions that can improve how you interact with members and streamline important business processes requiring membership information. CRM systems and applications manage and maintain constituent relationships, track engagements and sales, and deliver action-oriented data all in one place. In addition, a CRM system provides everyone across your organization with access to the latest membership data, enabling staff to have personal and relevant interactions with constituents.

But, as with any type of new system rollout, user adoption can be one of the biggest challenges. Attempting to have your staff grasp everything that a CRM can do in one fell swoop, and then expecting them to adopt it all at once, is a recipe for failure. Instead, gradually add functionality to allow your team to acclimate to the new system and process, which will maximize speed and volume of user adoption. For example, start with the main problem that you are trying to solve—whether that's a more efficient sign-up or dues-collection process or an easier way to communicate with event registrants—then implement the related capability first.

But once staff get the hang of the new system, the benefits will be seen almost immediately. For instance, when a new member completes her registration process, a CRM system has automated processes to send her a welcome message and alert the membership team that someone joined. Staff can then review the member's demographics and send a follow-up email to the individual with potential committees or chapters that may be of interest, based on her job function or geographic location.

For the event director, the CRM system collects data in real time and compares current registrations to previous events. Based on that information, the event director can execute a marketing campaign to members who attended last year but who have not yet registered for this year's event.

Finally, CRM systems can benefit your board. For timely communications, the CRM system captures the contact information for each board member and uses marketing automation to email them pertinent information, effectively keeping everyone in the loop.

To make CRM work for your organization and staff, start off small to gain traction, then add more capabilities as you go.