In this latest Digital Excellence 2019 Speaker Insight article we interview Dave Gilmore, Head of Communications at National Association for Head Teachers (NAHT). He will be talking about using segmentation to engage with digital audiences.

What does your organisation do and how many members does it have?

NAHT works to represent school leaders in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Including our NAHT Edge (our association for middle leaders) and our Life Members, we have around 45,000 members.

What is your session about at Digital Excellence 2019?

I’ll mainly be looking at where ‘could’ meets ‘should’ in terms of segmenting audiences for key communications, how digital can support this, but how we also need to use old school comms savvy to ensure we’re getting our our message across.

Why is this a topic of interest to membership professionals?

Many membership organisations, especially ones with limited resources, are now finding themselves in a situation where the technology they use can do things that exceed their human capacity to manage those processes. Finding the sweet spot between creating meaningfully segmented content and working within our means is a challenge many of us are facing. It’s by no means a session which will provide all the answers, but I hope will underline some key considerations that can be used when judging how and what to segment.

Who is your session useful for, who would find it useful?

I’m sure the topic will resonate with most people, but I’d suggest many small to medium sized membership organisations with multiple audiences and a restricted budget might find it to be of particular interest.

Why did you agree to take part in Digital Excellence 2019 as a speaker?

It was a great time to be asked as I was trying to reconcile a lot of these issues for myself, and it’s important for membership organisations to share these insights so we’re not reinventing the wheel every time. 

Are you looking forward to attending and what do you hope to get from it?

Very much looking forward to it and looking forward to meeting lots of comms people from other membership organisations. Like other attendees, I’m sure that I’ll come away from the event feeling inspired and ready to think of new ways to engage our membership through digital channels.