In 2025, email marketing remains the most popular channel for member acquisition and engagement among associations. Chapters use it to send renewal nudges, event promos, policy alerts, and sponsor spotlights weekly, sometimes daily. At the same time, average open rates have slid since 2024, dropping to about 35.6%. Now, before you think email is dying and yank the handbrake on your next campaign, remember it still returns about $36 for every $1 spent on average. The smarter move is to ask if you’re using the right tools for association campaigns.
At Glue Up, we believe the gap between “we sent it” and “it worked” comes down to three things: targeting, execution, and measurement. Our campaign module is the busiest part of our AI-powered association management software. Yet, most teams barely scratch the surface of the association email marketing tools we have.
Therefore, in this post, we’ll share the top tools for association campaigns you should use to:
Find the right audience
Build and deliver fast campaigns, and
Measure results, then adjust strategy accordingly
And if you’re new to Glue Up, consider this your preview—Schedule a quick call, show us how you send emails today, and we’ll show you how our all-in-one association software can make it faster, cleaner, and easier to prove results.
Start with Targeting: Get the Right People First
You can’t fix low engagement with prettier templates and blast campaigns; you fix it by sending the right message to the right slice of your database. Research shows segmented email campaigns can drive up to 760% more revenue than one-size-fits-all blasts and deliver about 14% higher opens and 101% more clicks.
So, the first thing you need to do is get targeting right—build dynamic segments that update themselves. Here’s how:
Use Smart Lists for Live, Behavior-Based Segments
Members are like customers; they don’t act the same—some open every policy alert, others only register for flagship events, and a few pay late but never miss a sponsorship email. So, if you blast everyone the same message, performance drops fast. Hence, you need segments that reflect real behavior and update without you babysitting spreadsheets.
In Glue Up, Smart Lists are dynamic segments driven by rules you set (think behavior-based segmentation). Pick the criteria—last payment date, renewal status, event attended, link clicked, chapter, custom field—and the list rebuilds itself every time you send.
Examples you can launch in minutes:
“Active members who haven’t renewed and didn’t open last week’s reminder.”
“Sponsors with unpaid invoices and no recent event attendance.”
“New members (≤30 days) who clicked a benefits overview but haven’t joined a committee.”
Set it once, let it refresh, and put every campaign in front of the slice that will care the most.
Layer Saved Filters and Tags for Micro-Campaigns
Once your big, behavior-based Smart Lists (link to /features/email-marketing) are humming, you still need quick pulls for one-off sends. That’s where Saved Filters and Tags come in—fast, precise slices without rebuilding criteria every time.
Think about the midweek asks: “Email sponsors with unpaid invoices,” “Ping new members who joined this quarter,” or “Remind speakers who haven’t uploaded bios.” With Saved Filters, you set those conditions once (status, date ranges, custom fields, etc.), save them, and reuse with two clicks.
Meanwhile, Tags add a human-friendly layer (“VIP Sponsor,” “Policy Committee,” “Media List”) so anyone on your team can grab the right group without guessing fields.
Quick Tip: Govern it, don’t just use it—Create a simple naming convention (e.g., Segment | Purpose | Date) and review quarterly to prune dead tags. Clean tags = clean sends.
Not on Glue Up yet? Book a demo today and walk us through how you segment members. We’ll show you how Smart Lists, Saved Filters, and Tags replace your spreadsheets and one-off lists in minutes.
Deliver Campaigns Faster: Create On-Brand Emails Without Leaving the Platform
You’ve nailed targeting with Smart Lists and clean tags. The next choke point is getting campaigns out the door quickly, on brand, and with the right checks. Here’s how the most effective teams on Glue Up handle that handoff from “who” to “send.”
Build Faster with the Drag-And-Drop Email Builder
One of the most underused features in our Campaign module is the drag-and-drop email builder. While starting from scratch isn’t fatal, when you’re emailing thousands, it’s wasted time.
Instead, grab a responsive template from our library, drop in buttons, images, and event blocks, then lock logos, colors, and fonts so no one edits brand assets at midnight. Then, save common blocks—renewal reminders, speaker bios, sponsor highlights—and reuse them to ship faster with consistent branding.
Let AI Copilot Tighten Subject Lines and Copy
Instead of hopping over to ChatGPT or another tool to tweak subject lines and copy, use our AI Copilot inside Glue Up. It suggests subject line variants and preview text, trims clunky paragraphs, matches your tone, and enables faster A/B testing for association emails. You approve every change. It just cuts drafting time and keeps everything in one workflow.
Want to learn more about our Copilot? Watch this video: Boost Your Writing Using Copilot AI.
Use Approval Flows & Smart Send Windows to Stay on Brand—And in Your Members’ Inbox
Did you know roughly 1 in 6 marketing emails never reach the inbox? Validity’s 2024 benchmark put average inbox placement at 86%, meaning the rest land in spam or vanish. Timing matters too—Campaign Monitor found that over half of opens happen between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., so blasting at the wrong hour tanks performance you could have kept.
So far, you’ve nailed targeting and built the email. Now, the last mile is where many campaigns stumble—poor timing and weak deliverability. Fix those, and the same content performs dramatically better:
Schedule with Smart Send Windows
Pick send times by time zone or past engagement patterns so you’re not blasting at midnight or during commute dead zones. Glue Up lets you queue, stagger, and batch sends right inside the Email Marketing module, so timing becomes a lever, not a guess. Just open your campaign, go to Send Settings → Schedule, choose the time zone and window, and confirm.
Boost Deliverability with Authenticated Subdomains & List Hygiene
With Glue Up, you can purchase subdomains to host member portals, event pages, and branded email links. The bonus most teams miss: authenticated subdomains (with SPF/DKIM/DMARC set) boost deliverability by telling inboxes your emails are legit. So, get one added—go to Settings → Domains → Add Subdomain, authenticate it, then switch your campaign sender address to that domain.
Not convinced yet? Check out our blog: Subdomain for Email Authentication: Reduce Phishing Risk, Boost Deliverability, Enhance Brand Trust, & More
Prove Impact: Measure More Than Opens, Connect to Revenue
You sent out your campaign—now prove it moved something that matters. Boards and finance teams care about renewals, tickets, sponsorships, and net-new leads, not just opens.
Unfortunately, many teams open the report just to check opens, clicks, and bounces then move on. However, you can go far beyond “who clicked”: tie those actions to renewals, ticket and sponsorship revenue, spot which segments converted (or churned), and feed that insight straight back into your next campaign. Here's how:
Use UTM & Link Tracking to Tie Clicks to Dollars
Even in 2025, 21% of marketers don’t measure email ROI at all. Don’t be in that group. Add tracked links and UTMs so our AI-powered CRM records the source and revenue for every transaction. Then you can say, “This renewal campaign drove $18K in membership dues,” not “300 people clicked.”
Use Suppression, Hygiene, & Re-Engagement to Keep Lists Honest
Email databases naturally decay (about 22.5% a year), so bad addresses and inactive contacts pile up fast if you ignore them. So, following every campaign, auto-suppress bounces and unsubscribes, then run periodic win-back sends for inactive segments to keep deliverability and metrics real.
If this feels like a lot and you’re not on Glue Up yet, no worries—book a quick demo below, tell us what you’re trying to fix, and we’ll walk you through every feature live.
Ready to Use Our Best Tools for Association Campaigns?
Even in the golden age of social media, email still rules member acquisition, renewals, and event revenue. However, your return on campaigns, and the ROI your board cares about, may fall down to leveraging every tool for association campaigns you have at your disposal, not just hitting “send.”
Many of these features were developed in direct response to teams like yours. So, yes, they deliver quantifiable value in terms of potential hours saved on list building and approvals, higher renewal and event conversion rates, lower bounce and unsubscribe figures, fewer software licenses, and cleaner board-ready reports.
At the very least, they eliminate the need for additional point solutions, prevent new data silos, and reinforce the all-in-one architecture of our platform.
So, pick the first lever you want to pull. We’ll fit it cleanly into your workflow. Get in touch with our team today for a live walkthrough.
