Back in the day, it was a given — with every new calendar year came another ad rate increase. You could usually budget for 2% over the previous year, perhaps more if you were aggressive. You’d cover costs and then some. Now? Not so much. Reducing costs and fighting for share of the advertising budget can seem like a full-time proposition for any size association. Yet a recent Ad Age study found 18% of magazine advertisers planned an increase in…

Most organizations want to know how satisfied their customers are because they recognize that dissatisfied customers usually take their business elsewhere. Unfortunately, many organizations don’t have a formal program in place to gather and track customer satisfaction, and have to rely on anecdotal information. In my experience, informal feedback is a fickle animal that comes in waves and often leads to knee-jerk decision making and ineffective improvement efforts. It can be exhausting to an organization that gets into a mode…