How Digital Credentials Can Benefit Your Association & Members

    It’s important for associations to continuously adapt and innovate their marketing, offerings, and membership communications in order to stay relevant and competitive. And adding a digital credentialing program is a smart way to improve success in all of these areas and propel the organization forward.
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    It’s important for associations to continuously adapt and innovate their marketing, offerings, and membership communications in order to stay relevant and competitive. And adding a digital credentialing program is a smart way to improve success in all of these areas and propel the organization forward.

    4 Ways Digital Credentials Benefit Your Association and Members

    Whether you represent a professional society or trade organization, credentialing programs can be a valuable benefit—for both you and your members. Below are four benefits that digital credentials can offer your association.

    infographic with text "4 Ways Digital Credentials Benefit Your Association and Members" explaining benefits of credentialing for associations

    1. Advance members’ careers

    A major aspect of successful membership marketing includes communicating to prospective members the benefits they will receive by joining your association or professional society.

    When you issue digital credentials, you’re providing your members with a portable badge that they can use to communicate the skills and qualifications they’ve earned. And if your digital credentials are issued from the Credly Acclaim network, your members have the ability to discover what’s next in their learning journey and get connected to relevant advancement opportunities.

    Your association can help advance your members’ careers by providing them with a shareable, verifiable way to tell the story of their skills and competencies—especially to hiring managers.

    2. Promote your programs

    Every time a member shares their digital credential, it’s a meaningful brand impression—more than 650,000 credentials are shared from Credly every month.

    Using digital credentials to recognize your association members for certifications, trainings, and event participation helps amplify your brand and the programs you offer.

    And all of this sharing, searching, and viewing can help new members discover your association—especially Millennial and Gen Z professionals who are apt to trusting what their peers share on social media more than posts from brands themselves.

    The ability to include recommended next credentials and courses helps drive engagement from your current members and encourages badge earners to keep skill sets current through recertification of your programs.

    3. Save valuable resources

    A digital credentialing program streamlines the process of certifying your association’s members and issuing digital badges to them upon program completion. In addition to issuing, you can easily revoke digital badges when necessary, and third parties can verify the status of any member’s credentials in seconds online.

    Automated issuing lets your members receive their credentials minutes after course completion, and custom printable certificates are available for members who need that particular format.

    And, you can rest assured you’re issuing secure credentials across Credly’s platforms—we cover data privacy and GDPR compliance issues so you don’t have to.

    4. Build industry credibility

    You want your association’s certifications to be known across the industry as the gold standard. By joining the largest and most connected digital credentialing network, you can drive brand awareness and increase the number of certifications your association issues.

    And as your certification program grows, the demonstrated knowledge and competency required to complete the accreditation can set the new standard within your industry.

    Build your reputation and meet increasing demand driven through corporate partnerships and agreements with a digital credentialing program that scales as you do.

    Credly Digital Credentials for Associations

    Credly has helped associations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) create and manage a successful digital credentialing program, and grow membership recruitment and engagement. IAB’s SVP of Learning & Development shared the following:

    “With two-thirds of our certification holders opting in to display their credential via a badge, we’ve been able to unleash a very cost effective grassroots marketing campaign. Not only are successful certificants promoting themselves, they are also marketing the IAB certification program for us.”

    Read the full IAB case study.

    Request a demo today to learn more about how digital credentials can help your association recruit, engage, and retain members.

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