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Presented by MemberWise, Cantarus and Umbraco | 21st July 2026
Featuring host Rich Gott, Founder and Chair at MemberWise, and panellists Dean Terry, Technical Director | CRM at Cantarus; Nick David, Head of Growth at Cantarus; and Jacob Howell, Regional Manager at Umbraco.
The MemberWise Digital Excellence Report has tracked the digital transformation of UK and EU membership organisations for ten editions. In its latest release, the 2026/27 report draws on responses from 480 membership and association professionals, making the findings statistically significant and the trends impossible to ignore.
In a recent webinar co-hosted by MemberWise, Cantarus and Umbraco, we explored the report’s findings on three critical areas of the digital backbone: CMS, AMS/CRM and analytics. This article captures the key themes from that session, along with actionable recommendations for membership organisations looking to get more from the systems they already have.
One of the most encouraging findings in this year’s report is that system integration is becoming less of a pain point. CMS integration is up five points to 78%, and AMS integration has risen by the same margin to 66%. The time it takes to integrate has also improved, and the number of organisations unsure about the benefits following integration has reduced.
These are positive trends. But as Jacob Howell noted during the session, completing an integration and actually making use of it are two different things.
“There’s quite a difference between completing the integration between systems and actually making use of it and benefiting from it. I see that almost as the step before the CMS can actually surface AMS intelligence.”
Community platforms, learning management systems and other tools remain less well integrated than the core CMS and AMS pairing. Cost continues to be the primary barrier, followed by platform incompatibility, time constraints and a lack of in-house technical skills. Notably, “not knowing which supplier to use” still appears as a barrier, which is something Rich Gott flagged as an issue the sector needs to address.
Dean Terry pointed to a structural reason behind the improvement: the shift from on-premise, bespoke systems to cloud-based, industry-standard platforms with open APIs. Where legacy systems required expensive custom integrations and firewall navigation, platforms like Microsoft Dynamics now offer readily accessible APIs and tools like Power Automate that enable organisations to build integrations themselves.
“Back in the day when it was on-premise, the authentication method was quite hard, you had to go through firewalls to get out to the CMS. Whereas now, you can just authenticate straight to the Microsoft platform. And their APIs are forever improving.”
What to do now: If integration between your CMS and AMS is already in place, the next step is to ensure it is actively delivering value – surfacing member data to personalise experiences, feeding behavioural signals back into your CRM, and connecting the systems that sit beyond the core pairing (community, LMS, events). If cost is a barrier, explore whether low-code tools bundled with your existing platform licences can bridge some of those gaps. And if you are unsure which supplier to work with, reach out to your CMS or AMS vendor’s partner network – it exists for exactly this reason.
Microsoft Dynamics has become the most widely used AMS across the sector, particularly among medium and large membership bodies. This represents a continued shift away from bespoke, purpose-built systems and towards industry-standard platforms that evolve continuously.
Dean outlined why this shift matters beyond the technology itself. With a platform like Dynamics, improvements from Microsoft flow through to the organisation automatically. When a partner or supplier builds applications on top of that platform, those applications also benefit from the underlying improvements. The platform is, in effect, ever-evolving, which changes the economics of the “rip out and replace” versus “stay and upgrade” decision.
“Historically, with a bespoke model, it would potentially be a lengthy and expensive rip-out and replace. Whereas with Dynamics, you can build on top and stay with it. Your platform is ever-evolving, ever-improving.”
This is showing up in the data. The proportion of organisations looking to replace their AMS within the next twelve months has dropped by five percentage points. Satisfaction with platforms has improved too, with 33% now satisfied, and 47% planning to stay with or upgrade their current system.
However, Dean raised a notable gap: while platform satisfaction sits at 33%, supplier satisfaction lags at 30%. In his experience, this gap often comes down to communication.
“As a supplier, we can only help you with what you talk to us about. The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.”
What to do now: If you are satisfied with your AMS platform but not getting what you need from your supplier relationship, start with a conversation. Raise the frustrations, the features you are not using, the areas that have had less attention over time. In many cases, improvements may already be available within your current licence or through a relatively low-cost enhancement. If you are still running a bespoke system, explore what an industry-standard platform could offer not only in immediate capability, but in the ongoing investment that comes with a continuously evolving product.
Personalisation continues to rank as a top priority for membership bodies: it was the joint highest-scoring response in the session’s live poll, alongside easier self-service for members. Yet only 19% of organisations are currently using behavioural data to drive personalisation, and personalisation via the CMS has actually dipped slightly.
Jacob cautioned against treating this as a CMS failure. The natural split, he argued, is for the AMS or CRM to hold the intelligence – the member data, the purchase history, the preferences – while the CMS acts on it and renders the right experience for the user. The dip in CMS personalisation may simply reflect the sector’s growing recognition that effective personalisation depends on joined-up data, not the CMS working in isolation.
The bigger concern is that personalisation often gets deprioritised because it is perceived as a large, high-effort, unknown-value project. Jacob’s advice: start small.
“Personalisation often gets seen as quite a large, worrying, high-effort, and potentially unknown value project. The ones that we’ve seen work really well always start particularly small, whether that be high-level personas or easy-to-differentiate offers between member types.”
He described personalisation as a spectrum. At one end sits public, unpersonalised content. At the other, a fully logged-in, AMS-driven, self-service experience. In the middle is where tools like Umbraco Engage can add value using a combination of behavioural data and AMS data to prioritise content for users who are already showing intent.
Nick David offered a practical example from a learning platform where Cantarus built what he described as a Netflix-style onboarding experience, asking users about their preferred learning style, their areas of interest, and how much time they had available, then personalising the course library around those responses.
“Start with post-it notes, map out journeys. You can use implied personalisation – anything you can do based on website visits, if people visit student content, anything you can do to use anonymous user data to start thinking about a student join journey, for example, is going to be powerful.”
What to do now: Rather than planning a large-scale personalisation programme, identify one or two high-value journeys where different member types have clearly distinct needs. Run small A/B tests with a tool like Umbraco Engage to prove the value, generate learning, and build the case for further investment. If your CMS and AMS are already integrated, check whether you are actually surfacing member data on the front end. If not, that is the immediate gap to close.
One of the more surprising findings in this year’s report is that web analytics usage has dropped by four points. At a time when measuring member engagement is the sector’s single biggest challenge, fewer organisations are using the tools that provide the most direct window into member behaviour.
Nick drew a sharp distinction between survey-based insight, which provides a snapshot in time, and behavioural analytics, which show what members actually do, what they click on, what they download, what they read, and crucially, what they ignore.
“What members click on, what they download, what they read, and more importantly what they ignore, is critical for understanding how content’s being consumed. And then how you can use tools like personalisation to improve things.”
He also noted a potential contributing factor: the transition to GA4. When Google retired Universal Analytics and replaced it with GA4, organisations had to rebuild their tracking configurations from scratch. There may be residual inertia, skill gaps or simply a perception that the tool is harder to use.
Nick offered an analogy to illustrate why vanity metrics can mislead. Seeing that a page has had a million hits tells you very little in isolation. What matters is what happened next… did visitors complete a conversion? Did they engage meaningfully, or did they bounce? Without understanding those downstream metrics, organisations risk investing time and resource in activity that is not moving the dial.
This is where tools like Umbraco Engage become particularly relevant. By placing first-party analytics directly in the Umbraco back office, content editors can see how pages are performing within the same environment where they create and manage content. That closes the loop between publishing and performance measurement without requiring editors to navigate a separate analytics platform.
What to do now: If your web analytics usage has lapsed or your GA4 implementation is incomplete, treat this as a priority. Ask your agency or an internal resource to audit your current tracking setup and ensure you are capturing meaningful behavioural data, not just page views, but conversion funnels, content engagement patterns and cross-domain journeys. If you are using Umbraco, explore whether Umbraco Engage could simplify the picture by putting analytics directly in the hands of your content team.
Dean raised an observation that stood out during the session. When discussing the tools organisations use to measure member engagement – email opens, survey responses, webinar attendance, website visits – he noted a conspicuous absence: benefits usage.
“If you’re offering benefits to the customer, that’s ultimately a core part for most membership organisations in the offering. Tracking that benefits usage, to me, is surprising that it’s not in there.”
Benefits usage is one of the most direct indicators of the value a member is receiving from their membership. If it is being tracked well, it needs to be communicated back to the member, particularly at renewal time, when demonstrating tangible value becomes critical for retention.
What to do now: Review whether you are tracking benefits usage at all. If you are, check whether that data is being surfaced to members and used in renewal communications. If you are not, explore how your AMS or CRM could capture this data and feed it into both your engagement scoring and your member-facing communications.
Throughout the session, a consistent theme emerged: the sector is under pressure to deliver more with less. The report found that 77% of membership bodies report increased cost and workload, while 64% feel the pressure to generate more income without additional resources. Yet only around 14% have their digital spend firmly aligned to a clear digital strategy, and roughly 20% have a data strategy in place.
As Nick put it, measurement without a framework means organisations risk spending their limited resources on activity that is not effective.
Jacob framed this as a reason to audit existing systems before assuming a rebuild is necessary.
“We know that budget and having to do more with less is a huge potential challenge right now. It’s a case of working with what you have before jumping into ‘we need a rebuild’. It might not necessarily be the case.”
His recommendation was to start with a full assessment of the potential ceiling of the systems already in place. There may be features that have not been switched on, configurations that have not been optimised, or tools within the existing product roadmap that could close the gap without additional investment.
Nick reinforced the point with a principle he returned to several times: your website and your systems are for life, not just for launch. Continuous improvement – regularly reviewing performance data, auditing content, and acting on what the data surfaces – is what separates organisations that get ongoing value from their platforms from those whose systems gradually stagnate.
“Your website and your systems are for life, not just for Christmas. That’s why it’s important to go back over the functionality on the roadmap, review content, analyse it with editors to see how it’s being used, and then make a decision about whether it needs to be there.”
What to do now: Before requesting budget for new systems, conduct a thorough assessment of what your current platforms can deliver. Check your vendor’s product roadmap for upcoming features. Work with your agency partner to identify underused functionality. And if you do not yet have a data strategy or digital strategy in place, make that the foundation because without a strategic framework, even the best technology will underperform.
Across the hour-long session, several themes recurred, regardless of which panellist was speaking.
The technology has genuinely improved. Integration is easier, platforms are more capable, APIs are more accessible, and the shift to industry-standard tools means organisations benefit from continuous investment by the vendor.
But technology alone does not solve the sector’s challenges. Strategy, data literacy, and active engagement with suppliers and agency partners are what determine whether an organisation gets real value from its digital investment.
And the starting point, for almost every recommendation the panel made, was the same: understand what you already have. Audit your systems, review your data, talk to your agency, and find out whether you have reached the ceiling of your current platforms or whether there is untapped potential waiting to be unlocked.
This article captures the key themes from the session, but the full conversation covered considerably more ground. To watch the replay, visit MemberWise Learn.
If the session has raised questions about your own CMS, AMS or analytics setup, or if you would like to explore how Cantarus can help you get more from the systems you already have, speak to our consultants who’d be happy to help.
Your CMS, AMS and analytics should work together to support better member experiences and better decisions. Whether you're looking to optimise what you already have or planning your next digital investment, our team can help you make the most of your technology.