Webinar Recap: Turn Association Content into a Member Engagement Engine with AI Search
On April 15, 2026, Progress hosted a live webinar featuring Michael Marolda, Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Sarvesh Kadia, Sales Engineer. Here's a summary of what was covered if you weren't able to join.
For most associations, the content library isn't the problem. You've spent years, maybe even decades, building it. Collecting research reports, conference recordings, certification programs, policy publications. The knowledge is there.
However, the problem rears itself when a member goes looking for particular content or research:
They type a keyword. They get a list of links. They click around, don't find what they need and inevitably give up. Or worse, they don't bother searching at all, because past experiences taught them it wouldn't be worth it.
That friction has a cost. Because when members can't find value, they don't renew. It's that simple.
Member Expectations Have Already Changed
In the past few years, something significant has shifted in how people expect to access information. Platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Gemini have flooded the market, making knowledge more accessible than it’s ever been. And with that growth has come a new default expectation—don't make me search; just give me the answer.
This is especially true with video. Where people used to watch a full 20-minute recording, they now want to jump directly to the precise moment that answers their question. If your content experience still looks like it did in 2019 (or even 2024!) then you're already behind the expectation curve.
What's at Stake for Your Association Content
The ROI implications are real and measurable: content that doesn't get used doesn't justify its cost. Conference recordings that sink to the bottom of a page after the event ends aren't driving non-dues revenue. Certification materials buried in a separate LMS portal aren't spurring course enrollment.
So these questions are worth asking of your own platform:
- Are members actually finding content on the first try?
Are they returning to your site, and is session depth increasing over time?
Are they getting faster time-to-answer, or abandoning because they’re frustrated?
Is your content driving downstream outcomes like certification enrollments, event participation or non-dues revenue growth?
Activating What You've Already Built
The good news is that most associations don't need to create new content to solve this problem. They need to activate what already exists.
This is the core idea behind agentic RAG (retrieval-augmented generation). An AI architecture ingesting your existing content library (e.g., PDFs, videos, articles, policy docs, conference recordings) and makes it queryable in natural language. Instead of a keyword search returning a list of documents, members ask a question and get a complete answer drawn from your actual content, with source attribution and all.
For video content specifically, this means the system isn't just indexing a title or description. It's extracting audio transcripts, running an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanner on presentation slides visible in the frame and using vision-to-text models to describe what's happening on screen. A three-year-old conference session now becomes fully searchable in a way it simply wasn't before.
Beyond Search: What Else Becomes Possible
Once your content is AI-ready, search is just the starting point. A few examples of what associations are exploring:
Auto-labeling and content classification: AI agents can automatically tag content by topic, content type, recency or premium status—making it easier to surface older content that's still relevant, or gate premium material for members only.
Practice exam generation: For associations with certification programs, AI can generate on-demand practice exams from your existing learning materials. It’s proven that members engage more deeply with content they're being tested on, and you get a differentiated member benefit without creating anything new.
Segmented member experiences: Different member personas have different needs. A single intelligent layer on top of your content can power separate search experiences by role, interest area or membership tier—all built from the same underlying knowledge base.
Moving From Experimentation to Monetization
The question most association leaders are sitting with right now isn't whether AI is coming to their member experience. It's how to get from the thought, "We should probably be doing something with AI" to something that's actually in front of members and driving measurable outcomes.
The architecture exists. The no-code and low-code setup options mean you don't need a large engineering team to get started. And the business case, whether it be member retention, non-dues revenue growth or content ROI, is increasingly easy to quantify.
The content you've built over many years has more value than your members are currently able to access. And AI search is the unlock.
Interested in seeing what this looks like for your association? Chat with one of our AI Knowledge Experts to see what's possible: Schedule a Call
Michael Marolda
Product Marketing Manager, Senior
Michael Marolda is a seasoned product marketer with deep expertise in data, analytics and AI-driven solutions. He is currently the lead product marketer for the Progress Agentic RAG solution. Previously, he held product marketing roles at Qlik, Starburst Data and Tellius, where he helped craft compelling narratives across analytics, data management and business intelligence product areas. Michael specializes in translating advanced technology concepts into clear, practical business terms, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and modern data platforms.
