Membership organizations are locked in a constant battle to keep members focused and engaged in a world filled with distractions and competing priorities. How do you earn loyal members? You need loyal, long-term relationships with your members to grow and thrive, so you’ll need to devote a lot of effort and creativity into nurturing them and to move them toward perpetual membership.
You need a membership engagement strategy. Everyone talks about engagement, but what is it? It’s definitely nuanced, but in simple terms, member engagement is the ongoing interaction between a member and an organization in exchange for meaningful value.
This means keeping in touch with your membership, posting often on social media, creating meaningful content, and inviting their participation, among other tactics.
It means getting their attention and reminding them of how you add value to their lives. It means building relationships to keep members happy. You have many opportunities to do this during the membership lifecycle, including:
As they say, there’s only one chance to make a first impression, so when you’re onboarding members, go the extra mile to reassure them they’ve made the right decision in joining your organization. And follow this rule to make onboarding personal to the new member: First talk about what’s important to them, then about your mission, then about the organization. They want to know how membership is going to benefit them.
It’s all about experiences today, so make your onboarding experience memorable by doing things like:
It's important to connect with your member base on a personal level to keep them engaged in the organization long-term, build member retention, increase event registration, and other conversions.
It’s important to connect with your member base on a personal level to keep them engaged in the organization long-term, build member retention, increase event registration, and other conversions. You have all sorts of information about them, so make your member communications personal.
But make sure to personalize with a purpose:
Your first step is to stop talking and take action. Measure and use data for both marketing and programming and boost member engagement: Create engagement scores and connect engagement levels to specific marketing segments, ensuring members get blog posts and that are of real value to them.
There are a lot a great (and essential) reasons your organization must create a member engagement system including:
Measuring Engagement
Using missionSYNC, it’s easy to develop an engagement scoring system, but these same concepts are useful for other AMS’s as well.
Most organizations track these activities:
But, your first step should be making a list of your own set of activities that go into creating member engagement.
The next step is refining your system, by weighting the relative value of each of these activities. Give them a unique multiplier, and assign a points system. You’ll then group the scores and define related categories.
With an engagement score, you’ll have the ability to make data-driven decisions that increase engagement. Of course, you can always look for outside assistance with this process. Consider talking to one of our growth coaches: they make it their focus to support your success.
Mobile apps are essential for effective engagement today. Young professionals and millennials often don’t even own a desktop computer and depend on tablets and phones instead. Your mobile app is a place not only for members to engage with you but with fellow members.
And think about your mobile app as a way to not only engage members but also to drive new revenue. You can do this via advertising, sponsored content and by sharing data with your advertisers and sponsors.
Artificial Intelligence is a relatively new tool and a developing technology, but there are ways you can use it right now that don’t require a huge amount of resources.
You might create some valuable blogs, you’re active on social media, and the click and open rates on your emails are great, but what other things can you do to make current members happy, increase member renewals and attract new members? Here are some additional ideas to add to your member engagement strategy:
This makes high-level members feel they’re an important part of your organization and a free level removes all obstacles to membership.
Send emails, post on social media, invite people to participate in a challenge, invite sponsors and advertisers to participate and offer prizes, host an event and invite local media–spread your message everywhere and make your members proud.
Work with your sponsors and advertisers to offer special discounts or other benefits, like free shipping. Make them happy with increased revenue, and do something your members will appreciate it, too.
Maybe your organization is a plumbers union. Create a scholarship program to encourage young people to enter your profession, and you’ll create lifelong loyalty.
This means getting people to talk about you. Have members tell their own compelling stories that people would want to share and send out press releases for old-school publicity.
This would include email subscription options, donation/payment buttons and a feed with the latest news that affects your members, as well as links to all of your social media accounts.
Utilize Facebook Live, Instagram Live and/or YouTube to develop a podcast, a branded quote of the day, or focus of the week.
This ties back to onboarding, but can be used to increase post-onboarding engagement as well. Send them a little something, even if it’s just “a penny for your thoughts,” with a survey.
They can give a larger voice to your brand and your members. Identify a celebrity that you could advocate with, or celebrities who share an interest in and talk about your mission message and reshare/retweet. You could also try Cameo.com for light-hearted one-to-one messages.
Ask your members how you’re doing for them. This will help inform all of your content, from emails to blogs to events.
Draw up your criteria before the year or month and offer incentives throughout the contest period.
Send personal messages for occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, membership anniversaries or even “remember when you attended this event.”
Members can post job openings and certification and advancement opportunities.
This adds value to your memberships with partnership/association discounts, but it’s also good for job opportunities.
that has not only opportunities, but success stories. There could even be a “bloopers” section about things that didn’t work that can help inform your membership.
This could be something simple like a quiz or even an “ice bucket challenge” sort of thing that makes them feel part of the organization and helps them connect with other members.
Sync your member list to Facebook and LinkedIn and serve them ads; these ads are usually less expensive than other ad types.
This can mean an email, a survey, a flash sale, or a social media post that promotes some sort of interaction with your organization.
Utilize Facebook Live, Instagram Live and/or YouTube to develop a podcast, a branded quote of the day, or focus of the week.
Offer something to members such as a free promo item like a piece of swag or a discount.
This would be a dashboard where people can see the difference you’re making in real-time.
Invite your followers, professional friends, and connections and ask them to invite theirs.
This offers unexpected rewards and can be especially effective when they serve as early renewal reminders.
Invite members to contribute songs that reflect your mission.
Partner with another member organization that reflects your values and mission. This is an excellent way to gain new members.
See a member engagement idea that speaks to you but not sure if you have the personnel to pull if off? Learn how we can get you the help you need with our Association Operations Support Services.
Perpetual memberships are the holy grail for all member organizations.
A perpetual membership program requires a bit of a rethink of your membership model, but if you look at the model developed by companies like Amazon and streaming services, among others, you’ll have your plans moving in the right direction. And look at all those other membership services for ideas, like monthly subscription boxes for cosmetics, coffee, shaving items, fruit, and pretty much anything else you can think of.
This all involves installment billing, which is part of perpetual memberships. Members can pay a smaller amount on a more frequent basis. The philosophy is that it’s just a little bit of money that hardly hurts.
There are some proven methods for managing an perpetual membership program:
Some members will leap at the chance for an installment plan or a perpetual membership, but some will need a bit of encouragement.
Want more tips about perpetual membership and other association management insights? Sign up for our newsletter and get the latest from enSYNC directly in your inbox.
Member engagement is crucial for your organization’s health on all levels, from participation, to recruiting new members to increasing revenue to keep your mission going.