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concern and one that a provider may not share with you unless you ask directly. Consider how you’d like to create ongoing member engagement, with creative emails, newsletters, invitations to events etc. All good systems should be able to manage these for you and track opening rates, bookings and responses. Consider how easy it is for your members to renew. I have personally encountered some systems that do not allow a member to renew their membership until two weeks before the renewal date. This could mean that your members try and fail to renew early, then forget and then only remember months later. They miss out on member benefits and you miss out on their membership income and possibly incremental revenue from the events and other ‘add- ons’ that they have missed during that period. If your members want to renew early, make sure your system lets them! A good system will enable you to manage membership renewals throughout the year or in one annual block if you have to. It’s worth remembering that renewing all your members at once may be easier for you as a business because you will know

your income for the year and you can plan accordingly, but it’s not member centric. If you allow someone to join for a whole year at the time it suits them and you then don’t have the trouble of new members joining for only a few

Work out what youwould like to achieve in a perfect world andwork backwards from that.

months until the annual renew date only to then have to commit again for a full year only a few months later. Choosing a newmembermanagement system is not something you do every day, and it is not something to do lightly so consider the points above, take your time to explore all the options and remember to ask questions. Your members will thank you for it.

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