N 9 ographics of Your Association
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WORDS OF WISDOM: PARTICIPANT COMMENTS
N 10 f Wisdom
Describe an acquisition or recruitment strategy that your association has employed that has been very successful, and/or from which you learned something valuable. Provide details so that others may learn from your experience.
y Any kind of promotion or discount has moved those on the fence to commit. Waive an enrollment fee, free gift with sign up, limited time offer, get in before the price goes up, etc. (IMO) y Bundled discounts for new members that allow them to join late in the membership year and automatically renew for the incoming year. This gives new members over a year of membership as well as time to become acquainted with the association. (Trade) y Christmas in New Zealand is a quiet time for member activities so from around November/ December each year we offer up to 17 months membership for the price of 12 months but with no other payment discounts for new joining members. (IMO) y Digital AdRoll marketing has been a great new endeavor. (IMO) y Direct mail campaigns are not as effective as they were even two years ago. Social media advertising seems to be much more effective, but we are still experimenting with it. (IMO) y Discount membership for first year, (try us out) but you have to be extremely careful that you are going to keep them engaged for that year—robust welcome program, valuable benefits and services pointed out to them, and emphasis on free things that they can get with their membership—not just “in order to save money you have to spend money” (....GIVE them something first so then they will know that they can’t live without you) (Combination) y Free as a strategy has served our membership growth quite well. We focus on upgrading to a paid member type. (Trade) y Group membership has been very effective in capturing a full team of professionals in an organization rather than just the managers. This has led to more training and conference attendance. We haven’t seen an impact on
membership revenue despite the reduction in cost per member (IMO) y New in 2019, implementing a digital marketing strategy. We are excited and hopeful these tactics will help us grow prospects and visibility. (IMO) y Our most successful recruitment has been free membership for an entire year. We gained 342 (in 2015) and 443 (in 2014) and have retained almost 234 (29%) of them to date. It is better than any other marketing campaign that we have done. (IMO) y Our most successful recruitment is word of mouth from satisfied customers. We build relationships with potential members by visiting them on site. (Trade) y Outbound membership calls from a membership service representative and speaking directly to the decision maker. (Combination) y Simplify your membership options and sign up process—adding complexity can overwhelm prospects and make it harder for them to engage. (IMO) y Texting has been a recent boon for us. It’s straightforward, to the point, and low cost. (Combination) y The more personal the outreach the better. Handwritten note cards along with a gift or resource in the mail have worked very well for us. (Trade) y We have been very successful in recruiting new members from our Trade shows. (Combination) y We have had great success with Cyber Monday discounts on membership. We have also had very successful campaigns for holiday related products on our merchandise website. (IMO) y We have implemented the use of Salesforce in our recruitment efforts—the organization of our prospect data has greatly increased the effectiveness of the sales process. (Trade) continued on following page
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