phics of Your Association
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WORDS OF WISDOM
dom
y Helping others to understand that membership and membership pricing is meaningless if we don’t have a solid value proposition or reason for people to join or stay. (IMO) y How do we increase non-dues revenue? (IMO) y How do we retain first-year members? (Combination) y IT, IT, IT… (IMO) y Keeping up with technology. Bandwidth to launch marketing automation, data analytics, etc. (Trade) y Membership benefits/programs—how we add more value to increase our memberships. Marketing analytics tracking—proving ROI on spend through better analytics and tracking. Improving website conversions. Content marketing (Combination) y Membership renewals and retention. It feels so out of my control (I can’t force a company to renew or to join, after all) but so much of what we do is dependent upon it. (Combination) y Not having a strategy in place on how the organization will run. No plan on how to market to prospective members, new members, or existing members. No process for measuring the data we collect for our membership. (Trade) y 1) Be succinct in your message. 2) Get a member to buy one thing before trying to sell a second thing. 3) Paid digital advertising works. Learn it. (Trade) y Adopt a philosophy of continuous testing. (IMO) y Always measure success. If it isn’t working, don’t persist with it. Try different strategies until you nail it. (Combination) y Associations MUST make the investment to market to their current and future members! (IMO) y Be willing to test new ideas. Make sure you track everything so you can look back and clearly see whether that campaign drove results and revenue. (Combination) y Consistency. Make the member journey from acquisition to engagement to renewal personalized, relevant, and consistent. (IMO)
y The constant challenge of growing membership, of connecting with members. Every month when we hit our new member target, it starts all over again the next month. (IMO) y The data. We have so many great ideas but our database is not centralized, we don’t collect enough demographics, and we can’t use any of it to personalize our messaging. Every great idea we have ends up stalled because we don’t have the data in place to make it work. (Combination) y The future workforce and our ability to meet their wants/needs. (Trade) y The plethora of ways members can access educational resources at no cost. Technology makes it easy to get instant answers and educational resources so we have to evolve and innovate even quicker than before. (Trade) y Trying to wrap my head around the cause of our softening membership numbers. I’m certain that the reasons are interwoven and complex, but teasing it out has proven tricky. (IMO) y Value proposition. How to properly structure the dues (what they pay in) and the benefits (what they get out) to be in balance. (IMO) y Continue to develop member benefits or ways to present them differently so they resonate with various members and backgrounds. (Combination) y Focus on solving problems; not selling products and services. Leverage the emotional bond between members and with the association. Continually improve ROI. (IMO) y I realized this year that we must stay the course on marketing plans that have worked well in the past. We stopped direct mail half way through the year because of budget constraints after sending for many years and saw a striking drop in processed renewals. (IMO) y Keep telling the members (and non-members) what advocacy work that the Association did this last week (Trade)
In your own words, what are the most important or successful lessons you have learned in the area of membership marketing?
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