Where would your association be without member engagement? Active, engaged members renew their memberships and help to bring even more members into the fold.
But getting members more involved isn’t always simple to achieve.
It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in the daily operations of your association. The next thing you know, your role as a champion for members might move to the back burner.
To remedy this, here are four practical member engagement ideas to boost retention:
1. Make New Members Feel Welcome
The first interactions with your association set the tone for how your new members perceive your organization. Ensure your members love their membership from the start, and you’ll keep them engaged for the long haul.
Welcome emails are an effective way to kick off your relationship with new members. Consider sending an onboarding email series that:
- Thanks them for joining
- Reminds them of the benefits they now receive as a member of your association
- Provides links to key member resources, such as online content and your online store
- Notifies them of important dates, such as your annual conference
- Let’s them know what communications you’ll be sending them
Your association management software (AMS) system can build and track these new member email campaigns.
2. Deliver Fresh and Relevant Content
You can also utilize your AMS system to collect valuable data and send targeted, relevant messages to members based on their interests and needs throughout their member journey. For example, use data about your members’ career stages, interests, and behaviors to provide them with recommendations for new industry reports or services offered by your organization that can help them at their specific career stage.
The key is to continue providing fresh, meaningful, and timely information to members at all stages of their membership. For example, if your organization is a professional association, consider offering a tool on your website that allows members to calculate the estimated contribution of an advanced degree to their lifetime earnings. If your organization is a trade association, you could provide a series of instructional videos or how-to guides.
Just keep delivering relevant content to help your members get value from their membership, and you’ll see member engagement increase.
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3. Build an Active Community
One thing that really bolsters member engagement is getting members to communicate with each other. Help your members achieve this bond through an active local or online community.
For local groups, this has often been accomplished through regular in-person meetings. However, in national or international associations with members spread worldwide (and during a pandemic), this type of face time isn’t as easy. For these reasons, building an active online community is essential for keeping members engaged throughout the year.
4. Add new virtual offerings.
Members who have been engaging virtually expect to continue that practice. Research suggests that members who have become more involved have done so because their organization is offering more online resources. Even members who used to engage more or entirely in person now say they will be moving toward a balance of in-person and virtual engagement.
Consider that while you might have moved your annual conference to a virtual conference in 2020, it’s still important to engage members in a variety of year-round learning opportunities to address members’ budgets, schedules, educational and certification needs, and learning preferences.
Take the time to review your training and certification programs to identify new virtual offerings you can provide. Additionally, ensure that your online career center extends beyond job postings to provide a wealth of career advancement opportunities and resources for your members.
Discover how we can enhance member engagement within your organization.
