Create a Magical Member Onboarding Journey

The onboarding process can sometimes be intimidating, so make the journey as welcoming as possible for members. Let's take a look at the benefits of an onboarding plan and the key elements involved. We’ll also share tips to help make your association impossible for members to do without.

In this article:

• Why Your Membership Organization Needs an Onboarding Strategy
• How to Create a Member Journey Map
• Leverage Technology for Onboarding Success
• Engage Members Through Personalized Communication

Why Your Association Needs an Onboarding Strategy

So, you’ve got a fresh group of new members — yay! They’ve completed the forms, paid their dues, and are ready to dive in. The hard part is over, right? Not quite. Your next hurdle is getting them engaged early to ensure you can keep the new people you worked so hard to attract.

The latest Membership Performance Benchmark Report by iMIS showed that about a third (33%) of organizations lose 20% of their first-year members.

Churn is incredibly expensive for associations. This is why a formal member onboarding plan is critical to guide your members through the initial stages of membership.

How to Create a Member Journey Map

Set Your Goals

As with any plan, it’s important to first define what you want to accomplish and determine how you’ll measure success. This doesn’t have to be elaborate. Here are some simple examples of goals for your member onboarding strategy:

• Increase first-year retention rates by 10%
• Increase first-year engagement rates by 20%

The key is to set attainable, measurable goals you and your entire team can work toward.

Make sure you don't skip this step. Clearly defining and reviewing metrics makes you more likely to increase member retention, according to the latest Membership Performance Benchmark Report by iMIS^®.

Create Member Personas

Personas are representations of members with specific characteristics, such as attitudes/beliefs, backgrounds, wants/desires, opinions, skills, behavior patterns, goals, or personalities. For example:

Personas help you understand the motivations behind your members. And you don’t have to do it all at once — you can slowly add in more personas.

As you’re starting out, don’t confuse personas with membership segments. A persona is the entire personality of certain members. Segments are simply categories and classifications of your membership base, such as demographic details.

Building personas helps you personalize your communications and make your members feel valued. As you’re building the personas, it’s important to uncover:

• Why did they join?
• What are their pain points and pressures?
• What are their specific interests?
• Where are they in their career paths?
• What variables might cause them to quit after the first year?

Free Membership Resource

Learn more about creating member personas on pages 13-14 of our guide, "Delivering an Unforgettable Web Experience"

Tap into your members' needs, concerns, and goals. This will help you better serve them and drive member retention.

 

Download the Guide

Lay Out the Stages of Onboarding

The ideal onboarding process should outline exactly how you will interact with the member for the first year. It might look like this:

• Days 1-14: Validate. Make them feel welcome, ask for their preferences (and listen!), send welcome packs, introduce them to other members, etc.
• Days 14-90: Demonstrate. Highlight relevant membership features, send videos to introduce your products and services, and invite them to events. Make sure you're showcasing your member value proposition so they understand what your organization provides.
• Months 3-9: Celebrate. Provide personalized offers, survey them about key issues and membership benefits, have various members of your staff call/text/email so they hear different voices, and encourage them to network and volunteer.
• Months 9-12: Reiterate. Send personalized renewal offers well in advance of the anniversary date, remind them of the benefits they’ve enjoyed, tease upcoming resources, and call to follow up for slow or non-renewals.

Create a Visual Map for Staff Use

You can document the onboarding journey, but building a visual map is extremely powerful. Consider creating one for each persona. It should be something that all staff can readily access and keep in mind as they go about their jobs. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but a visual representation can help you identify gaps and opportunities.

Leverage Technology for Onboarding Success

Use Engagement History from Before the Join

Prospective members typically visit your website to learn about membership benefits and resources. If they download a resource and share their email, your member management system should be able to track:

• Which pages they visit
• How long they stayed
• Items they clicked on, and more

This data is particularly valuable once they’ve joined. You can begin to build a profile and assign them to one of your member personas.

Look at Data from Lapsed Members to Guide Your Onboarding Strategy

You can tap into a wealth of information if your member management system is purpose-built for associations. It can be particularly helpful to look closely at the data and ask:

• When did they stop or slow their engagement with you?
• Did they attend events?
• Did they have a buddy/mentor assigned to them?
• Did they download your app?

The top reason members didn't renew, according to the latest Membership Performance Benchmark Report by iMIS^®, is budgetary constraints, followed by lack of engagement with the organization. These reasons follow overall trends for membership organizations, but you'll need to review your particular organization's data to find out why members are dropping off.

Automate Onboarding Elements

Your member management software should make this easy, especially if you’ve built out your personas. You can automate:

Welcome emails

Event invitations

Mentoring invitations

Check-in messages

Networking offers

Product offers

Training promotions

Licensing reminders

Renewal reminders

If you want to get started with automation, check out our article, Streamline and Automate Your Membership Management. It'll give you checklists on the questions to ask before automating, tips for testing, and how to measure success.

iMIS Engagement Management System

Is your association software holding you back?

See how iMIS helps you learn from every member interaction. You'll be ready to streamline processes, automate mundane tasks, and unlock new opportunities.

Watch a 3-Minute Tour of iMIS

Engage Members Through Personalized Communication

Regularly Poll/Survey Members

What’s the best way to learn what your members think of your association, and which benefits they really value? Ask them. Often.

Some organizations survey members once a year on a bunch of topics. But waiting a year to get the data you need can put you at a disadvantage. Your association needs to be agile and ready to respond to real-time feedback.

It’s easy to post a one- or two-question poll in your year-round mobile app. This gets you get instant results you can use to make important decisions. If you’re considering a mobile app, see our article, 7 Mobile Tactics Every Association Professional Needs to Know.

No organization is perfect, and you may never reach 100% retention. But you can come close by tapping into what works and what doesn’t. It can be uncomfortable to ask the tough questions. But if you’re open to hearing the answers, you can use the information to lower churn rates and generate more revenue.

Learn how to gather and use feedback with our article, Enhancing the Member Experience Through Feedback.

High-Touch Contact

The onboarding process should include numerous touchpoints to ensure retention. While we covered ways you can automate touchpoints, you can also use staff and volunteers. This combination will help members feel valued and part of something larger than themselves.

For key members showing signs of quitting, consider creating a team of executives and/or Board members to reach out to them. Hearing from an executive can help keep members in the fold.

In fact, member-to-member outreach and Board/executive take the number two and number three spots for top ways to win-back lapsed members. You can find more information on page 14 of the Membership Performance Benchmark Report by iMIS^®.

Use Your Secret Weapon: Happy Members

Joining a new organization can daunting for some — particularly if they’re new to the sector. One of the best ways to get them involved is to ask your established members to serve as “buddies” or mentors. The mentors can:

• Regularly reach out to check in
• Encourage them to attend an event
• Tell them about a forum they should check out
• Suggest resources
• Introduce them to others at events
• Ask about their experience with your organization

In this case, the new member doesn’t feel as isolated. Plus, the buddy/mentor feels needed, so they're more likely to renew. This isn’t a new idea — many organizations have a mentoring program for recent graduates entering the profession. But it's just as effective in shepherding other new members through the socializing process regardless of experience.

Provide Ongoing Value Post-Onboarding

Like any association, you want to create an environment where people can’t afford to not be a member. Here are a few ideas to enhance your member value proposition:

Exclusive Members-Only Resources

One of the best ways to ensure members remain “sticky” is to offer benefits they can’t get elsewhere. For example: If your most valuable resource is an industry report, don’t make it available to non-members. Or charge them a rate that’s greater than the cost of membership to encourage them to join.

Personalized Content and Resources

If your website and member management system are aligned, you can offer a personalized website and other content. Millennial and Gen Z in particular don’t want to feel like a number. They're looking for information and resources tailored to their interests.

With a year-round mobile app, you can easily send push notifications to particular personas. Try creating forums that reflect persona interests and encourage networking. Poll them to learn what’s on their minds, send alerts they might appreciate, and simply use the app to make them feel special. Learn more from the experts at Clowder with "The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Engagement."

Free Membership Resource

Learn more about delivering engaging content on pages 15-18 of our guide, "Delivering an Unforgettable Web Experience"

We explore 5 specific touchpoints to personalize and enhance.

Download the Guide

Partner Perks

Most associations offer an auxiliary membership level for industry vendors. These partners often sponsor events, awards, and resources. You might be able to negotiate discounts/perks from these partners that are exclusive to your membership. This increases the partners’ visibility and enhances the value you deliver to members.

ROI Justifications

You may develop justification letters for attendance at your annual events or training. But have you tried this for member retention as well? Offering first-year members a justification letter can be highly effective for both individual member organizations and trade associations.

Show the ROI they'll receive and the potential cost of non-membership. You can easily include these justification documents in your automated processes and the onboarding journey map.

The Bottom Line

Be sure to remember the following as you craft or enhance your onboarding process:

• Create an onboarding journey map — and make it visual
• Analyze your data to glean as much as possible from it
• Create member personas so you can tailor your communications and increase value
• Make your organization indispensable. Providing ROI justifications for membership, offer exclusive benefits, and deliver a personalized touch that makes members feel special.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2022 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.