Losing members? Master member retention with the essential formulas and proven strategies associations use to reduce attrition and win back lapsed members.
Winning a new member is a victory, but sustainable growth relies on strong member retention. If you want to focus more on retaining members, you're not alone. In our annual membership benchmark report, organizations overwhelmingly cited increasing engagement and retention as their top goal for the year.
Without a solid strategy to keep your existing members engaged, even the best recruitment campaigns will eventually fail to outpace churn. To build the stability you need to grow your association, you need a thoughtful retention plan.
That's exactly what this guide provides! We'll explore the essentials of keeping your members, from calculating key metrics to implementing proven tactics that inspire long-term loyalty. Here's what we'll cover:
As you explore these fundamentals and smart strategies, remember that your technology is the foundation of your member retention strategy. It ensures you can execute and scale your plans without burning out your staff. See how iMIS serves as your digital foundation, then read on for the strategies you need.
Member retention is the percentage of members who remain with your organization over a specific period of time, typically measured annually.
This metric acts as a report card for your member experience, quantifying your ability to deliver enough value to secure a renewal. Unlike acquisition, which focuses on capturing new audiences, retention is the continuous process of nurturing existing relationships to ensure your community doesn't slip away to competitors.
While attracting new faces is exciting, the true mark of a sustainable association is the community you've already built. Shifting your focus from aggressive acquisition to strategic retention offers a significantly higher return on investment and insulates your organization against market downturns.
Here are the primary benefits of prioritizing a retention-first strategy:
Overall, prioritizing your association's member retention will lead to a thriving community. By investing in the members you already have, you create the stability needed to fuel growth.
Use this formula to get an accurate picture of how well you are convincing members to stick around:
Member Retention Rate = [ ( Number of Members At End - New Members ) / Number of Members At Start ] x 100
So, let's say you started the year with 1,150 members. You ended with 1,325. During that time, you recruited 360 new members. Here is how the math works:
Don't want to do the math manually? Plug your numbers into our interactive calculator below to see your current member retention rate instantly:
Calculating your retention rate gives you the baseline, but moving that number in the right direction requires deliberate action. Let's explore five high-impact strategies you can use to deepen engagement and reduce churn:
First impressions set the trajectory for a member's entire relationship with your association. 78% of organizations reported an average or better renewal rate for first-year members compared to last year, likely because they had a strategic plan for integrating them into their community.
To do the same, move beyond a single confirmation email and extend a warm welcome. Try implementing a 90-day onboarding journey that gets them familiar with their benefits, your association, and your entire member community. This sequence should guide new members toward specific behaviors that deepen their investment, such as:
Additionally, you might offer a new member orientation webinar or a virtual coffee chat each month to introduce new members to staff and fellow newcomers. These personal connections help break the ice and make them feel like part of a community rather than just a name in a database.
Members often join for the content, but they stay for the community. A member who has built personal relationships within your organization is significantly less likely to churn since they don't want to lose those connections. In fact, one study found that 64% of association executives believe members most often join associations to network with others.
To foster peer-to-peer connection, you need to actively create spaces where members can talk to each other, not just to you. Consider implementing:
When you build these bridges, you stop being just another subscription and start being a professional home. It's easy to cancel a service, but it's much harder to walk away from a group of friends and mentors.
When an organization validates a member's expertise or loyalty, it creates a psychological barrier to exit. Leaving your association would mean leaving behind the status and reputation they have built within your community.
Launch a recognition program that celebrates contributions large and small. Some ideas include:
When you celebrate your members' success, they become personally invested in yours, directly impacting your association's member retention rate. This validation turns them into natural ambassadors who are eager to bring others into the mix.
A student member needs different resources than a C-Suite executive. Sending the same generic newsletter to both results in low engagement because it forces the member to hunt for relevant content.
Instead, segment your database to deliver personalized value to each member. Use the data you already have (job title, years in industry, location, etc.) to send targeted content. Here's an example of what that might look like:
Modern systems like iMIS make this approach scalable, helping to retain members more efficiently. You can segment members based on criteria like job title or tenure. This allows you to deliver personalized communication, ensuring every member feels like your content was written specifically for them.
Sometimes, losing a member has nothing to do with value and everything to do with friction. In fact, 28% of members fail to renew simply because they forgot.
To avoid accidental churn, you need to take the administrative work off your members' plates. Don't rely on them to remember the renewal date. Instead, replace manual invoicing with automated renewals.
As a bonus, this frees up staff time too. For example, the Life Sciences Trainers & Educators Network (LTEN) freed up 20+ monthly hours of accounting support by automating tasks like invoicing, application acknowledgments, and approval letters with iMIS.
Beyond automated renewals, consider setting up a generous grace period. This gives busy professionals breathing room to correct an oversight without losing their benefits or tenure at your organization. By treating a missed payment as an honest mistake rather than a cancellation, you save members who never intended to leave.
When a member leaves, don't just delete them from your membership database. Instead, build a specific off-boarding track that leaves the door open for their return.
Start by implementing a two-step exit process. Before finalizing the cancellation, offer an option to pause or move to a cheaper tier. Often, a member doesn't want to leave entirely. They just need a temporary break or a lower price point.
If they do cancel, use it as a learning opportunity. Trigger an immediate, one-question survey that asks, “What is the primary reason you are leaving?” You can't fix a leak if you don't know where the hole is, and this feedback is vital for improving member retention for the rest of your base.
Finally, play the long game. Wait 3 to 6 months before launching a “We Miss You” email campaign designed to win them back. In this campaign, you'll want to:
Around 70% of association leaders report email as being the most effective way to win back lapsed members, but several also cite member-to-member outreach (46%) and board outreach (38%) as smart options. Think about what would work best for your member base!
By treating lapsed members as future prospects rather than lost causes, you ensure that the door to your community never truly locks shut. Plus, re-engaging lost members is often more time- and cost-effective than cold acquisition.
The most dangerous form of churn is the kind you never see coming. Too often, organizations operate in a reactive mode, realizing a member is disengaged only after they have already cancelled.
To flip this dynamic, you need to move from simple record-keeping to predictive health scoring using an Engagement Management System (EMS) like iMIS. By consolidating your data, an EMS allows you to monitor member behavior in real time, identifying at-risk members so you can intervene before it's too late.
Here's how a purpose-built system like iMIS enables you to boost member retention:
This is just the tip of the iceberg. You can also integrate the system with your LMS and online community to offer a more enjoyable member experience and eliminate data silos. The end result is the complete visibility you need to proactively drive member retention.
Your technology should empower you to learn from every member interaction, and that's exactly what iMIS does! By using these tools to spot early warning signs, you can reach out with a helping hand rather than a goodbye letter.
Building a solid association member retention strategy requires an ongoing commitment to understanding your members' evolving needs. Shift from treating membership as a yearly transaction to viewing it as a continuous relationship nurtured by value and connection.
By layering the right technology behind a human-centric approach, you'll build a thriving community of professionals who are committed to your organization.
As you think about how to retain more members, check out these free resources:
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