Is Your Member Onboarding Journey Magical or Miserable?
Make your association indispensable and exponentially boost retention rates by learning how to create member personas and map the onboarding journey
Your member management system can help you understand why your members left and what you can do to win them back. Our 7-point plan shows you how.
Keeping members engaged has a lasting impact on your retention rates. But it’s inevitable a subsection of your membership will drop out for a variety of reasons — some of which you can control, others you can’t. If your attrition numbers are rising, you might start by reviewing the following 7-point plan to help pinpoint the reasons behind the decline and develop a successful counteractive strategy.
The first thing you need to determine is why the members left in the first place:
Your association software should be capable of quickly identifying:
If your member management system is capable of tracking member engagement, you need to look closely at what the data is telling you. It’s likely you can get a fairly good idea when they started to check out. Armed with this information, you can develop remedies to ensure this doesn’t happen again. This is why association software with exceptional data analysis features is so critical to your success.
As you review the data, you need to put on your detective cap to determine:
It’s important to step back and really look at what the data is trying to tell you. It’s not a time for finger-pointing about what might have gone wrong. It’s an opportunity to learn and adjust so you can ensure you keep the members you worked so hard to attract in the first place.
Ideally, you were already asking your members:
If you have asked these questions, your member management system should be filled with insights you can use to devise a successful campaign to bring lapsed members back into the fold. But if you haven’t, you can still conduct an exit survey using an online tool, such as SurveyMonkey, to learn exactly why they left. A telemarketing campaign can be great but given COVID, it can be more difficult to actually reach members at their desks — and members tend to be more candid online. Keep it short, but ask them:
These days, you probably have limited time and resources to spend on your win-back initiative. So, it’s important to identify the most critical member types to focus on, including:
Your member management system is essential to ensure you can:
If your current association software isn’t capable of this, consider finding a new system (such as an Engagement Management System) that can. Without it, your entire initiative will seem nearly impossible.
Member personas can be extremely helpful in keeping members engaged but building “lapsed member personas” can also work well in reversing attrition. As you review your data, try to identify what the lapsed members have in common, such as:
Then, once you have a good picture of who left and why, you can build out your lapsed personas and devise a strategy to try to bring them back into the fold. Check out our blog on the onboarding journey — it’s got lots of tips on how to construct member personas
The strategy you employ to draw former members back in has a lot to do with how long they’ve been gone
0-2 months: If you’ve got a solid retention program, the renewal process starts several months before the member’s anniversary date and continues for a few months until they renew. Members get busy and lose track of time — a one- or two-month lapse may be a mistake.
3-8 months: After 3 months of no activity, it’s not an oversight. You’ll need to understand why they left and develop an appropriate plan to reengage.
9-12+ months: If a member has lapsed this long, they’ve somehow managed to get along without the benefits you offer. At this point, you’ll need to:
We know what you’re thinking: yes, flexible membership levels can make billing more complicated. But your association software should be able to easily process complex member billing structures. If it can’t, see our recent blog for guidance on how to evaluate a new system to meet your needs.
Some members really value hearing from their colleagues who can provide a unique perspective on the value of membership that you can’t. Other members won’t respond to this tactic — so it’s important to understand the lapsed member’s communication style and persona.
If you don’t already have one, a retention committee or subcommittee of the Membership Committee can help your organization:
Invite the rising stars within your membership who are interested in future leadership roles to be part of this group. You can even consider making this part of your leadership ladder. For example:
This in-depth training gives your leadership a better view of the importance of retention so that by the time they serve as Chair of your organization, they are fully committed to ensuring strong retention rates.
Every organization is different, and you understand your membership best. With that said, if your retention numbers are dropping, it may be time to break out of the mold and try some new ideas. Here are a few thoughts to get you going:
After you’ve analyzed your data and understand the reasons behind your member attrition rates, you need to create a strategy that specifically addresses YOUR issues. You’ll need to start with these steps:
Regardless of your available resources, you can easily start with a multi-step email campaign that will:
Don’t shy away from the pain — let them know you recognize their concerns and explain how you’re addressing them.
If you have telemarketing resources available, use them to follow up on your email campaign and to solicit additional feedback you can use to further tailor your win-back approach. If you can’t implement telemarketing, use volunteer members who will reach out to members with a phone call or personal email and outline your organization’s value proposition.
Lapsed members may want to try membership again on a short-term basis to ensure their issues have really been resolved. If they’re experiencing financial hardships, consider offering to let them pay their dues on a monthly or quarterly basis vs. annually. Or consider a “membership lite” option that offers them limited resources (such as online only) at a reduced rate. But you’ll need to ensure that this “lite” version isn’t so good that it replaces your full-membership level.
If members know that they can find a way to access your key benefits, you take away the incentive to renew. By creating a members-only section of your website and controlling access to your mobile app, you’re protecting your assets. If your annual conference is a must-attend industry event, consider making the non-member registration higher than your membership fees to encourage them to rejoin.
When a member realizes that you’ll offer them more if they lapse and come back, they may try to do this every year. So, it’s a better strategy NOT to offer significant discounts/ additional benefits for coming back after just a few months. Your loyal members who pay their dues on time deserve just as much — and more — than those members who drop out, so don’t create a system that rewards members for leaving.
Of course, you always want to build in a short grace period for the well-meaning member who is dependent on your benefits and simply missed a deadline. But if a member knows that they can still access members-only resources for another 3 months after lapsing, they may try to take advantage of this every year (getting 15 months for the price of 12). So you need to set rules for when membership benefits expire and stick to them.
Yes, discounts can work to bring members back in, but these actually result in lost revenue for your organization — and the types of members who respond well to discounts may not be the best members for your association in the long run. Instead, a value-add — such as limited-time access to a member resource for which you typically charge a fee — has several advantages:
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Of course, it’s always better to keep members from leaving than to win them back but that’s not always possible. Try the following tips we’ve gleaned from our clients over the years:
We know you already have a digital transformation strategy — or you’re working on it right now. 😉 Boosting member retention should be a cornerstone of any effective plan. By following the advice above, you will understand how members feel, why they leave, what you need to do to win them back, and the support system you need behind you. All this flows directly into your digital plan.
We hope you’ve discovered some fresh ideas to solve your attrition challenges. To sum it up, we recommend you:
Make your association indispensable and exponentially boost retention rates by learning how to create member personas and map the onboarding journey
Walk through a year of member-centric communications with me to see how a personal, automated approach can engage members.
Try these 8 strategies — some you can start today! — to optimize your member engagement and acquisition efforts to better prepare for challenges...