subject: Evaluating Member Engagement Efforts -an Exercise For Associations [print this page] Member Engagement is a hot topic in the association industry. With communication methods trending towards social communities, e-mail communications and interactive websites, associations are tasked with keeping their members focused on engagement within the association. Before jumping feet first into the world of Web 2.0 or now Web 3.0 (yes, 2.0 has already come and gone), this whitepaper asks you to take a step back to re-evaluate and re-position your organizations engagement strategy for members and prospective members.
What is Member Engagement?
Effective engagement is actually a long term process whose purpose is not only to retain members but constantly deepen the associations relationship with members. This means making meaningful connections with members as whole persons and in the context of their environments. When thinking about Member Engagement, an association must evaluate the needs of their members and create valuable member services that not only keep members active but ultimately impact their lives.
Simply stated: Member Engagement happens when your members interact with you and with each other.
Some examples of engagement could be as simple as posting a comment on a blog, forum discussion, photo, or video within your online community. More advanced engagement could include giving a gift, purchasing a subscription, or reading your newsletter. Bottom Line: Its all about participation.
Evaluating the Big Picture
The purpose of this whitepaper is an exercise to determine how to better engage members and prospective members. When starting this process, its important to take a step back and answer a few simple questions to create the Big Picture of your organization. Take a minute now to answer the questions below to create your organizations Big Picture.
1. Know Your Members
Build a profile of your member base. What are the personal characteristics of your members? Are they professionals or organizations? How do members communicate with your organization? E-mail, phone, or online social networks, a mixture of all three?
What other commitments do your members have that compete with your organization for their attention? Work, other sources of knowledge, family, social life, etc.
What member demographics does your organization maintain through your database and how do you access them? Are there any demographics your organization does not track that would build a complete member profile?
What barriers exist that keep members from renewing their memberships? Expense, time constraints, lack of services, lack of identification with your organization?
Having a clear profile of your constituents will help ensure that your engagement is relevant and brings more value to your organization.
2. Understand Your Organization
Quite often we get caught up in presenting services that we think our members want. Instead, we should look at what services our members are asking for and then align the organizations priorities with member needs. Its important to continually communicate, support, and inform your members of your efforts to build better member engagement.
3. Build Member Engagement
Once your member profile is complete and your organization has aligned priorities with member needs, its time to start engaging those members.
Continual communication with members increases engagement levels which ultimately lead to renewing their membership, registering for events, making donations, participating in online conversations, and contributing to the conversation surrounding your organization.
Who are we trying to engage?
Its important not to narrow your focus when thinking about engagement with your organization. Of course, you want to retain current members, but more people interact with your organization than just paying members. Weve broken down the type of people who interact with your organization:
Members
Members include those individuals or organizations that you currently have a relationship with and are active as paying members or participants. They attend your programs, pay dues, and buy your products.
Prospects
Prospects could include prior members or prospective members who have expressed interest in the organization but have not joined. The bottom line for both segments: Understand their interest in your organization.
Previous Members
The most important question to ask when trying to engage previous members to re-join is quite obviouswhy did they cancel their membership? Maybe they changed
Quite often we get caught up in presenting services that we think our members want. Instead, we should look at what services our members are asking for and then align the organizations priorities with member needs.
employers and the new company doesnt pay for association memberships or the individual cannot afford their own membership.
Another question to ask is what type of value they received from their previous membership. If they felt membership lacked benefits, they chose not to renew. Or its possible they received many benefits from your organization but just cannot afford the membership anymore? The best way to gain this information from previous members depends on their interaction with the organization. Online surveys are a non-invasive way to gain insight confidentially and can be completed at their leisure, although survey response rates tend to be less than 20%. Another option is to create a call campaign to survey lapsed customers over the phone.
Once you have evaluated a previous members interest in your organization and why they left, its time to start a re-engagement strategy. Make your previous members feel included and encourage them to rejoin. A good place to start is sending them your communications or publications. Even though this might be a primary member benefit, you could send a special mailing or issue that gives the previous member an idea of whats happening with your organization today. If theres value in your publications that wasnt there before, a previous member may reconsider joining. Another idea is to offer incentives such as a Welcome Back Discount or conference discount that includes the price of membership. If membership cost is an issue, set up payment programs and lower the possible barrier of expenses.
Prospective Members
When evaluating engagement levels, its obviously important to engage and retain current members, but its equally important to engage prospective members who have shown an interest in your organization previously and may have run into barriers listed above such as expenses, rival commitments, or time commitments.
Encourage likes and followers through your social media pages and deliver valuable content regarding their profession that would advance their education. Allow them to lurk and feel involved. Invite them to your conference and include the price of membership in the registration fees.
Global Community
The broader perspective of who you serve is your global audience. This community could include anyone with contact to your organization in some form or the other such as website visitors, social media followers, or those who read your publications.
When evaluating your global community, its possible that only 30-40% of total participants are current members or prospective members. This means a larger portion of your audience is part of the global community but has not experienced the value of being a member of your organization.
Make sure you understand their demographics and interests and personalize communication to target their interests. Once theyve raised their hands offer short-term memberships such as a trial-based worry-free membership. Or if theyre a leader in the industry, ask them to contribute content for your next publication.
Become the knowledge source of the global community. Make sure your content is relevant and updated frequently. If you have a conference coming up, post the abstracts of the session on your website. This type of teaser could spark interest in joining your organization or, at least, allow them to see you are a leader in the industry. It also reinforces your value with a glimpse into your conferences. Make publications available for purchase.
Use social communications to expand contacts within the community. The average twitter account has 15-25 followers. If your organization has 5,000 followers and 400 re-tweet to 15 people each, you can exponentially expand your reach to the community. Also make sure youre website is showing up in online searches. Optimize your website by identifying and standardizing key words for search engines and embed keywords within the content to draw people to your site. Terminology changes so make sure to re-evaluate your keywords on a regular basis to stay current.
Tools for Member Engagement
Once you have a strategy of how to engage your audience, its time to evaluate what resources are available to execute your engagement strategy.
The way associations communicate with members has shifted in recent years. As more people turn to the internet to receive information and connect with others, its important your engagement strategy meets the changing needs of members. Prove that membership to your organization is not only valuable, but essential by providing services that fulfill their need for interaction with you and other members.
Private Social Community
Most associations utilize public social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn but find it difficult to measure and maintain online engagement with members. A private online community, such as Higher Logic, includes engagement reporting tools
Become the knowledge source of your global community.
that connects directly to your association management software and is branded to look like your website.
Members are rewarded with virtual ribbons based on a points system for completing a number of engagement actions such as posting a blog, replying to a discussion thread, and completing their profile page. This social community platform also suggests networks your members should join based on their interests listed on their profile page such as golf, cooking, and campingconnecting your members automatically.
Members can also access the social community through their smart phone. Members can view discussions, your resource library, member directory and contact members directly by phone or e-mail.
E-Mail Campaign Management
Your members spend a majority of their day reading, responding, or deleting e-mails. Keep your organization at the front of their mind by sending e-newsletters, event registration reminders, and other relevant news via e-mail. A successful e-mail or survey campaign can make a big difference in session and conference attendance, the number of membership renewals you receive and in many other events and/or campaigns you market.
There are a number of e-mail marketing platforms such as Constant Contact, Magnet Mail, and High Road Solution, just to name a few. Make sure to do your research before selecting an e-mail marketing provider. Most monthly subscriptions are either based on (1) the number of e-mails you send per month or (2) the number of contacts in your database. Many providers also integrate with your association management software so you can import and export contact lists in fewer steps
Social Commerce
The newest way to engage your constituents is by promoting a special offer through Twitter and Facebook. Companies such as Groupon and LivingSocial have paved the road for this type of engagement. Social Commerce enables you to add new followers and generate revenue with discounted offers that you tweet or post on Facebook. Social Commerce extends the reach of your organization since a follower must retweet your messageexposing your message to all of their followers and ultimately increasing the reach of your special offer.
Association Management System
Utilizing an association management system (AMS) is the best way to track member engagement since you can track multiple forms of interaction in one place. Many AMS provides, such as gomembers, provide integration with your website for member-only
sections and directories, event registration, social media channels, and e-mail platform so you can track engagement across all channels. Its important to research different AMS providers to select a system that fits your organization the best. Before evaluating systems, create a list of capabilities you need to better track engagement activities and other requirements needed to get the most out of your system.
What are the costs?
Software Costs
Decide how your staff would use software to optimize member engagement. If staff members are located throughout the US or world, a cloud based deployment would allow staff to utilize the software from anywhere with internet access. Or, if you have a larger staff with full time IT, an on premise solution may be best. Make sure to consider implementation costs, which is the cost to get it the software up and running. Dont hesitate to contact technology experts to walk you through this process. Knowledge is power.
Staff costs
The saying If you build it, they will come only works in the movies. Even if you build a beautiful website or social networking page but the content is stale or not updated frequently, visitors will not return and will ultimately lose interest in your organization. Social sites and your website are both living organisms. Its important to answer who will be responsible to monitor and update these sites on a regular basis. This is a significant cost that is often overlooked but is the single most important aspect of any member engagement strategy someone needs to own the process and make sure that everyone does their job to support the effort.
