Membership is the lifeblood of professional associations. Fees are a key source of revenue to sustain operations and facilitate member benefits like networking opportunities, professional development, and communicating changing standards within that industry.
While reaching new members is a crucial part of marketing initiatives for professional associations, the key to long-term success is membership retention. These non-profit organizations serve the interests of professionals in a specific industry often, their pool of potential leads is more limited than a broader-scale non-profit organization. This is why membership retention plays a crucial role in professional associations.
Email and SMS are indispensable tools for enhancing renewal rates and fostering member engagement. This article explores strategies tailored to the unique needs of professional associations, aimed at driving increased member retention through targeted communication efforts.
Understanding the member renewal journey
Let’s take a look at a journey timeline:
1. Initial membership acquisition
Prospective members join, often attracted by networking opportunities, professional development resources, industry standards, and other membership benefits.
Example: At this stage, you send a welcome email, deliver a lead magnet, or follow-up on event attendance
2. Early member engagement
New members explore your offerings, attend more events, participate in webinars, and engage with your online community to gain value from their membership.
Example: New members explore your offerings, attend more events, participate in webinars, and engage with your online community to gain value from their membership.
3. Mid-term engagement and evaluation
Members continue to participate in association activities, accessing resources, and networking opportunities. As they reach a mid-point in their membership, your members are evaluating whether the benefits measure up to the membership fees.
Example: Propose recommendations for their next involvement, determine their interest in volunteering or further engagement with your association to build loyalty. Email & SMS communication provides highly-personalized content and opportunities.
4. Renewal decision phase
Members approach the end of their membership term, prompting the decision on whether to renew. Factors that may influence renewal decisions include:
- Perceived value of membership benefits
- Satisfaction with your association's resources
- Personal and professional development
- Community interaction and networking opportunities
- Comparison with alternative membership options or industry affiliations
Example: Most marketers will send a simple renewal reminder email or text. A more effective strategy will create more email & SMS touchpoints that nurture members toward making a positive renewal decision. Year-in-review emails, more exclusive opportunities, and feedback surveys prompt subscribers to reflect on the value of their membership well before a renewal deadline.
5. Renewal action
Members who decide to renew take action to extend their membership. They may renew online through a membership portal, respond to renewal reminders, or reach out to your team for assistance.
Example: Email & SMS communication have a clear call-to-action for renewal, making it as easy as possible for members to take action. Touchpoints include a follow-up renewal reminder, suggested resources for assistance, and last-effort discounts or incentives for retention.
6. Non-renewal or lapsed membership
Some members choose not to renew, but understanding why can help you efficiently address the lapse. Here’s a few potential causes:
- Dissatisfaction with membership benefits or services
- Financial constraints
- Lack of engagement or perceived value
- Career or industry changes leading to disassociation from the profession or industry represented by the association
Example: If a member has missed the deadline or declined renewal, email communication could include a request for feedback to understand why they’re leaving your association. Based on their response, offer a discount or exclusive opportunity or tease what they’ll be missing out on in the upcoming year.
7. Post-renewal engagement
Renewed members continue their engagement, accessing resources, attending events, and participating in community activities.
Example: Send a personalized thank-you message or follow-up communication to acknowledge the renewal and express appreciation for continued support. From, here find ways to get your subscribers increasingly more involved with your association with every year of membership.
Mapping your members’ journey from acquisition to renewal helps you identify critical touchpoints, anticipate member needs, and adapt your communication to create an effective membership retention strategy. Depending on the industry tied to your professional association, your members’ journey might look different.
Tailor the customer journey we outlined above to reflect how members interact with your organization. To get started, define your member personas and identify key touchpoints like we’ve done in the example above. From there, you can build out a full customer journey map.
Segment your audience to create targeted membership retention campaigns
Segmentation lies at the heart of successful membership retention strategies, allowing you to tailor your messaging based on members' engagement levels, renewal history, and preferences.
By segmenting your audience effectively, you can deliver highly relevant and timely content that resonates with members, increasing the likelihood of renewal.
Here are some segmentation strategies:
- Event engagement: Segment your email and SMS subscribers based on their event attendance, volunteer participation, or campaign clicks. Send more frequent communication to highly engaged members while taking a slower, and more value-driven approach to re-engage less active subscribers.
- Demographics: Divide members into demographic segments like career stage, location, or income level. Analyzing this data will help you plan more specific opportunities and resources for the members that make up your association, and send more relevant peer-to-peer content.
- Interests: Interests and preferences can be a huge connection point in marketing for professional associations—your members’ career interests are what make up your organization! Explore interests that affect their career like environmental, industry, and education issues, and start tailoring your long-term strategy based on their interaction with that initial content.
- Loyalty status: Separate first-time donors, major supporters, lapsed donors, and never-before donors. Tailor messaging to appeal to each group's giving behavior and capacity, in doing so, you’ll maximize donor retention and lifetime value and potentially recruit or re-engage donors.
- Communication preferences: Link a preference center at the bottom of every email so members can easily update how they want to hear from you. Respect subscriber preferences and deliver content through their preferred channels to enhance engagement and satisfaction.
- Member journey stage: Send targeted opportunities, special discounts, and surveys, and set up niche online communities to offer something new to subscribers the longer they remain members.
By leveraging these segmentation strategies, professional associations can deliver personalized and targeted communication that strengthens donor relationships, maximizes engagement, and drives meaningful impact for their mission—not to mention retaining more members, year over year.
Tactics for membership retention excecution
So, once you have your subscribers segmented, what are your options for addressing those at different stages of the customer journey? Here are our suggestions for reinforcing your membership retention.
- Reminder emails and SMS Timely reminders before the renewal deadline serve as gentle nudges to prompt action. Crafting concise and compelling reminder messages is crucial for maximizing their effectiveness. Personalizing the renewal experience through dynamic content based on member data and past behavior enhances engagement and reinforces the value of membership.
- Personalized thank yous and membership benefits Sending personalized thank-you messages post-renewal acknowledges members' support and cultivates a sense of appreciation, fostering long-term loyalty. Regular communication highlighting the benefits of membership serves as a constant reminder of the value proposition, reinforcing members' decision to renew.
- Early renewal incentives Offer discounts or additional benefits for early renewals to incentivize early action and demonstrate appreciation for members' proactive engagement.
- Feedback surveys Gathering feedback through surveys provides valuable insight into members' experiences and preferences, informing future renewal campaigns and your overall membership retention strategy. Use member incentives like discounts or special status to encourage engagement with surveys.
- Engagement scoring Implementing an engagement scoring system helps identify members at risk of non-renewal, enabling targeted intervention strategies at the early signs of losing interest.
- Automated drip campaigns Setting up automated sequences guides members through the renewal process with personalized messages tailored to their individual journeys, areas of interest, and interactions.
Best practices for your membership retention strategy
Effective renewal and retention campaigns require attention to a few key considerations. Communication around membership renewal should be clear and persuasive, but provide an obvious course of action for subscribers. Make your call-to-actions and overarching message clear so members know how to take action.
It may seem obvious, but make sure your campaign complies with legal requirements like those outlined in the CAN-SPAM Act or the TCPA.
Good timing is also crucial to make sure you reach members when they’re most likely to open your messages, donate, engage, or offer feedback. The frequency of your communications will complement your timing strategy—send too often to a disengaging subscriber and you’ll frustrate or overwhelm them, but send too little to a highly-engaged member and their loyalty may decline.
Data is your best resource for understanding the best timing and cadence for your members. Consult your analytics to understand open rates, engagement, and content preferences. Leverage these analytics and implement tools like send-time optimization to find the right balance on timing and frequency for each member.
Learning from data will empower your association to refine and optimize continuously. Utilizing data effectively is crucial for nonprofits to enhance donor relationships and improve donor retention rates. Here are strategies to leverage data for member retention campaigns:
- Maximize your CRM: Integrate donor data into your CRM to track donor activity, personalize outreach, and demonstrate appreciation for past support.
- Identify trends: Analyze giving trends to pinpoint lapsed donors, re-engage them, and optimize donation revenue.
- Analyze email metrics: Monitor email metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates to refine email content and segment your email list for targeted communication.
Learning from data is critical to staying connected, providing relevant content, and maintaining member engagement. Professional associations can make regularly leveraging data a smoother and easier process with a platform like Delivra. Delivra can ingest complicated data and put it in the hands of marketers for powerful personalization. Seamless, data-driven personalization will help you build an effective membership retention strategy.
Personalized email & SMS is the key to successful membership retention
Email and SMS marketing play a pivotal role in maximizing membership renewals for professional associations. By understanding your members’ journey, you can start leveraging segmentation strategies and deploying targeted tactics. Through these tactics, your association can enhance member engagement, drive increased renewals, and ensure long-term sustainability.
Embracing best practices and harnessing the power of data-driven insights will position your association for success and foster a thriving community of members.
