membership Archives - Page 5 of 13

Partnership v. Membership: Defining Terms

Posted on April 2, 2019 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments

Four quadrant matrix - association membership versus corporate partnership

Lewis and I are both going to take a crack at this topic, and I’ve elected to go first.

I see partnership and membership as being founded on the same broad idea: individuals or organizations that seek some type of a relationship with an association. Whether they are individuals, companies, or other types of institutions, they have problems they can’t solve, or goals they can’t achieve, all on their own. So they’ve decided to associate in order to do those things more effectively than they can in isolation.

However, that desire for relationship can be expressed in a variety of ways.

The people who are engaged in the work of your profession or industry are coming to your association to solve problems and achieve goals that are – or at least should be – core to your mission. They need to get jobs in your field, improve their skills and networks in your field, and then get better jobs in your field. They need you to provide or point them to the education that will help them do that. They need you to uphold standards in your profession or industry and potentially discipline those who violate them. They need you to organize efforts to advocate on behalf of their profession or industry in their state houses and on Capitol Hill. These core constituents can be individuals, as is the case in professional societies, or companies/institutions, as is the case in trade associations.

Your suppliers are coming to your association because they need to connect with your core constituents. They need to establish themselves as trusted partners to your members, resources that can provide the services and solutions your members need to run their businesses, or operate in their professions, successfully. One piece of that is access. Another is the “glow” that being affiliated with your association can provide. They’re also looking for the opportunity to demonstrate expertise, whether formally through things like conference presentations, research projects, “how to” guides, and white papers, or informally through interacting with your members. These suppliers are most frequently companies of some sort, although they may be very small companies, as is the case with consultants to your industry.

The way I see it, there are two key distinctions to be aware both, both expressed in the matrix above.

One describes the relationship the person or organization has with the profession or industry your association serves. Is that person/entity engaged in the practice of the profession or industry (core), or does that person/entity seek to serve people who are engaged in the practice of the profession or industry (supplier)?

The second describes the relationship the person or organization has with your association. Is it short-term and transactional or long-term and loyal?

Some of the people who are in your core audience, those who practice your profession, only need a transactional relationship with you. They’re your customers. In fact, even those who become long-term, loyal, highly engaged members will probably start out as customers. They need to date you before they decide to marry you. And some may choose to stay at the dating/customer level, and that’s OK. You don’t have the capacity for every single person who practices the profession your association serves to be maximally involved. This core audience can be comprised of individuals, institutions/companies, or a combination.

Likewise, some of the suppliers that serve your industry only need – or can only afford – a transactional relationship with you in order to achieve their goals with your membership community. They are likely to be your advertisers (website, magazine, enewsletter) and conference exhibitors, or sole practitioner/small shop boutique companies who can’t afford a large-scale relationship. They have narrowly defined goals for your industry, and they can achieve those goals through transactional relationships (or that’s all they can afford).

Some suppliers are going to have larger or deeper goals for your audience, and deeper pockets. They are your candidates to upgrade, from advertiser/exhibitor to sponsor or even partner.

What role, if any, does supplier membership play in this ecosystem? You’ll have to check out Lewis’s response post to find out!

Partnership v. Membership: Untangling the Knot

Posted on March 18, 2019 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

I’m excited to announce a new blog series I’ll be writing with Lewis Flax, the founder of Flax Associates, a consulting firm that helps nonprofits support their objectives through establishing mutually beneficial partnerships with corporations.

In the coming weeks and months, Lewis and I will be looking at various aspects of association membership, sponsorship, and corporate partnership.

Properly structured, these three types of relationships can inter-relate and support each other, helping all the parties (members, suppliers, and the association) solve their problems and achieve their goals.

Unfortunately, these relationships are often structured at cross-purposes, with siloed departments being given goals that, at best, don’t complement each other and, at worst, are in direct opposition, leading to competition and conflict between departments, rather than one high-functioning team all working together to achieve the mission of the association.

Lewis and I have conceived of this series as an ongoing conversation between two association pros coming at this sometimes contentious topic from slightly different perspectives, one in which we’ll help our colleagues untangle the mess and achieve harmony among their staff members in different departments and among their members and the suppliers who serve the profession or industry those members engage in.

We’ll be taking on topics like:

What is the difference between partnership, membership, and sponsorship? How do they relate?
Who are appropriate prospects for supplier/corporate relationships? How do you find and nurture them?
How do you structure corporate relationships so that they’re to everyone’s benefit?
How do you educate your board of directors about the differences in types of corporate relationships?
How do you deal with internal conflict and departments with conflicting goals?
What is the ROI of corporate relationships? How do you show it?
How do you retain corporate partners? How do you increase the scope of those relationships over time?

What questions do you have about the role of suppliers in your profession or industry? Leave them in the comments or email them to ewengel@getmespark.comor lewis@flaxassociates.com, and we’ll address them in a future post.

(The Membership Q&A series will be going on a brief hiatus while Lewis and I talk about all the ways you can work with corporate supporters to the benefit of them, your association, and your members.)

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Membership Q&A: When Should I Ask Them to Join?

Posted on March 11, 2019 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

What is the ideal time to ask a prospect to join?

This is actually two questions:

When in the cycle of relationship should I invite a prospect to join?
When in the cycle of the year should I invite a prospect to join?

Relationship

The glib answer is: “When she’s ready to say yes.”

Hopefully, the follow up question has already occurred to you: “How do I know when that is?”

The same way you know in any relationship: you have to pay attention to her behavior. Don’t ask her to join the second you first meet her. She doesn’t know you yet.

Figure out offers you can make that give her a taste of what membership is like:

A free registration to a member-only webinar.
Sharing a snippet of a discussion from your online community (or even giving her temporary or limited access).
Sending her an infographic with some cool highlights from your latest member-only “State of the Industry” report.
Giving her access to the most-read article in your magazine in 2018.
Inviting her to sign up for your enewsletter.

And then pay attention to what offers she chooses to accept. Over time, you’ll begin to see patterns in what members who’ve just joined recently said yes to. Maybe it was a certain number of offers (“once he’s said yes three times, he’s ready to join”). Maybe it was particular offers (“if someone takes our free mini-course on the latest regulatory changes in our industry, she’s ready to join”).

You can use prospects’ behavior to determine when is the right time to pitch membership – and what to emphasize when you do.

Calendar

There are also some guidelines you’ll want to follow that have to do with the cycle of the calendar year and of your membership year.

If everyone renews on the same schedule, let’s say the calendar year, there are times of the year that are good for recruitment (October – early February) and times that are not (pretty much the rest of the year, unless you offer something like an “18/17/16/15 months for the price of 12” deal over the summer and fall, because prospects aren’t going to want to pay full rate for less than full product).

You also need to pay attention to the cycle of your profession or industry.

Are your members HVAC contractors? Don’t try to get their attention for ANYTHING in early May or early October – that’s when their customers are first turning their systems on, finding out what’s broken, and calling for help.
Are your members CPAs? Leave them alone from January 1 to April 15 every year.
Are your members teachers? Don’t bug them during the end of semester grading maelstrom.
Do all the companies in your industry do inventory at the same time of year? That is NOT the time to bombard them with membership solicitations.

If you time your pitches correctly, not only will you get a better result, you’ll annoy far fewer people by pushing the relationship too fast or trying to get them to pay attention to you when they have more important things on their minds.

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Membership Q&A: Why Won’t They Join?

Posted on February 22, 2019 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Asian woman making "talk to the hand" gesture

Why aren’t our prospects joining our association?

They don’t see value in joining.

Let’s unpack that a little bit.

The reason they don’t see value in joining may be because they don’t see it YET, or it may be because it isn’t there.

They don’t see value yet.

What that means is that you’re moving too fast. Your prospect hasn’t had a chance to get to know your association and how associating with your organization and its other members can help her achieve her goals and solve her problems. You need to slow down and give her a chance to get to know you before you ask her to commit to joining. What that means is creating a ladder of engagement and giving her time to work her way up it BEFORE you hit her with “please join.” Then when you do, she already knows you and what you bring to the table, so she’ll be inclined to say “yes.”

The value isn’t there.

Even though they might superficially look the same, prospects are different from members. For one, they haven’t, in fact, joined your association. What that means is that they may have different goals and face different challenges than your existing members. So when you pitch all your great member benefits to them, you’re trying to help them solve problems they don’t have or achieve goals they haven’t set for themselves. You may be a bad match. This might be a coffee date that doesn’t go any farther. They swiped left.

Which is OK if we’re talking ONE prospect, but what if a significant percentage of your universe has taken a look and said, “Pass”? Now you have a problem, one many associations are familiar with from struggles trying to attract younger (aka Millennial) members.

How do you learn what they want?

You can conduct a survey, but nonmembers have very little incentive to invest time in taking it. Providing a small gift for participating might help. It’s also hard to construct survey questions to learn what you don’t know – you can only ask about what you know to ask about.

A better way to learn what’s going on with nonmembers is to talk to them, in interviews or focus groups, at least as a first step. Now again, they have little incentive to invest the time, so you will need to find a way to compensate them that’s meaningful to them (which means it probably can’t be “free registration for our conference”). Once you’ve had the opportunity to hear from them, in open conversation, what’s going on in their worlds, looking for places where that differs from what your paying members are facing, you have firm foundation for further research.

That could look like a more well-informed survey. That could look like a lean startup style MVP test. That could look like further interviews and focus groups. That could look like a town hall at an in-person event, or a series of roundtables. That could look like piloting something new with one of your chapters. That could look like industry market research, or other kinds of secondary research projects.

The point is, if a sizable chunk of your prospect base has taken an informed look at what your association is offering and decided it’s not worth it to them, continuing to push something they’ve already said they don’t want on them is the proverbial definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Try something different instead.

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Membership Q&A: Maximizing Revenue AND Participation

Posted on February 7, 2019 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

What dues rates will maximize both revenue and participation?

That’s a good one!

This question actually came in from a client, and here’s what I told them:

The perils of pricing too high are obvious – no one will buy, because you’re too expensive. Pricing too low is equally bad, though, because people don’t value something that they feel is cheap.

The low-fi way to answer this is to benchmark against some comparable membership organizations, to see if what you’re offering (by way of benefits) and charging (by way of dues) is within, below, or above the general market. You never want to be the cheapest or most expensive option.

A mid-level effort approach would be to do a membership dues modeling project. This is like the above, only you deconstruct your benefits package first, price out the elements (both cost to deliver and also what comparable services cost elsewhere), mine your data to figure out which members are actually using which benefits, and recalculate what your benefits packages might include and what they might cost based on actual costs, perceived value, and actual use rate.

The most complicated answer is to do a full-on pricing study. Now that’s not a service I offer, but there are a number of good association consultants and vendors who do. (yep, I really told them that – and gave them some names)

One final note on dues: small annual dues increases are a much better idea than infrequent large increases. Members will not notice a 2-3% annual increase, particularly if you really do 2-3%, which quickly moves you off dues amounts that end in “0” or “5,” and that keeps you up with the rate of inflation without any price shocks. The alternate is to wait several years and do larger increases (10% or more), which are DEFINITELY noticed and can make people angry or lose you members.

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Membership Q&A: Networking Events

Posted on January 22, 2019 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

What is the best type of networking event to hold to get the maximum member engagement?

It depends.

I know, I say that a lot.

I’ve participated in – or seen – all kinds of successful (and unsuccessful) networking events: formal presentations with networking time either around a meal or not, peer-to-peer sharing roundtable discussions either around a meal or not, chat-everyone-up networking events with or without booze, activities (traditional, like golf or less traditional, like bowling), ball games, group service projects, dance parties.

So what makes something work – or not work?

It really depends on your industry culture. Is your community more “suit-and-tie, here’s my card, all-business,” or more “let’s grab a beer”? Are they big sports fans, either spectating or participating? Would they rather go lawn bowling, or spend a few hours together at the local food bank packing boxes of shelf-stable provisions for seniors in your community? Are they comfortable getting their groove thing on together, or would they rather attend an event that will also provide continuing education credits they need to maintain a certification or license?

When you’re thinking through, “Well, what IS our industry culture?” also think about, “Is it something we want to change?”

I was recently conducting stakeholder interviews for a client, and a non-member graciously agreed to participate (their opinions are REALLY important to hear, but it can also be REALLY difficult to get them to agree to invest 30 minutes in the good of a community they’ve chosen not to join). He offered a fairly harsh assessment, painting the association’s culture as an “old boys network,” of “men in suits, women in hose, rubber chicken dinners with off-color MCs” followed by “the men going to the bar, and the women and kids going to the hotel rooms,” and noted “women don’t tolerate this kind of Eisenhower America behavior anymore.”

Are there people in your community who are in recovery? Then maybe you want to think carefully about continuing your tradition of open bars at your events. Do under-represented groups (women, racial minorities, LGBTQ people) feel safe at your events, or are they worried they’re going to be harassed? Is the activity you’ve planned accessible to people with disabilities? Have you considered not just christian religious holidays, but those of the other major world religions as well, in choosing your dates?

Can you use your events not just to provide networking opportunities for today’s needs for today’s members, but also use them to pivot to a more diverse and inclusive future?

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Membership Q&A: What’s the Most Effective Renewal Cycle?

Posted on January 14, 2019 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

When is the best time of the year to begin renewal communications to members? How many notices should we send? Should we send paper or electronic notices? What should we send WITH the notices?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no one right answer to these questions. There are some good guidelines, which we’ll go over in a minute, but really, you have to test different options and, more importantly, PAY ATTENTION to what happens. Yes, that means you have to track what you do and the responses it generates and compare that against doing it a different way to see which works better: how many notices, of what type, sent to whom, with what messaging, and on what schedule.

Sorry not sorry.

When should we start renewal communications?

Three months out, give or take.

What I mean by that is if, for instance, you know that businesses in your industry all have a lengthy payment process that takes longer than three months, or there’s a common busy season, or they all close their books at a certain time of year that doesn’t align with your membership year, you might need to adjust that (and if that last is the case, think seriously about moving your membership year to align with their budget cycle).

How many notices should we send?

Generally, if you’re still getting enough of a response to justify the resources you’ve invested (both direct costs and staff time), keep soliciting people. However, at some point, you need to consider those members lapsed, not just “late,” and change your messaging from “please renew” to more of an acquisition-style message.

When do you make that switch? Probably about three months after lapsing, but again, you need to understand your audience. If three months after lapsing is your members’ busy season, or a time of year when everyone in your profession seems to go on vacation, adjust accordingly. For instance, if your renewal date is July 1, don’t change your messaging from renewal to reacquisition until after Labor Day at the earliest, because there’s a good chance a big chunk of your audience was on vacation before that.

And make sure you give people time to respond. For electronic notices, you can keep your response window pretty short. Most people are going to respond to your email within a week, max, and if they haven’t responded by then, they aren’t going to.

Mail is different. You need to allow 3-4 weeks for a mailed notice to arrive, be read, be responded to, and for the check that member mailed back to you to be received and processed.

My favorite schedule? Send an email. A week later, generate your mail list. Three weeks later, it’s time for the next email (or other electronic) notice. Etc. Speaking of…

Should we send paper or electronic notices?

Yes.

I’m not being snarky. You need to send notices through multiple platforms. It’s tempting to send only electronic notices – they’re fast, they’re cheap, they’re less labor-intensive – but don’t do it. What if you’re sending to an email address that person no longer uses? What if your notices are getting caught in spam filters? What if that member unsubscribed to your email updates?

I have a client that had switched entirely to emailed renewals. Their renewal rate was running around 66-67%. Not great. We reinstated some mailed notices (a more formal print notice with cover letter from the president, and later in the series, a fun, colorful postcard featuring a member photo and testimonial), and their renewal rate is now running around 85%. The mailed notices are, of course, not the ONLY reason for that improvement, but they definitely contributed.

Last week, I taught ASAE’s Association Management Week Membership Development class, and one of the participants, who works for an association with lots of student members, mentioned that her association is doing an increasing amount of communications via text. Talk with your members where THEY want you to.

What should we send WITH the notices?

This is one where you REALLY want to test to see what motivates your members. Do they like a contest with prizes? Are they CEOs who want a summation of all the member benefits their employees used during the year? Do they respond to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), so you should talk about what’s upcoming next year that they’ll miss if they don’t renew? Are testimonials from other members persuasive? What about some sort of reward that’s available only for doing what you want them to: renewing immediately, off the first notice? Are they all business, or do they like messaging that’s a little more casual, fun, or clever? Would they like a little gift?

The only way to know is to test. AND TRACK WHAT HAPPENS.

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Membership Q&A: Don’t Leave Us!

Posted on December 17, 2018 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

What’s the #1 reason a long-standing member would not renew?

As Dr. Theodore Woodward of the University of Maryland School of Medicine taught his med students in the 1940: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras.”

For our purposes, that means start with the obvious: Did that member switch careers or retire?

If so, you may have to chalk this one up to “forces beyond our control,” and let that person go.

If not, however, you potentially have a problem – a big one.

First of all, to quote Sohini Baliga’s and my recent whitepaper, Steal This Idea!:

Let’s say you get a new member who joins on the last day of early-bird registration for your annual conference and picks the “membership + member registration rate” package. Your conference is in Seattle, and he lives in Seattle. At the endof the next year’s renewal cycle, with your next conference coming up in Boston, you notice that he’s lapsed, so you put him back into your lead cultivation cycle.

Let’s say you also have a member who’s been with you for 15 years. She holds your professional certification, has presented at some of your events, is a regular contributor to conversation on your white-label social network platform, and served a three-year term on one of your committees. At the end of next year’s renewal cycle, you notice that she’s lapsed.

What happens next?

Far too often, she goes back into your lead cultivation cycle but otherwise doesn’t receive any sort of special attention.

Those two members are not equally valuable to your association, and treating them as if they are is disrespectful of the investment that the second member has made in your association. With the first member, it’s reasonable to infer that he joined to attend your meeting because it was local and that was all he was looking for from your association. He should go back into your lead cultivation cycle but otherwise probably doesn’t merit additional reinstatement efforts. But that second, long-term, highly involved member has earned the right to more attention. Her departure should trigger alarm at the highest levels of your association and direct, personal outreach to find out why she left and whether the association can do anything to reclaim her. The first member took your association out for coffee and realized you weren’t a match. That happens. The second member has basically served your association divorce papers. You should find out why.

Increasing numbers of my clients are reporting problems retaining mid-career professionals. These are people who are settled in their careers but not yet nearing retirement. They’ve often earned whatever credentials are available for their industry (whether those be undergrad or graduate degrees or certifications or other types of non-degree credentials). They’ve invested a decade or more building their professional network. They may NOT be interested in traditional modes of volunteering, spending years working their way laboriously up the association committee ladder with the goal of putting that “prestige” committee chair or board of directors position on their LinkedIn profile and resume.

And, frankly, a lot of associations are not serving them well.

Assuming it’s not due to outside forces like leaving the industry, members lapse because what you’re charging exceeds the value of what you’re providing.

It’s tempting to rationalize this trend as, “Well, it’s just GenXers, and there were always fewer of them anyway – smaller generation. We’ll just recruit more early-career Millennials to make up for it.”

Two problems with that thinking:

The oldest Millennials are about to turn 35. In other words, they’re rapidly approaching “mid-career.”
They don’t want the same things your Boomer members did at their mid-career stages.

What do those experienced professionals want?

There is no one answer, which is why you need to put in the time and effort NOW to find out what’s going on with them, what their current professional challenges are, and what goals they have yet to accomplish. GenXers are likely to be happy to be your guinea pigs and will give you the space to develop an experimental mind-set and approach, which will position you for success with the larger generations coming behind as they reach career maturity.

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Membership Q&A: How Much Is TOO Much?

Posted on December 5, 2018 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

How many follow up touch points is too many follow up touch points? When are we just getting annoying?

A good general rule is: As long as you’re still getting enough response to justify the investment of resources in the touch point, keep going.

But how do you know?

You have to pay attention to the response rate you get from each communication. Open rate matters, and per the INFORMZ 2017 Association Email Benchmarking Report, you should be looking for an open rate of around 35%. But click rate – that is, did people at least attempt to take your call to action? – and unsubscribe rate – that is, are you pestering people so much they’re fleeing? – matter more.

Benchmarking matters, and benchmarking within our industry is far more meaningful than just general benchmarking (not least of which because associations generally do better, so if you benchmark against commercial marketing emails, you may end up thinking you’re doing better than you actually are). But what matters most is benchmarking against yourself. If your own internal open and click rates are going down, or your unsubscribe rate is going up, it’s time to take a fresh look at what you’re doing.

That all being said, people are inundated with email, so it’s equally important – if not more so – to communicate using a variety of platforms.

Membership Q&A: Who Makes the Call?

Posted on November 19, 2018 | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Who should make contact around things like joining and renewing: other members or staff?

Member-to-member (or member-to-prospect) communications can be very effective, IF you can persuade your members to actually make the calls.

We’re often tempted to ask volunteers to call lapsed members – in fact, that can be a stated requirement of serving on a membership committee. However, that is the hardest call to get volunteers to agree to make (and actually follow through on), because unless your lapsed members just forgot, they lapsed for cause, and facing an angry or disgruntled member is scary for volunteers.

It can even backfire, if the volunteer who’s placing the call is the combative type. “I was upset with the association for X reason, so I let my membership lapse, and then Member Y called and started an argument on the phone with me,” is not good for your association.

I recommend starting with something easier. So what IS easier?

The best place to start with a member-to-member contact campaign is welcoming new members. While you can certainly restrict those new member calls to your board of directors and/or your membership committee, it’s not complicated to do (particularly if you provide a simple script), so it’s an excellent micro-volunteering opportunity for any member.

What would a script look like?

Start by – if possible – matching up a new member with an experienced member who is located physically near them, which allows for an in-person meeting if both members are amenable. Your volunteer starts off by introducing herself and welcoming the new member to the association. Then she asks for two pieces of information:

How did the new member find out about the association?
What caused him to join?

Then your volunteer shares a few things she likes about her membership, highlights one thing the new member can expect to see soon, and, if appropriate, invites the new member to get a coffee or lunch.

That’s it – easy and fun for both your welcome wagon volunteers and your new members.

Moving up a level in complexity, you can run a Member Get a Member (MGM) or Member Get a Lead (MGL) campaign.

There are MANY resources on how to run an MGM campaign. The keys are to make sure you have a good tracking mechanism, make sure you provide your member recruiters with plenty of sales support, and keep your expectations in check (every single member will not recruit one member – a tiny percentage will be really into it, and everyone else will ignore it). MGM can be challenging because people who aren’t salespeople as their profession tend to fear sales. Even people who are salespeople as their profession may not be comfortable selling your association.

Because of that, I often encourage clients to start with MGL, which is a lot less pressure on your members. All they have to do is introduce the association to a colleague and ask if it’s OK for someone from the association to follow up with more information, then your members submit those warm leads for association staff to follow up on. It makes tracking a cinch – you know exactly where a lead came from, because the members submit them directly – and takes the pressure to “close deals” off members.

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Category: membership