Membership Essentials: Recruitment and Renewal Strategies Webinar

A recording of the live webinar that I presented this month on Membership Recruitment and Renewal Strategies is now available online.  Here is the link (best viewed in Internet Explorer).  The session was adapted from the chapter that I authored for ASAE’s 2016 edition of Membership Essentials: Recruiting, Retention, Roles, Responsibilities, and Resources.

In the area of membership recruitment, the webinar included the following topics:

• Target Markets – Who you want to reach and determining what are your primary markets and acquiring or building lists of these prospects. 
• Membership Offers – What a member will receive by identifying special offers you will make in your promotions to attract new members.
• Promotional Tactics – How a member will be reached by selecting the best marketing channels like personal sales, direct mail, email, telemarketing, etc. and the frequency and timing of promotions.
• Marketing Messages – Why a member should join by proving your value proposition and presenting solutions and benefits to members that are compelling.
• Testing and Tracking – Where to take future efforts by trying variations of the four points listed above and recording which lists, offers, messages, and channels produce the best ROI and number of new members.

For membership renewals, the webinar highlighted these topics:

• New Member Conversion – Where to focus efforts to maximize renewals.  Typically, first-year members are the least likely to renew.  
• Renewal Frequency, Timing and Channels – When and how often various marketing tools should be applied to maximize renewals. 
• Budget Considerations and Steady State Membership Counts – Why most organizations under budget on renewal efforts and how adequate spending can make a big difference in total membership counts.
• Payment Options – How offering automatic credit card or EFT renewal turns renewals from an opt-in decision to an opt-out action.
• Renewal Notice Personalization – How personalized messages can be added to renewal efforts like, “because of your membership, you saved $50.00 on your product purchases this year.”

Look for details of our next webinar, Membership Marketing: Beyond the Basics, in February.