Happy Thanksgiving!

The other day I came across this old Puritan prayer and I thought it would be appropriate to share for Thanksgiving. It is titled, A Puritan Prayer for Thanksgiving.

O MY GOD,
Thou fairest, greatest, first of all objects,
my heart admires, adores, loves Thee,
for my little vessel is as full as it can be,
and I would pour out all that fullness before Thee in ceaseless flow.
When I think upon and converse with Thee
ten thousand delightful thoughts spring up,
ten thousand sources of pleasure are unsealed,
ten thousand refreshing joys spread over my heart,
crowding into every moment of happiness.
I bless Thee for the soul Thou hast created,
for adorning it, sanctifying it, though it is fixed in barren soil;
for the body Thou hast given me,
for preserving its strength and vigor,
for providing senses to enjoy delights,
for the ease and freedom of my limbs,
for hands, eyes, ears that do Thy bidding;
for Thy royal bounty providing my daily support,
for a full table and overflowing cup,
for appetite, taste, sweetness,
for social joys of relatives and friends,
for ability to serve others,
for a heart that feels sorrows and necessities,
for a mind to care for my fellow-men,
for opportunities of spreading happiness around,
for loved ones in the joys of heaven,
for my own expectation of seeing Thee clearly.
I love Thee above the powers of language to express,
for what Thou art to Thy creatures.
Increase my love, O my God, through time and eternity. Amen 1

1 The Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions by Arthur G. Bennett

Continue Efforts to Reinstate Former Members

The other day, I was presenting some of the membership research and one of the audience members expressed shock that our data suggested not giving up on trying to reinstate former members. “The former members left the organization. Why would you keep trying to bring them back?”

I thought that it might be of interest to share some real world response rates that support the point of working to restore the membership relationship with an expired member.

With one client organization, we regularly market to former members and ask them to reinstate their membership. In fact, we go back to members who expired in the year 2000. These members who have been gone for nine years still produce a very nice return -- 40% margin over marketing costs. On the other hand, for this organization, reaching out to those who have never been a member actually produces a return well below breakeven.

One note to remember, going back to former members only works if there has been good database hygiene practices in place. Running records through National Change of Address (NCOA) which corrects records going back for up to 48 months needs to be done on a regular basis. Also USPS Ancillary Service Endorsements should be used. "Ancillary service endorsements are used by mailers to request an addressee's new address and to provide the USPS with instructions on how to handle undeliverable-as-addressed pieces." There are a number of options available, so take a look at the link.

It is almost always a safe bet to reach out to former members as a first priority over prospects who have never been members.

Structuring Your Organization around the Value You Deliver

For many organizations the end of the year is a time to look and see if your strategies, tactics, and structure line up with your vision.

One of the top resources that I have found in helping an organization focus is a book by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders. I read it many years ago and still refer to it today.

They write, “The message . . . Is that no company can succeed today by trying to be all things to all people. It must instead find the unique value it alone can deliver to a chosen market.”[1]

To help organizations do this analysis, they divide organizations up into three different types of “value disciplines”. The opportunity for us as we plan is to determine the value discipline that best fits the strategy for our organization and then use the characteristics of that discipline to help in building staff and structure.

Here are some highlights of each of the three value disciplines.

1. Operational Excellence (examples Wal-Mart and McDonalds)

• Value Proposition: Best Total Value
• Golden Rule: Variety kills efficiency
• Business Structure: Standardized, simplified, tightly controlled, centrally planned, little discretion for rank and file
• Culture: Abhors waste and rewards efficiency
• People: Team counts, not individual, train them our way

2. Product Leadership (examples Intel and 3M)

• Value Proposition: Best Product
• Golden Rule: Cannibalize your success with breakthroughs
• Business Structure: Loosely knit, ad hoc, ever changing so as to adjust to entrepreneurial initiatives and redirection
• Culture: Encourages individual imagination & accomplishment
• People: Get the talent

3. Customer Intimacy (examples Nordstrom and IBM)

• Value Proposition: Best Total Solution
• Golden Rule: Solve the customer’s broader problem
• Business Structure: Delegate decisions to employees close to the customer
• Culture: Embraces specific (not general) solutions and thrives on deep and lasting customer relationships
• People: Stay at forefront and learn – broad skills and styles

Which value discipline do you identify with of the three? The structure you build will be very different based on where you focus.

[1] The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, page xiv

Calculating Membership Lifetime Value

It is nice to see that some things do not change – like math. I came across an article I had read many years ago that was originally written back in 1991 outlining how to calculate the lifetime value of a member.

Understanding lifetime value (LTV) is a fundamental calculation that every membership organization should do. It let’s you know how much you can spend to acquire and keep your members. It is the foundation for a membership marketing strategy.

There are some shortcuts that I use these days to get to the numbers a little more quickly, but the article is worth reviewing.

The article was written by Harmon O. Pritchard, Jr., who at the time was senior vice president of membership for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). Harmon along with Scott McBride, the founder of Marketing General, Inc. were really the first to apply the LTV concept to membership marketing world.

Here is the link:

http://tinyurl.com/ltvarticle

Let me know what you think.

A Process to help Define Member Value

The last couple of weeks I have met with a number of organizations that are re-focusing on defining their membership value proposition.

It is a smart thing to do because it is so easy in life to get lost in the trees of urgent matters and not see the forest. When we are selling membership, stepping back and seeing the big picture is essential. That’s because members want a clear and concrete reason to join and continue their membership.

So I wanted to share a quick three step group or team exercise that I use to help get re-focused on the big picture and big value that you deliver to your members. Here it is:

1. Define and list all the features of membership. Yes, start with the trees not the forest. Put as many features of membership on the list as come to mind. It helps to hold and touch these features. So to help lay your tangible member benefits on the table. For those that are not tangible, print out descriptions of them from you web site to make them more tangible. One feature on your list, for example, might be your job bank another might be the membership social network.


2. Assign benefits to the list of features. As a next step, write down the key benefit(s) that the product or service provides to a member. Be specific. For example, a professional association job bank means members access a trusted source to identify jobs specifically in their field. A social network means members can instantly connect with professional colleagues who can assist them with a particular problem or need.


3. Connect the dots. Now that you have a long list of features and benefits, the next step is consolidating them into simple and concrete value statements. It is useful to center benefits around one of life’s BIG three motivators: Pain, Gain, and Fear. So, for example, a member can gain by joining because she is in the know about the top jobs in your field and is regularly connected to the prominent networkers in the field who can help her advance her career. Membership helps you get ahead faster.

This value exercise does not need to take a long time. And you do not need to bring in a facilitator. Why don’t you take a few hours to try this with your colleagues and post a comment on how it went?

Upcoming Membership Marketing Benchmarking Presentations

For readers who are located in the Washington DC metro area, I wanted to let you know that I will be doing three separate presentations on our Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report this month.

The first session is at the Alexandria Brownbag lunch on Thursday, October 15, 2009. It begins at 11:30 and concludes at 1:30. The location is Marketing General Inc, 209 Madison Street, Third Floor, (corner of North Fairfax and Madison), Alexandria, VA. Admission is free.

The second is at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington, Association Day Conference on Wednesday, October 28, 2009. The location is the Capital Hilton Hotel, 1001 16th Street NW, Washington, DC. My session is from 3:45. Paid pre-registration is required.

The third is at the October 2009 Reston Idea Swap on Thursday, October 29, 2009. It begins at 3:00 and concludes at 5:00. The location is Veris Consulting, LLC, 11710 Plaza America Drive, Suite 300, Reston, VA 20190. Admission is free.

I would enjoy meeting you if you can make one of these meetings.

The Growth of Loyalty Membership Programs

The other day, I received a question from one of the readers of this blog about the number of members in loyalty programs. I was able to access some excellent data and wanted to share it with you.

For background, membership loyalty programs are marketing initiatives to retain and reward customers. They can be offered by major retailers or financial service companies or by your local barber shop. The goal of these programs is to move customers from a transactional relationship to a continuity relationship. Loyalty memberships are cousins to association memberships, sharing many of the same strategies, tactics and analytics.

The source of this data is drawn from The 2009 Colloquy Loyalty Marketing Census.

“For those interested in the bottom line, this report reveals that, from 2006 to 2008, U.S. loyalty program memberships increased from 1.341 billion to 1.807 billion—an adjusted growth rate of nearly 25 percent since our last Census. This number translates into 14.1 loyalty program memberships per U.S. household.”[1]

However, since most loyalty memberships do not require a regular renewal, there is a big difference between the actual number of members and those who are actively engaged with the brand. “The percentage of overall active memberships in the U.S.—those memberships that demonstrate some type of engagement within a 12-month period—remains flat at 43.8 percent, with a blended average of 6.2 active memberships per household.”[2]

The census also provided counts for US membership loyalty programs by sectors. The top five are:

• Financial Services – 422.0 million


• Airline – 277.4 million


• Specialty Retail – 191.3 million


• Hotel – 161.9 million


• Grocery – 153.2 million[3]

When I teach about membership marketing, I focus on the five key touch points in the membership lifecycle. Each has its own challenges and opportunities. For many classic membership associations, recruitment is the number one challenge.
Based on this report, the challenge for building loyalty memberships is not so much recruiting new members, but in engaging them and getting them to take advantage of the membership. Using the report’s definition for engagement -- no interaction over the past year -- over 56 percent of the names in a loyalty member database are not active.

If you would like to download a copy of the report, here is the link for registration and download.

[1] Rick Ferguson and Kelly Hlavinka, The 2009 Colloquy Loyalty Marketing Census, Loyalty One, page 1.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid. page 5.

Integrating Channels and Content to Recruit Members

Testing is such a powerful tool in direct marketing. I would like to share today the outcomes of two tests that produced a substantial pop in results.

The first has to do with channel integration – connecting with a prospective member through multiple media.

We tested this recently using mail and email simultaneously to prospective members. We split our audience into two groups. One group only received a direct mail membership solicitation. The second group received the same direct mail package, but also received a follow up email. The mail only group produced a 1.23% response rate. The combined mail and email group produced a 2.08% response rate. This represents a 69% lift in overall response by adding the email.

I have seen a number of tests combining mail and email in membership acquisition over the past year and in each case the combination has improved response over either channel used in isolation. In adding email to the marketing mix, it is important to remember that email is not free. Often email lists needed to be rented for the promotion and the creation, deployment, and building a companion microsite also involves costs.

A second test included channel integration, but added to the mix exclusive and useful content. I call this content integration.

Here is how this test was structured. The prospect list was split evenly and the relevant touches were sent out at the same time.

The control group received a direct mail solicitation and a follow up membership recruitment email. The email provided a link to a customized microsite with an in-depth presentation of the organization’s membership benefits.

The test group received the same direct mail solicitation, but a series of emails where used to follow up the mailing. The first follow up email offered access to a microsite full of information on how an organization could take advantage of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The second email provided a link to another microsite that included a staff presentation again focused on how to access funding from the ARRA.

The third and final email replicated the control email from above and provided a link to the microsite outlining the membership benefits.

So the test really focused on the use of free, exclusive and relevant content to engage the prospective member.

The test group was the decisive winner. Allowing for a statistical margin of error, the test group outperformed the control group by over 300%. It did over three times better in both the number of members and in dues revenue.

What can we learn from these tests? One lesson is that intensity is important in marketing. More touches with valuable content in a short period of time gets a prospects attention. In addition, all of the communications pushed toward a sale.

Feel free to post your questions or observations about these tests here.

A Response to Acronym Blog: Membership Recruitment and Retention are Alive and Well

Scott Briscoe wrote a post yesterday on the Acronym blog entitled, “RIP: Membership?” He writes, “I am firmly in the camp that this model is dying. I believe that the nature of the way people affiliate, and what they expect to get out of it, is changing.”

I think everyone will agree that the world is changing, but I am not ready just yet to put association membership in the grave.

Here are several of reasons.

First, in our Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, 45 percent of association executives reported that membership had increased over the past year. Only 35% saw a decrease. That is pretty good considering the economy—it beat the stock market.

Additionally, 49 percent of association executives reported an increase in new member input over the past year. While only 21% saw new member input fall. The survey had over 500 participants.

Finally, I think that there is a more important indicator out there related to health of membership model. If the concept of membership is in decline then why are for profit companies running full speed toward a membership business model? I believe that they are doing it because it makes economic sense.

In the past, I have highlighted this strategic embrace of the membership concept among companies and organizations. Here are some of the posts discussing this trend.

Corporations Coop Membership Marketing – For profit marketers argue that every company should offer membership.

Costco Membership Up 30,000 per Week and Renewals at All-Time High of 87% -- Costco does not seem to be having a problem selling membership.

A Wake-Up Call for Associations – Magazines are offering association membership services

Exploring Alternative Membership Models -- Everyone from insurance companies to museums to retailers now offer membership.

So perhaps the issue is not that association membership is dying, but that association membership needs to be more effectively presented and managed.

One of the goals of this blog is to help membership marketers more effectively use this customer relationship called membership. I continue to believe that membership is an ideal model for an organization that provides good value and services to customers and wants to strengthen that relationship.

A Blue Ocean Strategy for Membership Marketing

Stepping back and looking at the big picture is what three day weekends help us to do. So I wanted to share a couple of concepts that I came across today in re-reading the book, Blue Ocean Strategy.

As marketers, we tend to continually refine and focus our segmentation. But what if we took the opposite approach and looked for larger commonalities in the marketplace?

That’s what Kim and Mauborgne recommend in their book. The authors write:

“Typically to grow their share of market, companies strive to retain and expand existing customers. This often leads to finer segmentation and greater tailoring of offerings to better meet customer preferences. . . As companies compete to embrace customer preferences through finer segmentation, they often risk creating too-small target markets. To maximize the size of their blue oceans, companies need to take a reverse course. Instead of concentrating on customers, they need to look to noncustomers. And instead of focusing on customer differences, they need to build on powerful commonalities in what buyers value. That allows companies to reach beyond existing demand to unlock new mass customers that did not exist before.”[1]

Here are a couple of other unconventional solutions from Blue Ocean Strategy.

The authors claim that extensive customer research may not be the best method of opening up new strategies and markets.

“Our research found that customers can scarcely imagine how to create uncontested market space. Their insight also tends toward the familiar ‘offer me more for less’. And what customers typically want ‘more’ of are those product and service features that the industry currently offers.”[2]

So what is one way a company can evaluate a new strategy? They recommend, “A good way to test the effectiveness and strength of a strategy is to look at whether it contains a strong and authentic tagline.”[3]

If you cannot put your promise into a clear and concise tagline then you should question whether or not it is a viable offering.

[1] W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Harvard Business School Press, 2005, page 101 and 102.
[2] Ibid. page 27.
[3] Ibid. page 40.

Impact of Frequency of Contact in Membership Recruitment

You often hear the advertising wisdom that it takes seven impressions to produce a buying decision. You also may have read in our Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report the power of continuing contact with renewing and lapsed members.

But how do these concepts apply to the frequency of contact when looking at membership recruitment or acquisition? Is there a correlation between the number of new member solicitations and the likelihood of a prospective member joining?

We asked this question recently and set up a test to help find the answer. Here is what we did.

With one membership marketing client that uses fairly static prospecting lists that we have compiled, we went back in our data to identify the number of times we had sent a mailing to the prospective member over the past three years. We then tagged prospective members by the number of contacts.

Then in a subsequent campaign, we defined our lists by the number of mailings that the potential member had previously received and tracked back our responses to these “lists”. Here is how responses broke out.

Clearly our analysis highlights that for this group there is an erosion of response from people who have been mailed multiple times. So with this organization, to maximize net revenue and work with tighter budgets, we dropped the prospects who had been contacted more than seven times from some upcoming campaigns. By eliminating these prospects, we saw response rates jump up. However, after resting these records for several campaigns, we will re-introduce them in future promotions.

In the coming months, I will be doing more analysis with mailers who have a longer history and higher frequency of contacts.

199 Ideas: Membership Recruitment and Retention

Last week ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership released their newest book, 199 Ideas: Membership Recruitment and Retention.

You will find it a very practical resource that membership professionals should keep handy and use as a checklist for the basics of membership marketing.

As the title suggests, 199 Ideas, is presented in a readable format as tips by topic area: Recruitment Basics, Where to Find New Members, How to Get Prospects to Join, and Retention Basics.

Here is a sampling of some of the tips:

1. “Tracking is everything. Want to really know what works for recruiting new members? Remember that all of your applications should be coded so that you can track where [they came from] (page 14).”


2. “New members can be found in lots of places, but the easiest sources are people who already know your association (former members, nonmembers who have attended you convention or purchased your services) or know your members (page 15).”


3. “By far, it [direct mail} is the most effective and fastest way to grow your membership, if numbers are what you’re after. Direct mail can be costly overall, but after you’ve been at it for a while (testing and analyzing, that is) you’ll be able to pick lists like a pro and you’ll learn which copy and offers will work and which won’t. This form of marketing allows you to pinpoint success – or failure -- with real numbers and thereby lets you control how much it costs you to get a member (page 19).”


4. “Every membership professional who engages in direct marketing must understand two things: 1.) that every mailing is an opportunity to test new ideas; and 2.) never ‘roll out’ . . . until you’re satisfied that the test works (page 22).”


5. “It’s important to have a well thought out renewal campaign with multiple touch points. You should consider a blended approach in your communications that includes email, direct mail, telephone calls, and web based tools )page 63).”[1]

As useful as the book is, I would take issue with a couple of the points made in 199 Ideas.

First, I think that recruitment basics chapter overemphasizes research and analysis. If all the research that was recommended in the book was done then there would not be time to actually do the recommended marketing. Often a better approach is to attempt some marketing efforts early on and let the market speak to you through the responses you get. Yes, research is good, but I also believe in the “just do it” approach to marketing.

Secondly, setting the expectation that your “response is usually somewhere between 2 and 5 percent (page 22)” for direct mail acquisition is unrealistic. Of course we would all love to mail 100,000 pieces of mail for $70,000 in cost to sell our membership at $200 in dues and get back $1,000,000 (5 percent return), but don’t promise that to anyone if you want to keep your job!

The book was developed by the Membership Section Council of ASAE and the Center. Key contributors to the book were Linda Brady of the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering, Tip Tucker Kendall from the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, Michael C. McGough (a former colleague of mine) from the National Investment Relations Institute, and Miriam Miller from the United Fresh Produce Association.

By the way, the book also includes a "Share My Tip" form where you can contribute your thoughts for the next version of the book.

[1] 199 Ideas: Membership Recruitment and Retention, by ASAE & The Center's Membership Section Council, 2009, 88 pages.

We Don't Know What We Don't Know

BusinessWeek had a very encouraging article this month on Why It's Smart To Be Optimistic.

One quote in the piece jumped out at me from the inventor Thomas Edison who said, “We don't know a millionth of 1% about anything."[1]

Human nature seems to say that we know it all. But the wise course may be to humbly put ourselves in the place of being a learner.

As the old proverb says, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.”

[1] BusinessWeek, The Case for Optimism, August 13, 2009

Membership Marketing Benchmarking Final Report Now Available

We just publicly released the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Final Report for you to download. Only a registration on the site is required to get a copy.

I wanted to thank those who participated in our formal presentation of the report Monday, at the ASAE Annual Convention.

Please feel free to share the report with others in your organization. Post your comments here on this site and please let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to your thoughts and feedback. Here is the link.

This has been one of the more interesting projects that I have worked on in a long time. I hope you find it a help in your membership marketing efforts.

Monthly Installment Dues Billing: A Case Study

Everyone wants to increase their membership recruitment results and renewal rates and here is one tip to do just that – monthly installment billing of dues.

If you think about it, our society has moved to a month by month financial focus. Your cell phone, internet, car payment, and service contracts are paid each month. In fact, our likelihood to purchase these products would be greatly diminished if we were required to pay for the year in advance. We are also more likely to continue the services when the payments are automatically debited from our credit card or bank account.

However, most membership organizations do not offer the opportunity to pay monthly. A member is typically required to pay the full dues up front.

Over the past several years, we experimented with making monthly installment billing available to members. I wanted to share with you today a case study from one organization that has tried this program.

Let me start out by admitting that putting this type of program in place is an administrative challenge. Credit cards expire and have transaction fees. In the case of electronic funds transfers (EFT), bank accounts open and close. So this type of change will require staff time and programming time. The higher the dues payment, the more beneficial this type of program will be.

For my case study group, the idea to test installment billing was first raised as a method to increase response rates on membership acquisition mailings. Research showed that the $225 price tag for dues was an impediment for members to join.

So we built a head to head acquisition test for this organization. The control offer with the $225 price went to 37,640 prospects and the same package offering the additional option of an automatic credit card payment of $18.75 a month went to 37,623 prospects. The results were impressive. The control package generated 436 new members for a 1.16% response rate. However, the test package with the installment option produced 657 members fro a 1.75% response rate.

Clearly many prospects were more willing to join if they had the option to pay monthly.

The next question was how will members who select the monthly installment renew compared to members who pay up front. Our latest data reports on members who renewed on time. The on time renewal rate for members NOT on the installment plan is 55.7%. However, the on time renewal rate for members participating in the installment plan is 82.0%. The non-installment member rate will probably rise to 70% when late renewal payments are included. But even when late payments are included, a potential twelve point lift in renewals is a major improvement.

The bottom line for this organization is that making an installment dues option available to members has caused an increase in the work load for staff, but it has helped produce more new members, more revenue and a better renewal rate. It may be something that more membership organizations should test.

Let’s Connect at ASAE 09

I would enjoy meeting you if you will be attending the ASAE Annual Meeting in Toronto next week.

Here are some ways that we can connect.

First, my firm, Marketing General, Inc., will release the final report of our 2009 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Survey. If you would like a printed copy of the report, please stop by our booth – number 113 -- in the exhibit hall and ask for me. (Click here to read a summary of the Top Five Findings of that study).

Secondly, on Monday August 17, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm in room 802A of the Toronto Convention Center: I will be co-presenting an “un-session” on the report. The session is titled, How do You Compare? Benchmark Your Association against Industry Research in Membership, Marketing, Meetings and More.

In addition, Marketing General Inc. is pleased to again sponsor the Membership Section's Reception at this year's Annual Meeting. Join me from 5:00 to 6:30 PM on Sunday, August 16, in Ballroom A of the InterContinental Toronto Centre Hotel.

Finally, on Sunday August 16 at 1:30, I will be attending a session by my colleague Erik Schonher who will be part of a panel of membership executives and association CFOs to explore how to facilitate communication between the association's membership department and their finance department's leadership.

Schedule Your Membership Marketing Phone Consultation

The Washington DC area pretty much shuts down for much of August. That means my schedule is unusually free. I could take another vacation with my family, but I thought I would try something new this year and offer a free half hour phone consultation to my blog readers. I am setting aside time the week of August 3 to 7 for these conversations.

My hope is that I will be of help to your membership program and at the same time learn from what you are doing and get some more material for fall blog posts.

If you are interested, I have set aside some time slots for next week and will allocate them on a first come first serve basis.

You can connect with me either through LinkedIn or my contact information to the right on this blog.

I look forward to speaking with you.

Date Set to Present Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report

The past several weeks, I have been sharing my initial findings from our Membership Marketing Benchmarking Survey. I hope that you have found it helpful. We are now writing the final report.

We will be releasing the report at the ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership Annual Conference. If you are at the conference, you are invited to participate in a session that I will co-present on this research along with research from my friend, Sheri Jacobs, CAE. She will highlight her updated research on the state of the association economy. On this blog, I previously reported on the original edition of her research and I am sure her updated data will be very valuable.

We have titled the session: How do You Compare? Benchmark Your Association against Industry Research in Membership, Marketing, Meetings and More. The session is on Monday, August 17 at 2:00 in room 802A of the Toronto Convention Center.

If you are one of the more than 400 survey participants, you are scheduled to receive your personal copy of the research report the first week of August. For those who did not participate, we will provide copies to those who attends the session.

This presentation is done with the permission of ASAE, but is designated as an "unsession". It will be promoted exclusively through word of mouth and social media. So feel free to jump the fence to attend and share the date and time with others.

A Wake-Up Call for Associations

Most associations that I interact with view competition as coming from the association next door. Going forward, I think that it will most likely be coming from a for-profit company. And in my mind, the best way to protect and grow your association before this happens is to build relationships and connections through membership with your market.

Companies moving into the traditional association marketplace are eager to fill any vacuum that they can profitably find in the markets you serve.

That’s why developing or hiring expertise in membership marketing is more important today than ever for associations.

Here is one example, Merion Publications; the publisher of ADVANCE Newsmagazines. They provide a magazine, current job listings, education/events, job fairs, and communities to professionals in the following fields.

Nurses
LPNs
Imaging & Radiation Oncology
Directors in Rehabilitation
Physical Therapists & PT Assistants
Occupational Therapy Practitioners
Speech-Language Pathologists & Audiologists
Audiologists
Long-Term Care Management
Respiratory Care & Sleep Medicine
Administrators of the Laboratory
Medical Laboratory Professionals
Health Information Executives
Health Information Professionals
Nurse Practitioners
Physician Assistants
Healthy Aging

I do not want to communicate that there is anything unethical with companies moving into the realm traditionally owned by non-profits. They see a market opportunity and have taken advantage of it using the marketing and sales expertise that they have honed over the years.

The questions associations should ask themselves are: How well prepared are we to deal with for-profit competition? Should this be a wake up call for our association? Is business as usual sustainable?

As I have shared on this blog, building the membership relationship is driven by making prospective members aware of who you are, actively recruiting these prospects, engaging new member in the organization, and effectively renewing them.

Agree or disagree, please let me know your thoughts on this.

Never give up on Membership Renewals

Winston Churchill said, “Never, never, never give up.” And it would appear that as it relates to membership renewals, he may be correct.

In our Membership Marketing Benchmarking Survey, we asked “when does your organization finish renewal efforts” by months from expiration. We then cross tabulated this against their reported membership renewal rates.

The data appears to indicate that organizations that stop their renewal process earlier are more likely to have membership renewal rates under 80 percent. However, those that continue in their efforts to renew members are more likely to have membership renewal rates over 80 percent.

In fact, those who say that they “don’t stop contact” are 83% more likely to be in this higher renewal grouping than those who stop contact earlier.

But wait there is more.

Using the same cross tabulation, this trend also appears to be true when we asked in the survey how long a member is “graced” with the continuance of membership benefits after expiration. Organizations with longer grace periods tended to report renewal rates of over 80 percent. In fact, groups that grace member benefits three or more months are nearly three times more likely to have renewal rates over 80% (9% compared to 26.5%).

Client research that I have read independent of this study often suggests that one of the most common reasons for a member to lapse is that he forgot or did not get around to renewing. So it does not surprise me that those who keep working at restoring the relationship with a member end up keeping more members. Members tend to leave an organization for reasons of omission not commission.

So if you have members in your database who have not renewed, keep a perspective that they have not renewed “yet” and try to reconnect with them. Never give up.