More Marketing Channels Available for Membership Recruitment

There are now more marketing channels to use in membership marketing than ever before. These options give us wonderful opportunities, but also some real challenges.

I thought that a former colleague of mine, Dave Taylor, expressed the potential challenges with adding more and more marketing channels well in his blog. He wrote,

“I believe that many, if not most, of the organizations pursuing this strategy will not be able to sustain this pace (or spend) to keep up with all these new channels. Even more dire: they will become so focused on managing all the new media (often with the same resources they had before the influx of the new media) that they will eventually dilute their attention to their core (and perhaps more pedestrian) programs – the same marketing programs that have proved all the ROI to this point in time.”

Ideally, careful tracking of membership recruitment will help define what marketing channels are most effective for your organization. And, in line with the quote above, I believe you need to track two key pieces of information. First, you want to look at ROI by channel. Where do the most members come from at an acceptable price? Secondly, you need to track where you invest your time. For example, social media can be fun and it can produce a good membership ROI, but if it takes up time that could be spent on more productive media, then it may not be the best investment.