In MemberWise’s June poll on existing member retention during COVID-19, we saw how different organisations have been impacted by the pandemic. Almost most two-thirds of participants have seen some sort of impact on member retention. For 20% of participants, COVID-19 has had a positive influence on membership! However, almost half of participants at 43%, reported a negative correlation between membership retention and COVID-19.
– Improved Significantly: 6%
– Improved Slightly: 14%
– Remained the Same: 37%
– Worsened Slightly: 31%
– Worsened Significantly: 12%
A clear value proposition and robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can the difference between dream and dread when it comes to renewal season. To tackle this, we’ve broken down three key considerations for renewals to ensure you are leveraging the correct tools and improve your membership retention after COVID-19.
1. Non-renewal, or no-one to renew?
COVID-19 has had monumental implications for many organisations resulting in re-prioritisation, redundancies, and restructures across departments.
Unmanaged or hard to manage member records can impact your renewal stats. Here are a few ways to make sure members affected by COVID-19 are catered for by your system.
- Validate non-engaged email accounts – If you’re emailing your membership base on a regular schedule, you should have the data to maintain a clean database. If not, you can contact your database with an engaging piece of content. Clean your membership system of any hard-bounces by segmenting the contacts as a list. Re-send to recipients who did not open the email and segment those who did not engage a second or third time as an at-risk group.
- Company-wide account management – If your members are likely to be from local groups or specific organisations, providing a central account management option from your CRM system will help HR or administrators to remove past staff members.
- Paused or tiered membership status – Members on furlough, out of work, or snowed under may look to cancel their membership. By using a customisable website portal and CRM solution, you can offer the option to ‘pause’ memberships for a defined period, or to downgrade tier if required.
2. Make your value clear every step of the way
When renewal comes around, it’s important to remind members of the value you offer them. However, unexpected or confusing emails can lead users to opt-out. Here are a few tips for communicating the value of your membership:
- Make your communication regular and relevant – Without regular engagement, members may forget why they registered in the first place. Use engagement data from your website, emails and social media to send relevant and timely messages to segmented member lists.
- Consider who your ‘value proposition’ is really for – It’s easy to get excited about being the ‘leading body’ or ‘largest community’, but these benefits feel intangible for your members. Review your messaging and communicate the value for your membership body. For example “Be a part of the largest community of Llama raisers” becomes “Get feedback and support from Llama raisers around the country”.
- Personalise their experience – In a year, your members will have achieved a lot. By integrating your CRM with your website’s analytics and CMS, you can provide members with a recap of all they have achieved. For example, number of downloads, events attended, minutes spent, or their most loved content.
3. Make it easy with automatic renewals
Subscription platforms such as Netflix and Amazon are old hats at the ‘set it and forget it’ membership renewal. As long as unsubscription is easy when members wish to do so, you should aim to remove requirements and triggers that encourage users have to actively engage with re-subscribing.
Even if you think your members are automatically renewed, these hidden actions may block re-subscriptions:
- Annual email re-authentication
- Invoice processing by member
- Requiring the member to maintain a standing order
- Missing follow up payment attempt after voided transaction
- Unexpected or confusing emails that lead users to opt-out
If any of these actions take place undecided or busy, but otherwise happy members, may not find the time to renew.
So what can you do?
By implementing a subscription payment process into your membership portal, you can automate payments directly from their bank account.
Your subscription solution should have optimal data security when managing sensitive personal data, and members should always be able to view and manage their payment details and previous payments.
In an automatic subscription account, you can also provide members with tiered membership options to promote upsells, downgrades and additional features if they come to delete or review their membership.
By automating the payment process, you reduce pressure on the individual member or their organisation and create a stable environment for long term members.
CTI Digital are an award-winning agency specialising in web development and digital marketing. If you want to work with an expert full-service agency who can improve your entire conversion journey, get in touch with us at CTI Digital.
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