Our last blog looked at how data can help membership organisations understand their members better – who they are, and how and why they engage (read it here). The next few instalments in our blog series will take a closer look at how this insight can help with some key challenges:
- Member acquisition
- Member retention
- Member engagement
Tackling these common challenges in the right way will help increase the value of your members and drive the growth of your organisation.
Let’s begin by looking at member attrition. Why you need to recruit new members may seem obvious. Any file of stakeholders (customers, supporters, members, etc.) is going to have an underlying level of churn – people pass away or their circumstances change. So, new member acquisition is vital even just to stand still, let alone grow. MemberWise has calculated the average member retention rate is 83%. So, the average new member acquisition rate needs to be 17% to keep momentum (we’ll delve further into this later).
However, it’s also a question of who to recruit. Good recruitment requires knowing how to recruit the best members and conducting a cost-benefit analysis of what the organisation gets from each channel or initiative. It’s also important to target an appropriate mix of members to support your portfolio of services.
At Wood for Trees, we’re often asked to investigate why a particular programme is in decline – it’s often assumed it’s something to do with the programme itself. While this may sometimes be the case, we also find one of the root causes to be the recruitment of people unlikely to become long-term members or advocates. After all, this isn’t just a numbers game, it’s quality not quantity that matters.
But let’s start with the numbers. One of the first things helpful to know is the overall level of acquisition across all activities and how this impacts the size of your membership base. The below chart can be insightful in understanding the overall health of a membership file. From viewing this, you can begin to question; what’s causing more members to lapse in the last year? Is recruitment of new members keeping pace with this attrition?
The chart highlights the churn in the existing file – only a quarter of the file is being retained each year. So, any level of recruitment is going to struggle to keep up with this. But it also shows what level of recruitment will be needed to maintain the file and begin to grow.
So, the issue here is retention, right? Well, yes, but if you aren’t recruiting the right kind of members, this may be contributing to the problem. We’ve done a lot of analysis on profiling recruitment campaigns to identify the best people to recruit. For example, with charity fundraising, it’s usually the case that older supporters are more likely to be retained than younger ones (see the below example).
Unfortunately, many organisations chase volume and implement what they believe to be highly successful recruitment campaigns without realising these volumes are boosted by recruiting many young people who are easy to sign up but quickly walk out the door. It’s more beneficial to attract lower volumes of highly engaged members or supporters who’ll provide more value to the organisation.
Think of it like trying to build a dam. Are you better off shovelling piles of small stones into the river, topping them up as they’re shifted away in a never-ending cycle? Or is it better to take a bit more time to put the right boulders in place that will stay there indefinitely?
Age is just one dimension, the same can be said for wealth, interests, job titles or any other factor that may influence the way a potential member engages with your organisation.
Knowing what’s working will help you expand on the best bits and cut aspects of your recruitment that aren’t performing to their full potential. Or it may allow you to optimise underperforming campaigns by making them more focused on specific target groups, locations or channels.
Remember, recruitment today will form the backbone of your membership tomorrow. So, getting the right people through the door will make everything easier. And the best way to achieve this is by gaining an understanding of who your top performing recruits are and what channels or activities are attracting your most valuable members.
Wood for Trees has helped many organisations gain a deeper understanding about their supporters through delivering and optimising valuable data and insight. Contact us here if you’d like to find out how we can help you discover the value you’re providing your membership base.
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