If you’re considering how to deliver even more value to your association members, boost engagement to retain existing members, and attract new members to sign up, scalable online training could be your competitive edge. 72% of peoplesay their top reasons to join an association are continuing education, professional certification and learning new professional skills.
This article looks at how digital training supports both you and your members. It offers added value to members, while opening a reliable direct revenue channel for your association, too.
Your Members Are Looking for True Value from Your Association
There’s no doubt that members today have higher expectations than ever before. Innovative digital content is everywhere, often powered by growing investments into AI-driven solutions. Members expect the same level of digitisation and innovation from their associations. With a cost-of-living crisis affecting everyone, members demand that every subscription and membership fee provides real value. If they can’t quantify the benefits of a line item, or see the impact on their careers and professional development — it’s got to go.
Look at the data, and you’ll already see that this fact is nothing new. In 2023, the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report found that more than a third of associations cite a lack of membership benefits as a reason why their association fails to provide a strong value proposition to its members. Almost two-thirds of executives say that prospects fail to sign up to the association because they can’t see the value in becoming members.
Your training experience could become that key differentiator, the very reason why prospects look to your association and think ‘this is going to add value to my professional growth’ or ‘this is a worthwhile investment for my career.’ After sign up, the more frictionless the training delivery, the more likely members are to feel good about their membership, and keep hitting renew. In contrast, if the training fails to live up to their expectations — churn will quickly follow.
A Modern Member Experience Relies on the Right Technology Investments
Frictionless delivery starts with a centralised platform for training delivery. This means that members can access all of your content and resources, no matter what channel they are using, or what modality you’re using to create training content. From Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT) and on-demand web content, to microlearning, or full certifications and courses — everything is in the same place. This is the kind of one-stop Academy or learning platform that acts as a centralised association hub, and keeps members enjoying logging in time and time again.
With one centralised learning experience, you can use the right technology to create personalised member dashboards, so that all members can log in to their learning experience, and quickly view their data and their progress. At a glance, they can see what their next learning goals are, recommendations for new courses or content, as well as reminders for important dates for their diary — complete with links to register where relevant.
You’ve made it easier for your members to access content that supports their professional development and success, but how are you supporting your association as a business? As you have a single centralised learning platform, you also have all the data that’s being collected behind the scenes. You can now make data-driven decisions, such as recommending the right courses to the right people, stepping in with added TLC where you spot friction, or identifying your brand champions — association members who can help you get the word out about the association’s value and attract new members. With robust analytics about all of your memberships, you can improve your program, and identify trends ahead of time.
Preparing for Scale: What Does the Future Hold for Your Members?
Think ahead. By choosing the right technology, you’ve opened the door to powerful learning opportunities that enhance member experience and present data-driven analytics to your association. But what’s next? Choosing the right tech is all about thinking about the needs of your association both today and tomorrow — so that as membership numbers grow, you can handle varied requirements, growing numbers, and the technology must-haves of the future.
Knowing that growing numbers means different cohorts of learners, each who will have their own needs, a multi-tenant solution makes a lot of sense. This allows you to have one central repository of content, and then securely syndicate it to a number of different customer cohorts as necessary. The right technology solution will limit the administrative headache, and allow you to hand over management and control to sub-groups, whether that’s regional factions or specific membership bases. That means they can provision their own content, view and analyse specific reports and analytics, and extend licences where necessary, too.
As well as a multi-tenant platform, think ahead when it comes to eCommerce capabilities. To make training and learning a direct revenue stream, you want it to be as simple as possible for members to click to buy, keep learning with the next course or event, and upgrade to access more content and resources. The right tools will give you out-of-the-box capabilities so that you can offer member discounts, free trials, tiered membership structures, and even incentives for your VIP members — like access to bonus content or face-to-face networking events.
Successful System Integration is All About Extensibility
It should be no surprise that there’s a direct correlation between associations who are losing members, and those who say they are not leaning into innovation. As the old saying goes — innovate or die.
Of course, innovate is a broad term — and different associations will approach it in their own way. However, one truth is clear: you can’t innovate without flexibility. Whether the Next Big Thing is Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, the Internet of Things, or something else altogether, associations and organisations who can be flexible will be the first in the queue to integrate. Unfortunately, there are three categories of organisations who will be unable to make that happen:
- Those with legacy and patchwork systems in place, where change is often impossible to visualise — let alone make happen.
- Any business who is still using an LMS that’s built for internal employee training instead of external education, which isn’t fit for purpose.
- Associations who have built and use homegrown technology, where every update is a roadmap item that takes years to get approved and complete.
Instead, if you have onboarded an LMS which has true extensibility, your association can build a frictionless, flexible, and integrated member experience, complete with features such as Single Sign On (SSO). This means a seamless connection to Association Management Software and events tools, which has the added benefit of keeping administrative overheads low behind the scenes. True extensibility means you can integrate anywhere, and access business intelligence that meets your goals for personalisation, member engagement, and growth.
At Thought Industries, we work with leading associations to support their goals for scalable, personalised training solutions that keep members engaged and provide direct non-dues revenues. Reach out to discuss creating certifications, micro-credentials, skill-building courses, or personalised membership education crafted to your exact use case.
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