“Proactive, personal and two-way member contact is more important than ever during the current economic and employment crisis,” says Alana Turnbull, Business Development Director at Chord UK.
Here are six reasons why you should prioritise personalised telephone calls to your members, so they see their membership is essential:
1. Increase Member Value
Personalised conversations with members over the telephone helps to communicate and reinforce the value and benefits of membership. This is especially important during the current cost-of-living crisis.
Members who have a positive and meaningful experience are more likely to renew.
Proactive, outbound calls to your members will help them feel valued, perceive value and motivate them to stay – No brainer, right?
“Many companies have forgotten they sell to actual people. Humans care about the entire experience, not just the marketing or sales or service.”
Dharmesh Shah, CTO & Co-Founder, HubSpot.
2. Communicate Two Ways – Personally
The telephone enables two-way communication in the form of a human conversation.
Conversations are more memorable than receiving emails. Talking with another person helps build a stronger relationship and trust. Two-way communication with your members will also enable a free flow of insight and feedback, which is essential for creating member value.
Nicola Emmerson, Director of Membership and Professional Affairs at The Royal Statistical Society explains that using the telephone: “ensured that our members felt valued and gave their feedback freely, which is great.” Find out more here.
3. Take Care of Members – and Your Organisation
Do you know that it costs around eight times more to acquire a new member than it does to retain an existing one? *
In times of financial uncertainty, it is essential to keep communicating personally with your core base of loyal members, because they’re important.
Engaging with members over the telephone will help prevent that leaky bucket!
4. Increase Renewals, Upgrades and Win-backs
Use outbound calling strategically to increase outcomes and return on investment. Using targeted calls to speak with lapsed members, members due to upgrade or unpaid members at renewal time will not only help improve your retention but also your revenue.
Mark Leach, Associate Director at Royal Society of Biology said that calling unpaid members due to renew: “has consistently generated a profit: the attributable renewal income has consistently exceeded the additional expenditure of outsourcing this work. It is also noticeable that a significant proportion of renewals are being received earlier.” Read more here.
5. Engage to Retain
During the current cost-of-living crisis, making a good first impression to your new members is more important than ever – And retention starts with onboarding!
The first year of a new members’ journey is vulnerable so it’s crucial to create member value and win their loyalty from the start. Introducing personalised, one-to-one, welcome calls and touchpoint calls at other points identified as ‘at risk’ in the member journey will help your members feel invested in your organisation and motivated to stay.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) trialled calling a segment of new members to compare first-year retention rates. RCN’s analysis clearly showed a significant uplift in the number of members who renewed in the group that received a telephone call, in comparison to group that didn’t. Find out more here.
6. You Can and Should Outsource
Has your organisation been hit by the ‘Great Resignation’ and seen employees resigning from jobs en masse, making it hard to source and retain experienced people?
If you lack skilled, in-house staff and want to eliminate the pain of recruiting, outsourcing is a brilliant solution!
Have you considered how subcontracted telephone calls made by specialist, experienced membership professionals can complement the work of your team?
Please visit Chord on Stand E1 at Membership Excellence or email [email protected] to find out how you can help members view their membership as essential.
* Digital Excellence Report 2021/22, MemberWise
Chord are membership outbound calling specialists. We help membership organisations and associations increase their member acquisition, engagement and retention, using an integrated approach of telephone and email marketing.
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