Digital Excellence Report 2026/27: Mobile Apps That Members Actually Use: Sector Benchmarks and What to Build Next (with RD Mobile)

Mobile apps for membership bodies have entered a new phase. Members aren’t asking for shrunken-down websites. They want focused, high-utility tools for events, self-service and community. The Digital Excellence 2026/27 data confirms it. Event functionality, surveys and community features are climbing, while news/blogs (-16%) and eLearning/CPD (-18%) are falling away fast. So where should your investment go next?

In this session, we unpack fresh findings from the Digital Excellence 2026/27 Report, a statistically significant study of circa 480 membership and association professionals, and turn them into practical decisions you can take back to your team and board this week.

Walk away with:

• A clear benchmark of where your mobile offering sits versus the sector (52% now have an app, is yours pulling its weight?)
• Our Mobile App Benchmarking Scorecard, a one-page tool to score your app against sector data, share with your team, and use as a planning prompt
• An understanding of why traditional content is declining and interactive features are rising
• A view on the emerging “365 value app” model and how leaders are using it to attract younger members
• Data and talking points you can drop straight into internal business cases for investment, refinement, or even retiring an underperforming app
• A clearer sense of what to prioritise, and just as importantly, what to stop doing

Learning objectives

• Benchmark your app adoption and feature mix against the wider sector
• Identify which features are gaining traction and which are losing relevance
• Position mobile within your wider digital engagement and retention strategy
• Build a realistic, member-led roadmap for year-round mobile value

The full Digital Excellence 2026/27 Report is available at: https://memberwise.org.uk/dx/

Speaker: Richard Gott, Founder & Chair, MemberWise Network