What is member engagement?

Engagement is a bit of a buzzword. It’s one of those terms that people use in conversation and everyone nods approvingly. The reality is that it means different things depending on your objectives and the type of member or other audience member you are thinking of. It also depends on how you intend to measure engagement, if at all.

But, every single time a member has any contact with your membership organisation you can say there is a level of engagement. This could be reading an article, calling the office, attending an event, completing their renewal forms, and everything in between.

The aim for any membership organisation should be to reinforce your relationship with your member every time there is an opportunity for engagement.

Remember that not all members want to or can become committee members and engagement should not be measured simply by the number of hours a member spends on your organisation’s business. Member engagement is more complex than that. Yes, there is physicality to engagement that is attractive. Attending a conference does demonstrate engagement. But so does the use of post nominal, reading your journal or visiting your website. Some of these can be measured and some cannot – not easily anyway.

Engagement tips

I’ll now provide some tips for improving member engagement. They can be applied across many different membership organisations, whether your members are individuals, groups or businesses, professionals or the public, engagement is critical to ensuring your membership organisation remains relevant.

The tips are:

− Understand the psychology behind member engagement
− Understand the member experience and member journey
− Define your member engagement objectives
− Ensure clarity of communication
− Don’t make engaging hard work
− Welcome new members effectively
− Provide interactive content on your website and use social media
− Measuring member engagement in a meaningful way

In my next Guest Blog we’ll look at the first 3 of these tips, the ones that set the scene for better member engagement.

About Loud Marketing…
Loud Marketing is a Memberwise Recognised Supplier and a specialist in membership marketing. Since 2005 they have offered a flexible extension to our clients’ marketing resources and often become a trusted advisor and part of their clients’ team. Loud Marketing provides strategy, market research and marketing communications services to a range of membership organisations and is led by Stephen O’Reilly ([email protected]).