The MemberWise Digital Excellence 2019 Survey found that members’ key goal was increasing member engagement – for the third year running. However, measuring engagement remains a challenge.
Thanks to technology, not only is it easy for membership bodies to connect with their members- they can also measure how connected members feel to the organisation.
Why engagement matters
In its 2019 Digital Excellence Survey, MemberWise says:
“Engaged members are more likely to renew and they are more likely to advocate. The value to the organisation of engaged members is immense. There is a clear need for professionals to measure online (and offline) member engagement, and many are currently evaluating a range of behavioural activities.
Put simply, retaining members is directly related to their engagements.
How do you gather this data?
Technology
Every interaction generates measurable data. You can capture and analyse these to assess engagement levels at both individual member and organisational levels.
There are many ways to capture this data, including:
Unified solutions – Management Software
The three most common types of management software are Learning Management System (LMS), Association Management System (AMS) and Event Management System (EMS).
While carrying out their administrative duties – such as storing member data, handling events and letting you manage your website – they constantly data capture.
What’s the average time someone is a member for? How many reminders does someone receive before they renew? Is there a link between members attending courses and renewing? Is someone less likely to renew if they haven’t accessed any educational material?
With reporting functionalities with these management systems, you can create engage reports across your entire organisation and build strong correlations between rates of engagement and renewal.
Say, for example, you realise over half those who didn’t access training material didn’t renew, you can send monthly emails to members with links to the content. By doing this, you’re helping them get more out of their course, ultimately convincing them to renew.
Google Analytics
You can get to know loads about your engagement by your website data, even more so if you use cookies to track engagement. Google Analytics has tonnes of data about how your members interact with your website – from number of visits, the devices they use and the time of day they visit the site.
By analysing how long people are on the site for, the number of returning traffic and the most visited resources; you can make changes to your site or content to help your members get more out of their membership.
Member login information on your website can tell you a lot, too – such as engagement rates in forums and members who haven’t completed their profile.
Social media
Your social media page is full of analytical data – from Facebook likes to Twitter retweets, you can gain a good insight into how members engage with you. Marketing automation platforms can collect data from your social media pages and let you run reports.
What to do with this data?
Now you can see EXACTLY how engaged your members are, you can start an engagement drive to boost this.
- Segment your audience
Personalisation is key to engaging members. Segmenting audiences means you can deliver unique messages that are relevant to them. You can go further than just grouping by age, gender and location – consider hours spent on training material, website activity and event attendance. Look at the kind of content they engage with and send relevant content to this.
- Send personalised communications with strong CTAs
If possible, personalise messages in the ‘to’ field to add that individual touch. Use strong calls to action (CTAs) for each email, including “book event tickets”, “sign up for our webinar”. You can use a marketing automation tool to assist with this.
- Monitor success
When developing a strategy, it’s important to set clear and achievable KPIs. (Key Performance Indicators). What do you want to achieve? Are you looking to boost engagement rates across the board, increase member retention or improve event attendance?
Regularly monitor and review your performance alongside your KPI and adjust your engagement plan depending on its success.
- Automate membership management
As you gather member data and monitor the success of your engagement campaign, it can be difficult to keep on top of it all. Automated membership management can help your association in so many ways, and make managing your memberships more efficiency.
It can help with customer satisfaction and retention, boosting membership engagement and reduce costs within your association. Automation also means you have data in one place; so you can conduct analysis to improve your association.
PSP-IT is a government-approved supplier. We work with membership and professional bodies to develop fit-for-purpose solutions; including legacy system support, bespoke software and system integration. Email: [email protected] or call 01775 722377.
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