When is the best time to evaluate your member journey?

It’s a trick question really because the best time was 6 months ago … failing that, last month …last week …yesterday… but we can’t go back and change the past. AND as we are a little over halfway through the year – NOW IS the best time to evaluate your member journey.

How are your figures doing so far this year? There seems to be a real divide between organisations that are seeing a great boost to numbers post COVID and those for whom the current economic situation has stunted their growth.

Do you regularly review your membership targets? If not, before you do anything else, make sure they are realistic and achievable. Do you understand your market share? So often targets are set to increase membership without ever looking at the pool of potential members. If your budget allows, it’s worth investing in a little research to discover where there may be untapped pockets of your target audience, just waiting to be converted.

Once you find your members it’s so important to really get to know their needs. The top thing you can do to ensure you understand why your members may leave, or re-join, is to get to grips with what your member journey looks like. Plan your communications to hit at the right time as well as with the right tone.

Try something new

This is the time to plan your communications for the final quarter of the year. Have you got a great gift membership package, ready for Christmas? Perhaps membership has always been an essential or necessary purchase for your members, so why would it be gifted? Well, this year, when people are feeling the pinch financially, it’s the perfect time to re-evaluate this. Would membership be a great present from parents to help their student or newly qualified child’s career?

Is membership to your organisation a gift that makes a member’s life more enriched or fulfilled? If December isn’t usually a month of member growth for you, have you looked at gift membership as an aspirational present…? Something to be enjoyed throughout the year and therefore a gift that keeps on giving.

Do you really understand the motivation for joining?

Look at when your membership peaks and troughs are and see how you can maximise the growth areas and defend against slow months. If your budgets are small there are many ways you can campaign throughout the year and spread the cost with monthly content packages. We’ve also seen a boost in the use of creative Direct Mail pieces. With DM it’s absolutely key to know when a piece should land and to ensure it has standout on the mat. Perhaps you need to create or reinvigorate your member-get-member scheme. Or perhaps you need to take a look at your photo library and ensure that it is current and reflects who your members are now.

Plan your next steps

It’s important to remember that, as part of the Memberwise Network, you have all the contacts you need to plan every stage of your marketing strategy at your fingertips.

Whatever the challenges you face today or in the coming months, there’s never a better time to look at your member journey than NOW!