By Guest Blogger:
Emma Burley, Marketing Director
For the first time since 2016, member value has outranked member engagement as the sector’s main goal/challenge (prior to 2016 it was new member acquisition).
It has taken a global pandemic for this shift to occur. Now is the time to go the extra mile.
How can your membership services be elevated to meet the changing needs of your industry/sector, and what can your organisation do to add value and build further trust between yourself and your members?
1. Develop and expand your online community
Social channels provide so much more than a sounding box. Key channels including Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram provide opportunity to set up closed groups that can be developed into online communities. If your membership organisation is already championing online communities then why not explore how the interaction within these communities is changing. Are there potential brand ambassadors emerging in the face of adversity? Are there patterns in requirements for specific resources?
If you haven’t already done so, created a closed group (e.g. on LinkedIn) or develop a new/existing online community to enable the conversation to continue during the current lockdown.
Example: MemberWise Connect – This is the dedicated online professional community hosted by MemberWise. Its membership is exclusive to membership/association professionals and enables online networking, benchmarking, peer-to-peer Q&A in a safe environment where ‘there is no such thing as a stupid question’.
https://connect.memberwise.org.uk/home
Monitoring online groups and contributing with valuable insight and exclusive content will encourage conversation that ultimately spills out onto your feed. Most importantly, closely monitoring groups enables you to respond to members’ needs quickly and personally.
2. Create a social media toolkit
Your members will undoubtedly have a scale and range of activity levels on their social channels, so why not align your members in a campaign that they can all participate in to create unity and community online? Providing your members with a series of posts with a dedicated hashtag, imagery and accompanying content that they can place on their website will provide much needed innovative streams and updates about your sector. If you ask your members to tag your organisation in their posts, you can respond, react and increase your digital footprint whilst bolstering your industry online with postive messaging.
3. Consider a buddy/mentor scheme
Ask those members at more advanced stages of their professional journey to buddy/mentor with newly qualified or those still in academia. A mentoring scheme is a strong tool to connect members at no cost to your organisation whilst providing key industry tools and insights to help those more inexperienced members to cope with the challenges faced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Connecting your members with a mentor scheme will also place your association at the heart of active upskilling during this period, whilst giving your more established and experienced members the opportunity to impart their knowledge and resources.
4. Adopt a flexible approach to membership fees
Some of your members may be experiencing cash flow issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, so in the event that their membership renewal is imminent, or if they feel that they cannot find the fees at this time, consider pausing their membership subscription for an agreed period whilst retaining their access to core member benefits. They still need you and are more likely to resume their payments once business returns to normal than if you adopt an inflexible approach that leaves them unable to justify partnering with your organisation. Continue to offer your support and communicate with them during any periods of lapsed membership so that they retain confidence in your organisation ready for when they can manage their fees again.
5. Continue to promote your core services and benefits
Whilst you will need to adapt your membership acquisition and retention strategy, don’t lose sight of the core reasons your offering is strong in the first place. Continue to promote your services and explain why they are more important than ever to your prospects, whilst adding new services and resources to improve your membership value.
How we conduct ourselves in the membership sector during this unsettled and unprecedented period will ultimately shape our future as normality will eventually be restored. It’s a great opportunity to explore the many ways your membership offering can adapt to new working arrangements and look to upskill and provide even stronger communication lines to reaffirm the importance of your membership offering during the pandemic and beyond.
CJ Association Management is an established, specialist association management company providing support services tailored for the membership sector.
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