HIT REWIND
Tech
Written by Simon Clayton
Is the relationship with your
members going sour? Data
might be the key
to rekindling an
old flame, says
Reftech’s Simon
Clayton
MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS are the
lifeblood of associations and yet, in my
experience, few associations are doing
enough to ensure the highest possible
number of renewals.
A member will join an association
because of the perceived benefits, but
if they then leave a year or two later, it
is almost certainly because they didn’t
see enough value from
their membership. These
days, we are lucky that
technology makes it far
easier for associations to be
able to track and report on
who is using which benefits, but
there needs to be a conscious effort by the
associations to integrate these tools and
techniques into their processes.
A good membership management
platform will allow you to efficiently
communicate with your members and
track which ones are getting involved and
attending events. Additionally, there are
several ways that you can track and report
on which ones are using offers, discounts
and other member benefits.
Once you start collecting this data,
you can easily report on which member
benefits are the most popular; which event
topics, locations and times lead to the best
attendance for events, and which offers
have the best take-up. Knowing if a certain
benefit was popular or not could help
www.aenetwork.co.uk
influence your choice of future benefits,
and having hard evidence of redemption
rates could help you to attract more
partners too.
The ways to do this aren’t complicated.
If you have a partner offering a discount
code, see if they can run a monthly report
with the membership numbers of people
who took up the discounts. Alternatively,
ask the members to report back to you if
they tried to use a discount - if it was an
insurance discount, for example, then did
the benefit make the insurance cheaper
than the alternative suppliers?
For a year, I bought an annual pass
for one of the UK’s leading attraction
groups. We spent quite a few days a
year at their attractions, but during our
membership we never heard from them
once. Surely as members we are prime
targets to be upsold to? They could have
been targeting us with special offers for
food at quiet times, or package deals for
accommodation. This sort of marketing
could have enhanced our experiences and
made us return more often. They had our
data but they didn’t use it, and I’ve always
thought that was crazy.
Know your members, and communicate
with them. Know what matters and what
doesn’t, and ensure that alarm bells ring
before their membership is up. Good
membership data is crucial to running a
healthy association, and technology means
that it’s getting easier and easier. Ensure
that your members are fully utilising
their membership benefits, or it will most
definitely be your loss.
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