Engaging members has always been a key priority for association executives. 50% of them report that members are most likely not to renew because of lack of engagement. Year-round member engagement is a challenging task. More so in an increasingly virtual and distracting world.
But it’s critical to achieving your future membership goals. Here are three best practices to follow while building a robust, member-centric engagement plan.
Personalize your engagement plan
99% of marketers say personalization helps advance customer relationships. Your association members aren’t all alike so don’t treat them as such. What’s interesting to some is boring or irrelevant to others.
Create different member segments to ensure you can provide value to your members each time you reach out to them. With segmented email campaigns, marketers report a 760% increase in email revenue. You can achieve such great results too when you personalize all your communication to match your members’ interests.
You can categorize members in different ways. For instance, highly engaged, moderately engaged, and disengaged members. New members and veteran members. Or members just starting their careers, with over five, 10, or 20 years of experience.
Host more, smaller and on-demand events
One in-person annual conference and a few spread-out chapter meetings don’t cut it anymore. In a recent survey, 69% of members said they prefer many small events throughout the year vs. a few larger events. Provide value to your members by hosting more, regular events curated for different member segments.
With virtual and hybrid event options, you can host multiple events throughout the year at a fraction of the cost and effort that it takes you to host in-person events. Three tips to make hosting more, smaller events more effective for you in 2022:
- Make your events hybrid. 72% of members now expect their organizations to offer all or most events in a hybrid format.
- Diversify the kind of events you host. Consider awareness events, meet-and-greets, expert discussions, open events, training events & workshops, and more.
- Make event content available for on-demand viewing after the event. Members who can’t attend the live event and new members who join after the event is over will appreciate this flexibility.
association member engagement.
Extend year-round networking and learning opportunities
Networking with others in the field and continuing education are the top two reasons members join associations for. Don’t limit networking options to in-person gatherings or just during virtual events. Use your virtual or hybrid event platform to extend year-round networking opportunities. Make use of different formats such as 1-1 chat/audio/video meetings, breakout rooms, and more. Allow members to host their own theme-based networking lounges any time of the year.
According to a survey, members are interested in more learning options than what’s currently offered by most associations. Some of those include live online courses, webcasts of live events, recommended courses, short videos/audio, social learning, just-in-time learning, on-demand, self-paced online courses, and more. Offer learning opportunities throughout the year in some of these different formats and see your member engagement increase.
Excited to deliver effective member engagement in 2022? Reyes offers a super intuitive platform with multiple networking options. Plus all the support you need to hit the ground running and execute your plans.
Chat with one of our experts today.
Credit: @Kirti