As with anything in life, there are levers that save time, energy, and resources. This is also true in developing a membership marketing plan. This presentation provides insights to help you better understand what might be keeping your organization from realizing membership success and gives the solutions to help build a thriving membership program.

1. Diagnosing and Solving Your
Membership Marketing
Challenges
Presented by
Tony Rossell

2. Diagnosing Your Membership
Marketing Challenges

3. What are the Vital Signs for Membership
Organizations Today?
2018 Membership Marketing
Benchmarking Report
• Over 800 Participating Organizations
• Tenth Year Produced by MGI
• Download: www.MarketingGeneral.com

4. Total One Year Membership
Growth
MEMBERSHIP CHANGE IN PAST YEAR
Total
(n = 819)
Increased 48%
Decreased 25%
Remained the same 26%
Not sure 2%

5. Total Five Year Membership
Growth
CHANGE IN MEMBERSHIP OVER PAST FIVE YEARS
Total
(n = 809)
Increased 53%
Decreased 29%
Remained the same 14%
Not sure 4%

6. Increase in Membership
Renewal Rates
CHANGE IN MEMBER RENEWAL RATE OVER
PAST YEAR
Total
(n =774)
Increased 27%
Decreased 24%
Remained the same 42%
Not sure 7%

7. Increase in New Member
Recruitment
CHANGE IN NEW MEMBER ACQUISITION OVER PAST YEAR
Total
(n = 785)
Increased 47%
Decreased 12%
Remained the same 35%
Not sure 7%

8. Membership Director’s Reported
Challenges
TOP REASONS FOR NOT RENEWING MEMBERSHIP
Total
(n = 639)
Lack of engagement with the organization 37%
Could not justify membership costs with any significant ROI 28%
Budget cuts/economic hardship of company 24%
Left the field, industry, or profession 24%
Lack of value 23%
Employer won't pay or stopped paying dues 23%
Forgot to renew 21%
Too expensive 20%

9. Reasons for Membership
Decline
Why do you believe your membership has decreased?
 Industry consolidation; free‐rider problems; lack of perceived
value.
 More competition from social networking and free
professional development and niche organizations.
 The Leadership was infighting, and members were not being
engaged, no events/no benefits to joining.
 There was nobody dedicated to recruitment consistently.
Ageing demographic with not enough members brought in to
replace deceased members.

10. Membership Dashboard to Track Vital
Signs

11. “Systems thinking shows that small,
well‐focused actions can sometimes
produce significant, enduring
improvements, if they’re in the right
place. Systems thinkers refer to this
principle as ‘leverage’. Tackling a
difficult problem is often a matter of
seeing where the high leverage lies, a
change which – with a minimum of
effort – would lead to lasting and
significant improvement. The only
problem is that high‐leverage changes
are usually highly nonobvious to most
participants in the system.”
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Applying Systems Thinking to
Membership Marketing

12. A Membership Marketing System
The Membership Lifecycle
– Awareness
– Recruitment
– Engagement
– Renewal
– Reinstatement

13. – Awareness:
______________
– Recruitment:
______________
– Engagement:
______________
– Renewal:
______________
– Reinstatement
_____________
Defining Your Membership
Impediment

14. Solving Your Membership
Marketing Challenges

15. Awareness

16. Defining Your Target Market
“When you seek to engage with everyone,
you rarely delight anyone. . . The solution
is simple but counterintuitive: Stake out
the smallest market you can imagine. The
smallest market that can sustain you, the
smallest market you can adequately
serve.”
Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog

17. “The message . . . is that no company can
succeed today by trying to be all things to
all people. It must instead find the unique
value it alone can deliver to a chosen
market.”
Treacy and Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders, page xiv
Defining Your Value Proposition

18. Value Proposition Example
Who: MGI exclusively serves growth
oriented membership organizations
What: with effective strategic marketing
solutions
How: using innovative, data driven, and
market tested best practices
Why: so clients can maximize their
membership potential and achieve their
mission.

19. Defining Your Organizations
Value Proposition
Who: ___________________________
What: __________________________
How: ___________________________
Why:____________________________

20. Capture the contact
information and opt-in
of those who are
interested in you!
Trading Content for Conact

21. The Growth of Digital Marketing

22. 1 2Targeted Ad Placement. Data Capture on Microsite.
3 Cultivation e-mail campaign
with enrollment offers.
Example of Facebook Online Lead Generation

23. 2
Capture the contact
information and opt-in
of those who are
interested in you!
Lead Generation with LinkedIn

24. Example of Targeting through LinkedIn
LinkedIn allows you to deliver
advertising only to people with
certain qualifications or titles,
people with specific job functions,
and/or people specifying a
particular skill set.
•Title/Qualifications
•Job Function
•Skills
•Geography

25. Your Awareness Goal

26. Recruitment

27. Recruitment Strategy
1. Marketing Segmentation (WHO?)– who you want to reach – this
includes determining what are your primary markets and acquiring or
building lists of these prospects.
2. Membership Offer (WHAT?)– what a member will receive – this includes
how you package your membership product and what special offers you
will make in your promotions to attract new members.
3. Promotional Tactics (HOW?)– how a member will be reached – this
includes selecting the best marketing channels like personal sales, direct
mail, email, telemarketing, etc. and the frequency and timing of
promotions.
4. Testing and Tracking (WHERE?) – where to take future efforts – this
includes trying variations of the four points listed above and recording
which lists, offers, messages, and channels produce the best ROI and
number of new members.

28. Former Members
Like Organizations
Subscribers
Directories
Segmenting Your Target Market

29. • A first year dues discount.
• A "no‐risk" or “no‐obligation” offer with a “bill‐me”.
• A product voucher offering new members $75 to $100 in
savings on any future product purchase.
• Premiums (free gifts).
• Offering more of the product (e.g., 15 months of
membership for the price of 12).
• A free trial offer membership.
• Installment billing turns a $239 membership into an easy
monthly payment of $19.91.
Membership Special Offers

30. Using Facebook, AdRoll, and Google Remarketing
to retarget website visitors.
Capturing Visitors through
Remarketing

31. 1 Prospect visits targeted
page on your website.
2 Prospect is shown your
targeted ads when she logs
into her Facebook account.
Facebook Remarketing

32. Be Aware of Feedback
“Now it has become clear to me that these ads
targeted to me appear in several media. I have also
met them in The New York Times, The Guardian (UK),
Politiken (Denmark), Hufvudstadsbladet (Finland), Le
Figaro (France), El Pais (Spain), Il Tempo (Italy),
Bangkok Post (Thailand). Just to name a few. It
seems to me like you have infected my Mac with a
virus.”

33. Custom and Look-a-Like
Audiences

34. 1
2
Direct Membership Recruitment

35. 35%
Boost
Testing and Tracking: Identifying a
Control

36. Developing Your Recruitment
Plan

37. Engagement

38. Strategy:
1. Target – Define you most vulnerable market segments.
2. Interaction – Member involvement and usage are the best levers for
engagement.
3. Communicate Relevance – Providing lots of communications that
are not targeted are relevant to a member can cause
disengagement. Let behavior drive your communications strategy.
4. Score Engagement – Define the measurable behaviors that indicate
engagement (i.e. transactions, website usage, email behavior,
volunteering).
Engagement Strategy

39. Lapsed Year Tenure Count of Members % of Members
Lapsed Members
10 619 2.81%
9 2,668 12.12%
8 536 2.43%
7 530 2.41%
6 582 2.64%
5 747 3.39%
4 898 4.08%
3 1,404 6.38%
2 2,318 10.53%
1 11,720 53.22%
Total 22,022
Be Aware of Feedback

40. Very Little Difference Between
Non‐Engaged Members and Lapsed Members
Members “who are not involved lie perilously close to
former members in the overarching assessment of the value
they derive from associations. If former members are
thought to be dead, the uninvolved are close to comatose”
(The Decision to Join, p 4).
Be Aware of Feedback

41. 1
2
Continually Demonstrate
Relevance

42. One Month Statistics:
• Impressions:185,000
• Clicks: 1,800
• Cost: $1,100
• Cost Per Impression:
$.006
Cost Effective Engagement

43. Renewal

44. 1. Renew Frequency and Timing – Like it or not, people forget to
renew.
2. Budget – Most organizations under‐spend on renewals.
3. Payment – Offering automatic credit card or EFT renewal, turns
renewals from an opt‐in decision to an opt‐out action.
4. Personalization – Adding personalized messages to renewal efforts
like, “because of your membership, you saved $50.00 on your
product purchases this year.” Or, “we had some success on the
legislative issue you were most concerned about.”
Renewal Strategy

45. RENEWAL RATES BY NUMBER OF RENEWAL CONTACTS
INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATIONS (N=356)
Renewal Rate
1-6 renewal
contacts
7 or more
renewal
contacts
Less than 80% 49% 44%
80% or higher 51% 56%
Frequency of Renewal Contacts

46. RENEWAL RATES BY START OF RENEWAL EFFORT
INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATIONS (N=354)
Renewal Rate
Three months
or less prior to
expiration
More than
three months
prior to
expiration
Less than 80% 51% 40%
80% or higher 49% 60%
Start of Renewal Contacts

47. RENEWAL RATES BY END OF RENEWAL EFFORT
INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATIONS (N=354)
Renewal Rate
1‐3 months
after
expiration
More than
three months
after
expiration
Less than 80% 51% 43%
80% or higher 49% 57%
End of Renewal Contacts

48. • Average dues rate of $195.
• Nine part mail renewal program with supporting emails.
• The incremental cost to service a member is approximately $24 per
member.
• Amount spent to renew each member from each renewal effort.
Effort #1 ‐‐ $ 2.31
Effort #2 ‐‐ $ 4.05
Effort #3 ‐‐ $ 8.75
Effort #4 ‐‐ $10.24
Effort #5 ‐‐ $15.96
Effort #6 ‐‐ $10.15
Effort #7 ‐‐ $ 9.36
Effort #8 ‐‐ $ 20.54
Effort #9 ‐‐ $ 37.61
Renewal Budgets

49. TOP RENEWAL OPTIONS
Total
(n = 406)
Installment renewal payments (monthly,
quarterly)
37%
Multi-year renewals 36%
Automatic annual credit card renewal 35%
Lifetime membership 24%
Renewal bill-me 21%
Automatic annual Electronic Funds Transfer
(EFT) renewals
17%
Early-renewal discounts 17%
Gift or premiums for renewal 7%
Renewal Payment Options

50. Multi-step,
integrated
channel, issue
driven, digitally
printed, renewal
program.
Renewal Personalization

51. Reinstatement

52. Definition:
1. Conduct Lapsed Member Research – When members
leave they highlight a breakdown in the membership
system. Conducting research to understand why
members do not continue with an organization will impact
all parts of the membership lifecycle
2. Learn and Improve – Use what you learn and message
differently to lapsed members than what you
communicated to “never members”
3. Never Give Up – Lapsed members are almost always the
most economical members reach out to for membership.
Reinstatement Strategy

53. Qualitative Research

54. "Look not where you fell, look where you slipped.“
(African Proverb)
• Reinstatement programs test the effectiveness of your
renewal program.
• Many organizations are sitting on thousands of prospects
just waiting to return.
Lapsed Membership are Source of
Information and Funds

55. CONTACT AFTER MEMBERSHIP LAPSE OR EXPIRATION
Total
(n = 636)
We don’t contact lapsed members 12%
1 year after expiration 18%
2 years after expiration 10%
3 years after expiration 8%
4 to 5 years after expiration 5%
6 or more years after expiration 2%
We continue indefinitely to contact lapsed members 33%
Not sure 6%
Other 7%
Staying in Contact with Lapsed
Members

56. Questions
Contact Information
Tony Rossell
Senior Vice President
Marketing General Incorporated
Email: Tony@MarketingGeneral.com
Web: www.MarketingGeneral.com
Blog: Membership Marketing Blog
Twitter: @TonyRossell