A membership business model is one of the ways to earn a steady and predictable revenue. At the heart of this business model are the members who pay a recurring fee in exchange for value.
To gain the most from your membership organization, you must develop effective member engagement strategies to keep the satisfaction and the cash flow coming in at its peak.
But how do you do that? You’ll find out soon enough.
Just a little heads-up: in this article, you’ll better understand the term “member engagement” and learn effective strategies to keep them engaged.
Let’s start with the basics.
What Is Member Engagement?
It refers to the level of involvement, participation, and interaction between a member of your organization and your team, as well as other users, during the course of their membership plan.
An engaged member will get involved in the organization’s activities and have near-perfect event attendance. For example, if you have an Instagram organization, the most engaged members are those who’ll like and comment on your posts, share with their network, and engage with your Stories, among others.
However, some people like to stay in the shadows and use Instagram Story Viewer from Views4You to view their posts anonymously. Investing in member engagement strategies will help turn these people into proud members and brand advocates.
Let’s start by understanding why you should take member engagement seriously.
Why Is Member Engagement Important?
Membership engagement is important for all membership organizations because it’s the only way to ensure the organization stands. You need to employ an effective membership engagement strategy to boost interaction rates. Now, here’s what happens when you do.
1. Increased Member Retention
When you employ methods to engage members and give them value for their money, they’ll keep coming back. Additionally, you can get new members from your satisfied customers network.
2. Improved Member Loyalty
Loyal members are those who’ll stick with your organization long-term. Getting such loyalty lies in your ability to build personal connections with your current members through a personal engagement strategy.
3. Positive Brand Reputation
Super-engaged users are active members. You can trust these members to spread the positive tales of your association to people around them. In addition, you can rest assured that you’ll get nothing but positive reviews online from these association members.
6 Ways to Build a Great Member Engagement Strategy
There are different types of membership associations, and the engagement strategy for each should differ. Generally, however, there are six steps you can follow to set the foundation for a winning member engagement plan.
1. Create Member Personas
Personas refer to fictional characters or profiles created to represent different segments of your target audience. You make these characters by collecting data on your members, including demographics, members’ interests, and communication preferences.
Collect relevant data from your existing membership base to create an effective persona. Then, identify and develop key segments. For example, you can create a persona for younger members, one for males or females, and so on, depending on your audience.
These personas help you understand your members’ unique needs, preferences, and motivations to provide a more personalized experience and foster engagement.
2. Understand and Leverage Your Member Engagement Funnel and Touchpoints
Your member funnel is the stages each member goes through, from onboarding until they become fully immersed in your organization’s activities. Touchpoints indicate every point of interaction between a member and your organization as they move through the funnel.
You need to identify and understand these touchpoints to evaluate the effectiveness of your interaction at each stage of the funnel. Check the personas you created against your touchpoints, and determine if your interactions are endearing, relevant, and appropriate for the specific profile.
3. Determine Your Value Proposition
Your value proposition is a concise statement that explains what your organization has to offer members. It states what distinguishes your association from similar ones and why prospective members should choose you.
Your value proposition should clearly communicate the problem your organization solves, the benefits it offers, and its distinguishing factor.
4. Specify Your Benefits and Incentives
One of the major reasons people join your organization is the member benefits. So, you should create a benefits list that’s valuable to your target audience. The benefits you offer should never be based on the things you like. Instead, use member data or the persona you created as a guide.
Benefits can include training programs, exclusive events, networking, and job opportunities. You can also offer irresistible incentives to encourage members to participate in engagement activities.
5. Set Well-Thought-Out and Measurable Goals
Your goals will serve as a benchmark for measuring your member engagement strategy. The best way to set goals is to follow the SMART model.
- Specific: Clearly state what you intend to achieve after a given period. For example, your goal might be to increase member engagement rate by 5% with the online forums in six months.
- Measurable: This means that you should be able to measure the progress of your goal. So, if your goal was to boost engagement by 5% in six months, you should be able to do X% weekly.
- Achievable: Keep motivation up by setting achievable goals. Don’t set yourself up for failure in a bid to challenge yourself. Get inspiration from other brands in your field and weigh the resources you have before setting goals.
- Relevant: Ensure your goals align with the overall goal of your brand.
- Timely: Always set tasks to a deadline. This will help all the stakeholders remain accountable as they work towards the main goal.
6. Track Member Engagement and Make Relevant Adjustments
Measuring member engagement is important for ongoing adjustments and improvements. Review all your communication channels and observe where members engage more. You can also create member surveys to gain insights into the individual experiences of each member. After that, you can engage your team for a thorough analysis.
Also, you can track relevant KPIs like website visits, online member and email engagement, member lifetime value, and benefits use. Identify trends and make necessary adjustments.
6 Member Engagement Ideas for Your Online Community
Now that a lot more people are online, having member forums makes it easier to share updates and build emotional engagement.
If you need a little nudge in the right direction on how to boost member engagement online, here are some ideas to start with:
1. Provide an Exceptional Onboarding Experience
Create a memorable first impression when members register with your organization. This starts from your online member portal. Ensure it’s intuitive and always have a support team on standby for any inquiry.
Then, when a member joins the organization, send them a welcome package and assign a member of your team to take charge of the recruits. Also, when many members join at the same time, you can schedule a welcome gathering to help them ease into your association.
2. Create Valuable Content and Offers
You can constantly engage with your members via social media platforms. Determine the best social media platform for your target audience and post updates regularly. Share pictures of events, your brand’s mission, reviews from satisfied members, useful tips, and member-only offers, and incorporate fun activities like a storytelling session.
3. Personalize Your Communication and Offers
Remember the personas you created? It’ll help you to achieve personalization. Engaging your association members based on demographics, particular interests, or other factors is an effective way to boost member engagement. It’ll make them feel like you know them personally. This, in turn, fosters bonding and engagement.
4. Encourage Members to Use Their Membership Benefits
Encouraging members to use their benefits is a way to ensure they get the full value of their membership plan. Some members may be unaware of their full benefits. To keep them engaged, you should carefully outline their benefits and walk them through claiming them, especially new members.
5. Don’t Forget Your Existing Members
It’s easier and arguably cheaper to keep existing members than acquire new ones. So, even when you’re focused on expanding your organization with potential members, don’t neglect the members you already have. Keep them engaged with offers and events. You’ll eventually turn them into advocates that’ll bring in new members.
6. Build a Sense of Community
Make your members feel a sense of belonging and community within your organization. Host networking opportunities and workshops for your online communities to help them interact with fellow members. Strengthening the bond among members is a win for you because then you can rely on other members to encourage their “friends” within the organization to engage.
Conclusion
The primary goal of any membership association is to promote member engagement and, as a result, retain members and build brand advocates.
Creating a detailed member persona, understanding member touchpoints, and adjusting specific goals set the framework for a member engagement strategy.
The key, however, to continuous improvement is to keep tracking your progress and make relevant changes.