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Strategies to Encourage Member Engagement Digitally

Strategies to Encourage Member Engagement Digitally

An association’s lifeblood is its member engagement tactics. Active, engaged, and passionate members renew their memberships and help bring in even more new members.Achieving strategies to encourage member engagement digitally isn’t easy. It’s easy to get caught in the day-to-day operations of your job and forget that you’re supposed to be a champion and cheerleader for the issues that members care about.

The right technology can assist you in utilizing powerful member engagement tactics, keeping track of the activities you initiate, and assessing the critical metrics that will indicate when your member engagement practices are gaining traction and even growing membership.

What is Member Engagement?

Member engagement in general is a two-way investment between an association and its constituents. The association’s most ardent supporters donate money, time, and passion, and it focuses its efforts on improving the member experience.

The goal of member engagement for associations is to increase their members’ perceptions of membership value. In addition, the personal benefits of membership and the sense of pride that comes from supporting a worthy cause contribute to the value of membership.

To energize both recruiting and retention, you should pay attention to member engagement. The higher the value supporters place on your membership, the more likely they will purchase and renew it. Events, communication, and other aspects of membership engagement are included.

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What Makes a Member Engagement Strategy?

Each association will develop its membership engagement strategy depending on its missions, size, and operational structure. No matter which strategy is employed, successful member engagement aims to bring associations and their members closer together in ways that serve the greater mission. Most associations will use a combination of the following elements to boost member engagement:

  1. Discounts and material benefits available only to members
  2. Members have priority access to specific events or programs
  3. Participation in online and social media
  4. Affiliation with the larger community of members
  5. Quantitative and qualitative metrics can be used to assess membership engagement

How do we know if our members are engaged?

Without meaningful data, your association will be unable to track progress toward its objectives. You’ll need integrated association membership management software to track quantitative and qualitative data to keep your membership engagement plan on track:

  • Quantitative:

    Track membership program registration over time, renewal rates, attendance at member events, the popularity and usage patterns of member benefits, donations made, and memberships given.

  • Qualitative:

    Collect feedback from members, nonmembers, and staff about your membership program. Regular surveys and focus groups should be scheduled, and they should be brief enough to fit into busy schedules.

Why focus on your members?

Focusing on members has always been a priority for all great associations that have grown significantly. You can significantly increase member engagement by doing so. First, you must concentrate on providing value to your members.

After all, if your goal is to keep members, you’ll be wasting time and resources on strategies and member engagement tactics that won’t scale or deliver value. They alleviate pain and friction, whereas your true goal should be to provide more benefits, especially those they can’t get anywhere else or quickly.

Onboarding is a crucial part of retaining members. It may appear that dealing with renewals in a retention program is something you’ll have to deal with in the future (when membership renewals come up), but there’s reason first impressions are so important.

9 Strategies to Encourage Member Engagement Digitally

  1. 1. Make newcomers feel at ease

    Increase member engagement with seamless induction for the newly joined members. Consider a time when you were utterly unfamiliar with something, such as a new school, job, or even your association needs an LMS for Association. You had no idea what to expect, how to act, what to expect from the others, or how they expected you to work.

    Starting with welcome emails is a great way to go. First, however, include guides, instructional materials, and other helpful information on your website to help members understand the association and their role in it. Then, use your association software to track the effectiveness of these new member campaigns so you can duplicate what works.

  2. 2. Get new members up to speed

    Getting new members on their feet cost-effectively and quickly is the key to increasing member engagement. Keeping your website updated with relevant, timely information for members at all stages of their membership is excellent for boosting engagement. You might also think about adding LMS for Association tools and interactive content to your website to give it more functionality.

    Maybe your company is a professional association. You could provide a tool on your website that allows them to calculate the value of an advanced degree in terms of lifetime earnings. A trade association might offer a series of tutorial videos or how-to guides. Keep delivering relevant content so that your members get value out of their membership, and you’ll see an increase in member engagement.

  3. 3. Create a vibrant community

    Direct communication with association leaders is beneficial to members. However, getting members to communicate with one another strengthens a community.

    The sense of belonging—the feeling that you are a part of something bigger and more powerful than yourself—is one of the most appealing aspects of joining an association. Through an active local or online community, assist your members in forming this bond.

    This is usually done through regular meetings for local groups. Unfortunately, this type of face time isn’t generally possible in national or international associations with members scattered across the globe—except perhaps at an annual convention. As a result, establishing an active online community is critical.

    When properly managed, community forums can be highly effective. Encourage member engagement and participation by keeping content fresh. If the information isn’t confidential, make it simple for members to share it via social media, email, etc.

  4. 4. Maintain a laser-like focus on your associations’ mission and objectives

    It’s a lot easier than you think to let the group’s goals take precedence over the associations’ mission. This is known as “groupthink,” It is a sociological phenomenon in which members are more concerned with the group’s cohesiveness than with achieving the mission for which the group was formed.

    Keep your organization’s mission, purpose, and goals in mind. Sticking to the main objective of the association and its members is one of the powerful member engagement tactics especially if the association is just starting out.

  5. 5. Organizing events

    Meeting in person is one of the best member engagement tactics there is. Members feel more like they are part of a community focused on mutual benefits and shared goals when they see you and their fellow members in person.

    The value of their membership in your association becomes more apparent as the network grows. For example, a dinner and awards ceremony could be part of an annual event to recognize your most active members.

    As per multiple researches, organizing events has been reported to boost member engagement digitally with members able to connect from a remote location.

  6. 6. Consistently communicate

    Always keep the communication lines open for the members. How else will members be able to voice their concerns or express gratitude when a team member goes above and beyond to assist them?

    Make sure you give members the option of communicating with them via email, text messages, e-newsletters, or snail mail. Include links to your social media accounts in your emails so that if a member cancels their email subscription, they can still connect with you on Facebook, for example.

    Boost member engagement via maintaining a sense of belonging. Your members will be more engaged if they form a strong community. Start with online communities because they are the easiest to create.

  7. 7. Customize the content

    For survey respondents, a lack of personalized, relevant content is a significant source of frustration. It’s possible to tailor content to demographic segments of your member database. And you have to! One type of message may appeal to younger members, while another appeals to the association’s elder members.

    Its apparent involvement fosters loyalty. And, because member loyalty helps your association grow, there’s no better time than now to start changing how you engage with all of your members, from those who have just joined to those who have been with you from the beginning. Set member engagement goals and determine what member engagement tactics your team will employ to achieve them.

  8. 8. Automate the Processes

    Making it difficult for members to engage with your association is easy to turn them off. Having an end-to-end seamless membership workflow helps increase member engagement

    With membership software that streamlines two-way interactions and communications between your membership base and your association, you’ll improve your member engagement efforts.

    For example, don’t make members jump through hoops to renew their memberships. Instead, invest in integrated membership management software that sends personalized automated renewal reminders and expiration notices on your preferred schedule.

  9. 9. Participate in Online Discussions

    If you want to send a message to your members, online communication is the cheapest, fastest, and most accessible option. You can reach out to your members via email, social media, forums, blogging and video.

    Don’t just post updates or announcements when communicating with your members online. Instead, interact with members by initiating conversations and soliciting feedback on pertinent issues. Your members will tune you out if all you do is ask for donations or registrations

    Invite members to unique mailing lists or social media groups where they can share their thoughts with other members to encourage engagement within the member community. When it comes to increasing membership engagement, a thriving member community is a bonus in and of itself!

Putting it all together in a nutshell

  • The most effective way to boost member engagement in your association is to provide them with more value than paying for membership.
  • Make an authentic connection with your members to increase engagement.
  • While 84% of members are satisfied with their membership, only 55% believe they have a connection with their professional organization, according to studies.
  • Around 26% of members said they wouldn’t renew their membership because they thought the associations provided too little for the money they paid.
  • Utilize the power of targeted emails to increase member engagement.
  • Hold events to bring members together and strengthen the community.

Wrapping Up

Running a successful membership drive and retaining new members over time takes much effort. On the other hand, using these 9 strategies to encourage member engagement digitally in modern membership organizations and associations can come up with creative and exciting ways to deal with the challenges they face.

Using eLearning solutions like association LMS, offering compelling incentives, and writing delivering the most relevant content can help drive members to your organization. However, keeping them is putting all of your resources (including your website) to good use to provide the most valuable experience possible.

But, above all, pay attention to your members. Remember that an organization’s members are its lifeblood. This blog has covered the strategies to encourage member engagement digitally. I hope this solves many of your questions on member engagement tactics. If you would like to know more about how to boost member engagement, contact us today.

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