From my prospective
they're both equally important. While it's imperative to take care of
your current members you must continue to build and keep your eye on the future.
Your chamber will always
have attrition (the amount of your members who drop their membership each year).
The key is keeping it to
a minimum with great customer service and great programming and gaining more
new members than the amount of members you lose each year through attrition.
The better question is
whether you have a strategy in place for both of these important aspects of
your membership activities. Remember, we are membership organizations so
without them we wouldn't be in business.
Retention plan
In addition to your initial new member kit, each chamber should have
their own membership retention plan in place.
I’m not going to list everything you should do, or what may or may not
work for you, but here’s a list of things a number of chambers have done with
success:
- 90 day welcome call;
- Six month "check-in" email; and
- Three months prior to due date you reach out again and thank them for their membership.
Recruitment plan
Just as you have a
retention plan you should also have a recruitment plan. Again, what works for you may not work for
all chambers, but you need to have a plan and stick with it.
- A good list;
- Repetition in "the ask;" and
- Follow-up.
Retention and
recruitment, you need to be doing both!
A great resource for
measuring your activities and results vs what others are doing around the
country can be found in their annual Marketing General Inc. Membership survey.
You can get it HERE.
