Onboarding New Members

The following post is based on a recent webinar I attended sponsored by NXUnite.

The session focused on sharing ideas for your new member onboarding process, based on seven questions they asked.

There are lots of great ideas listed below that you could implement into your onboarding process, in addition to what you're already doing.

1.  How have onboarding best practices changed over the past 5 years?
 

• More individual interactions.

• Elevating engagement – get feedback and be more intentional on finding out why the member joined.

• The process has been digitalized – hybrid, accommodate to meet your members where they are.

• Members have a voice in the organization and let them know that.

• Use the platforms your members are on to connect.

 
2.  What advice do you have for building an onboarding strategy?
 

• Membership and marketing departments should be part of the conversation on the new member experience.

• Be consistent with your messaging.

• Think about the user experience – make it easy for them to interact with you.  Again, make it easy!

• What are your value propositions?  Deliver that message with your communications plan.

• Don’t overload with too many messages/emails.  Maybe a 5 for 5 strategy?  5 emails with 5 messages in 5 weeks or months.

• Be consistent with your messaging from all parts of the organization.

• Don’t make assumptions, use data to find out what your members want and need.

 
3.  What to do when you want to update your strategy?
 

• Ask your colleagues what they are doing, you don’t have to have all the answers.

• Have you thought about having an onboarding committee?

• Ask your most active members how they became active.

• Think about the first experience your member has with your organization.

• One size does not fit all.

• Are you doing quarterly webinars for onboarding your new members?  Have some of your most active members be your speakers.

 
4.  What onboarding mistakes are people making?
 

• Not having a formal onboarding process.

• Not asking for feedback from your onboarding process.

• Don’t just talk to them but have a two-way conversation to engage your new members.

• Overloading your new members with too much information too fast.  And, not doing enough.  You need to find the right balance.

• Not having your board, staff and members make calls.

 
5.  What small changes can you do to make a big change in your onboarding process?
 

• Create an email series campaign that officially welcomes your new members.

• Ask the new members questions that you can use later for engagement.

• Describe the onboarding process to your new members and then deliver on that promise.

• Acknowledgements, let them know you appreciate them.

 
6.  People are busy, how to onboard successfully without taking up too much of their time?
 

• Make your onboarding process self-service.  Use different platforms that they can access with your messaging.

• Are you texting with your new members as a welcoming touch point?

• Be creative!

 
7.  What is the future of onboarding?
 

• Automation of the onboarding process and AI.

• Using online communities to engage with your new members.

• Make sure you are continuing to invest in resources to make the onboarding process productive – think retention!

 
Final thought - don’t be afraid to review your onboarding process.  There is no need to blow up your current processes, but you can add or delete new ideas and track how your new members are responding, on a regular basis, to get better results.
 
For more resources on onboarding go HERE.

How to Increase Your Retention Rate

Are you communicating what your member’s value?

Once you know what your members value, communicate that throughout all your communication vehicles (website, newsletter, magazine, social media, etc.)

Go HERE for an article by Cathy Hight on the 10 reasons why members renew based on her many years in the industry.

Do any of her 10 reasons ring a bell with you?  Members renew for different reasons.  It’s not a one size fits all but the list she has set forth is a road map for your chamber.

And by the way, don’t guess what your members value, survey them. This is where your annual member assessment survey plays a role in your strategic plan.

One last thing to remember, when conducting surveys, you should always send to non-members too!

They may become members in the future and it might give you some insights on what they value if they become a member.

Revitalizing Member Onboarding

We’ve all heard the terms, right?

Recruitment, Engagement, Renewal (Retention).

When reviewing your membership application process and onboarding of new members, start with the basics.

Ask yourself these three questions?

• Is the application easy to fill out?  Do you make it easy for your members to renew?
• Do you have ambassadors to help you sell memberships?  Think member-get-a-member campaign.
• Do you send a welcome kit?

Once the initial transaction has taken place with the welcome kit.  Are you connecting with these new members in 30, 60, 90 day communications?

That is an example of drip marketing and an effective way of making sure you keep your new members focused on their membership. These communications should be personal and come from the CEO.  Think segmentation.

How do you personalize? Think segmentation.  Are you listening to them in the recruitment process? It’s important to understand their challenges and be ready to solve their problems.

Differentiation - tell your chambers story at the 30,000 foot level and then drill down to how you can help them with their needs.  At the end of the day, it’s about them, the member, not you.

Always remember to connect, listen and engage with your new members.  Don’t forget to communicate your culture!  What do you stand for in addition to what you are doing?

Think about how Amazon communicates with you if you’re a Prime Member - when you join Prime they don't send you one communication with all the benefits.  They send you three different communications, first is the free shipping benefit, then the movie TV option, and then the Prime Music station, etc.  Again, it’s called drip marketing and it's very effective.

Are you making phone calls to that new member six months in?  Old technology still works and should not be discounted.  Everyone likes a check-in call.

Create a script for your staff team or ambassadors who will be making the calls.  Most calls will go to voice mail, but you've made the contact.  At the very least, end the call with thanking them for being a member and a call back number should they need anything.

And at renewal time, prove your worth - are you doing a year in review document with your invoice?  Are you using video to show value by having your members give testimonials - show the value of ethics, connections, advocacy?

Communicating with your membership on a regular basis should be top of mind for all chambers and your members' lifecycle.

Finally, membership is a team sport - Membership Is Everybody's Business!  Go here for a blog post on that HERE.

Good luck in your revitalized onboarding process!

Engaging and Retaining New Members Using Drip Marketing

Amazon has 22 benefits - they introduce you to a few at a time through weekly or monthly emails.  I'm a member and I've personally experienced these onboarding emails. That's how I learned about e-books, prime music, etc.

I recently attended a session led by Larry Guthrie and Leslie Whittet, both from the Association for Corporate Growth where they talked about how to market the benefits of your organization a little bit at a time with your members.

If you're an Amazon customer you're familiar with their monthly email that talks about a specific benefit or two.  What they are doing is putting their benefits in bite size messages.

They spent a good amount of time discussing the difference of onboarding versus an orientation?

Onboarding improves retention rates - period!  An orientation is just the beginning of a true onboarding process.  The onboarding process could be the first 90 day period of your new members interaction with you.

This is where drip marketing comes into play. You communicate with them on a regular basis over this 90 day period by introducing the different benefits of your organization.  You might want to communicate on a biweekly basis.

The value proposition is a major part of your onboarding process.  Advocacy, education, networking are benefits that you are providing your members, are you doing a good job of communicating those benefits?  Your communications should always be member focused not chamber focused.

Maybe your onboarding (90-days) communications might be:

• Welcome kit
• Communication on an advocacy effort you're working on with a link with more information
• Communication on how to participate in your next networking event
• Communication on a couple of benefits that they might not be aware of

 Your goal is to have your members "learn it and use it!"

Drip marketing is showcasing your member benefits in your communications in a strategically planned out process.

I also think it's important that in these communications you are not asking for more money.  Remember, they just paid you a sum of money to join.

Think of drip marketing as a guided tour of your chamber.  You're breaking up your value proposition into small digestible bites of information. Make your communications clean and concise.

Biweekly emails focusing on a different set of benefits is a plan worth considering.

Once you've finished your 90-day onboarding with new members you might want to check in with them at the 6-month interval. Remember, at the 9-month interval you'll be sending your first auto-invoice.  That three-month window before an invoice is sent will be a great time to fix any problems from the information you might get at that 6 month check-up.

Good luck!

Understanding Typical Member Retention Rates

What are your current retention rates?  Do you know?

If not, that's the first thing you need to do to understand your membership and where your money comes from on an annual basis.

Let's review the basics, 90% retention, 80% retention, 70% retention can make a huge difference in your recruiting strategy.

If you're at the 90% retention level, great, consider yourself lucky, because most chambers are nowhere near those numbers.

You've heard the old saying, engagement increases retention.  Yes, and maybe no!

The bottom line is you want to recruit members who believe in what you do (your mission) and they're called "Altruistics."  They will support you no matter the issues of the day that your Chamber may be dealing with at any given time.

For more information on different types of members please visit YTheyJoin.com or HERE.

An "Altruistic" by definition, believes in what you do and will not change their mind in supporting your chamber over any contentious issue that may arise from time to time.

They believe that you want a strong economic environment for not only the business community but also the general public and that's why they will support you, even if they don't believe in any one specific issue that they may disagree with you on.

Those are the members we want!

Why chase members that you have to please every day vs the "Altruistic" that will be with you every day, week, month and year because they believe in you and the greater cause?

Find the "Altruistics" in your community and recruit them today.  They will support your efforts in building the future of your organization and your community.

For a previous blog post on membership equations go HERE.

Good luck! 

Why You Should Set Recruitment, Retention and Revenue Goals Each Month

If you don't set recruitment, retention and revenue goals on a monthly basis you really can't measure your success or lack of success with any accuracy.

Membership is a numbers game, right?

You must track your progress on a regular basis.  What frequency are you tracking your efforts?

Obviously, it depends on the resources at your disposal to create these reports to track your success.

For me, I track on a daily basis (money), weekly basis (number of new members) and monthly basis (retention), the three pressure points in membership.

The key for these reports is to try and get them produced automatically. If you don't have to crunch the numbers it makes it a lot easier.  Today's technology allows for setting up these reports fairly easily.

Most chambers I work with use an anniversary due date for their membership renewals.  If you're in this category, it's imperative that you set up these daily, weekly and monthly reports.

And by the way, armed with these reports, will allow you to accurately budget your membership revenue from year to year.

That's an added bonus when it comes to budget time!

For the latest Membership Marketing Benchmarking Reports from Marketing General Incorporated go HERE.

Retention or Recruitment: Which Is More Important?

Depends on who you ask!

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.

Rules of Engagement

An engaged member is a retained member!

You know the deal -- recruitment, engagement and retention, are the keys to an overall effective membership plan.

Do you have a formal engagement program for new members?

Does it include:

• A welcome letter w/benefits sheet.
• Do you call them 90 days into their membership thanking them for joining and asking some key questions:

1. Have you visited our website?
2. Have you attended a chamber event?
3. Have you signed up for our grassroots network?

• In this call, it’s important to close w/thanking them for being a member.

While these simple suggestions may seem elementary, they can go a long way in improving your retention rates.

Remember, we all know it’s cheaper to retain a member than to recruit a new member.

Something to think about!

Engaging New Members

We all know that first year members don’t renew at the same level as our base members.

 

Why is that? Engagement.

 

In some chambers, that can be a difference of up to 40% (i.e., base member’s retention rate of 85% and first year member’s retention rate of 45%).

 

What are you doing to engage that first year member?

 

If you don’t have a formal plan, now is the time to create one. At a minimum, the following should be considered in any first year member engagement plan:

 

• Welcome letter and membership kit;
• Follow-up phone call 90 days into the membership;
• Sign-up for something on your website; and
• Get them to a chamber event.

 

It’s a fact - an engaged member is a retained member.

 

Create that first year member engagement plan today!

15+ Bright New Membership Ideas

The following is a list of potential ideas you may want to try for your organization as it relates to your:

- Recruitment;
- Retention; or
- Engagement campaigns.

The second set of ideas were collected in small groups representing professional societies and trade associations.

The following were identified strategies that they they were employing or planned to employ in membership.

Recruitment

• Membership is everybody’s business (staff and volunteers).
• Create a fact sheet.
• Know why people join: Advocacy, publications, affinity programs, recognition, training & development, etc.
• Fine-tune your message (you don’t have time to tell all).
• Sell your brand.

Retention

• Communicate (not just at renewal time).
• Show dollar value of each service for membership.
• Show the value (Benefits – Costs = Value).
• Mini surveys to monitor satisfaction.
• Office visits.

Engagement

• Orientation programs (in person, virtual).
• Reference guide.
• Volunteer opportunities.
• Personal contact.
• Rewards programs.

Professional Society Ideas

Recruitment

• Go directly to the college or university.
• Work closely with graduates or soon to be graduated students.
• Get member volunteer to work with each campus.
• Conduct some events for non-members (non-student members and non-society members).
• Use these public events as a “look” at what the society can do for you.
• For non-member conference attendees, offer 30-day window to join at special conference attendee rates.
• Follow up with mailing and phone contacts.
• New member discount on first event attended.
• Obtain letterhead and envelopes from members and send “invitation letter” to join to prospects as a personal endorsement over member signature.
• Use “endorsement partners” to assist with or sponsor membership marketing program.

Retention

• Ask lapsed members why they have not continued.
• Get local members more involved in retention work.
• Offer deferred dues for displaced members (hardship) category.
• Job board for free to keep members involved (retains members if it is free to them.)
• Have volunteers make calls to non-renewals - there is usually a higher response rate because their peers are asking.

Engagement

• Conduct regular “Needs Assessment Survey’s.”
• Ask them to be on a committee.
• Ask for expressions of interest.
• Add new volunteer positions (in each committee).
• Show appreciation for membership and volunteering.

Trade Association Ideas

Recruitment

• Personal visits.
• Business/members to bring in a new member.
• Use phone-a-thon, with a runner to deliver membership packet.
• Changes in staff offer opportunities to meet again with prospects.
• Ask board members to write why they are a member and use these statements as testimonials.
• Focus on core group.
• Work on strategic relationships and alliances with allied associations so that there are opportunities to share information.
• Membership and involvement in umbrella organizations to add credibility and to foster relationships and raise industry profile.
• Make sure that the Web site draws prospective members to the “How to Join” site easily and logically.

Retention

• Calling program—list those not on ‘involved’ status.
• Mentor/ambassador program to adopt new members.
• Reenergize membership committee: 1) give them high visibility at convention and other events; 2) provide distinctive polo shirts, ask them to greet members at trade show, convention; and ask membership committee members to make follow-up calls, visit after staff contact.
• Press releases to industry of association developments, and copies sent to members to show what the association is doing to raise visibility, credibility of industry.
• Press releases to announce member accomplishments.

Engagement

• Use mentors or hosts for each new member.
• Organize a mentoring program.
• Some groups are offering a “tour’ of membership programs.