Category: membership

What dues rates will maximize both revenue and participation?

That’s a good one!

This question actually came in from a client, and here’s what I told them:

The perils of pricing too high are obvious – no one will buy, because you’re too expensive. Pricing too low is equally bad, though, because people don’t value something that they feel is cheap.

The low-fi way to answer this is to benchmark against some comparable membership organizations, to see if what you’re offering (by way of benefits) and charging (by way of dues) is within, below, or above the general market. You never want to be the cheapest or most expensive option.

A mid-level effort approach would be to do a membership dues modeling project. This is like the above, only you deconstruct your benefits package first, price out the elements (both cost to deliver and also what comparable services cost elsewhere), mine your data to figure out which members are actually using which benefits, and recalculate what your benefits packages might include and what they might cost based on actual costs, perceived value, and actual use rate.

The most complicated answer is to do a full-on pricing study. Now that’s not a service I offer, but there are a number of good association consultants and vendors who do. (yep, I really told them that – and gave them some names)

One final note on dues: small annual dues increases are a much better idea than infrequent large increases. Members will not notice a 2-3% annual increase, particularly if you really do 2-3%, which quickly moves you off dues amounts that end in “0” or “5,” and that keeps you up with the rate of inflation without any price shocks. The alternate is to wait several years and do larger increases (10% or more), which are DEFINITELY noticed and can make people angry or lose you members.

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When is the best time of the year to begin renewal communications to members? How many notices should we send? Should we send paper or electronic notices? What should we send WITH the notices?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no one right answer to these questions. There are some good guidelines, which we’ll go over in a minute, but really, you have to test different options and, more importantly, PAY ATTENTION to what happens. Yes, that means you have to track what you do and the responses it generates and compare that against doing it a different way to see which works better: how many notices, of what type, sent to whom, with what messaging, and on what schedule.

Sorry not sorry.

When should we start renewal communications?

Three months out, give or take.

What I mean by that is if, for instance, you know that businesses in your industry all have a lengthy payment process that takes longer than three months, or there’s a common busy season, or they all close their books at a certain time of year that doesn’t align with your membership year, you might need to adjust that (and if that last is the case, think seriously about moving your membership year to align with their budget cycle).

How many notices should we send?

Generally, if you’re still getting enough of a response to justify the resources you’ve invested (both direct costs and staff time), keep soliciting people. However, at some point, you need to consider those members lapsed, not just “late,” and change your messaging from “please renew” to more of an acquisition-style message.

When do you make that switch? Probably about three months after lapsing, but again, you need to understand your audience. If three months after lapsing is your members’ busy season, or a time of year when everyone in your profession seems to go on vacation, adjust accordingly. For instance, if your renewal date is July 1, don’t change your messaging from renewal to reacquisition until after Labor Day at the earliest, because there’s a good chance a big chunk of your audience was on vacation before that.

And make sure you give people time to respond. For electronic notices, you can keep your response window pretty short. Most people are going to respond to your email within a week, max, and if they haven’t responded by then, they aren’t going to.

Mail is different. You need to allow 3-4 weeks for a mailed notice to arrive, be read, be responded to, and for the check that member mailed back to you to be received and processed.

My favorite schedule? Send an email. A week later, generate your mail list. Three weeks later, it’s time for the next email (or other electronic) notice. Etc. Speaking of…

Should we send paper or electronic notices?

Yes.

I’m not being snarky. You need to send notices through multiple platforms. It’s tempting to send only electronic notices – they’re fast, they’re cheap, they’re less labor-intensive – but don’t do it. What if you’re sending to an email address that person no longer uses? What if your notices are getting caught in spam filters? What if that member unsubscribed to your email updates?

I have a client that had switched entirely to emailed renewals. Their renewal rate was running around 66-67%. Not great. We reinstated some mailed notices (a more formal print notice with cover letter from the president, and later in the series, a fun, colorful postcard featuring a member photo and testimonial), and their renewal rate is now running around 85%. The mailed notices are, of course, not the ONLY reason for that improvement, but they definitely contributed.

Last week, I taught ASAE’s Association Management Week Membership Development class, and one of the participants, who works for an association with lots of student members, mentioned that her association is doing an increasing amount of communications via text. Talk with your members where THEY want you to.

What should we send WITH the notices?

This is one where you REALLY want to test to see what motivates your members. Do they like a contest with prizes? Are they CEOs who want a summation of all the member benefits their employees used during the year? Do they respond to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), so you should talk about what’s upcoming next year that they’ll miss if they don’t renew? Are testimonials from other members persuasive? What about some sort of reward that’s available only for doing what you want them to: renewing immediately, off the first notice? Are they all business, or do they like messaging that’s a little more casual, fun, or clever? Would they like a little gift?

The only way to know is to test. AND TRACK WHAT HAPPENS.

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Who should make contact around things like joining and renewing: other members or staff?

Member-to-member (or member-to-prospect) communications can be very effective, IF you can persuade your members to actually make the calls.

We’re often tempted to ask volunteers to call lapsed members – in fact, that can be a stated requirement of serving on a membership committee. However, that is the hardest call to get volunteers to agree to make (and actually follow through on), because unless your lapsed members just forgot, they lapsed for cause, and facing an angry or disgruntled member is scary for volunteers.

It can even backfire, if the volunteer who’s placing the call is the combative type. “I was upset with the association for X reason, so I let my membership lapse, and then Member Y called and started an argument on the phone with me,” is not good for your association.

I recommend starting with something easier. So what IS easier?

The best place to start with a member-to-member contact campaign is welcoming new members. While you can certainly restrict those new member calls to your board of directors and/or your membership committee, it’s not complicated to do (particularly if you provide a simple script), so it’s an excellent micro-volunteering opportunity for any member.

What would a script look like?

Start by – if possible – matching up a new member with an experienced member who is located physically near them, which allows for an in-person meeting if both members are amenable. Your volunteer starts off by introducing herself and welcoming the new member to the association. Then she asks for two pieces of information:

• How did the new member find out about the association?
• What caused him to join?

Then your volunteer shares a few things she likes about her membership, highlights one thing the new member can expect to see soon, and, if appropriate, invites the new member to get a coffee or lunch.

That’s it – easy and fun for both your welcome wagon volunteers and your new members.

Moving up a level in complexity, you can run a Member Get a Member (MGM) or Member Get a Lead (MGL) campaign.

There are MANY resources on how to run an MGM campaign. The keys are to make sure you have a good tracking mechanism, make sure you provide your member recruiters with plenty of sales support, and keep your expectations in check (every single member will not recruit one member – a tiny percentage will be really into it, and everyone else will ignore it). MGM can be challenging because people who aren’t salespeople as their profession tend to fear sales. Even people who are salespeople as their profession may not be comfortable selling your association.

Because of that, I often encourage clients to start with MGL, which is a lot less pressure on your members. All they have to do is introduce the association to a colleague and ask if it’s OK for someone from the association to follow up with more information, then your members submit those warm leads for association staff to follow up on. It makes tracking a cinch – you know exactly where a lead came from, because the members submit them directly – and takes the pressure to “close deals” off members.

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Do members respond well to “tiered” membership plans?

Generally, yes, with an important caveat. There must be meaningful differences in member behavior patterns.

If all your members pretty much behave the same and use your benefits the same, there’s nothing around which to differentiate tiers.

Or if you don’t have enough benefits to allow for it, you really can’t create tiers.

But if different groups of members use different benefits in identifiable and trackable ways, yes, tiered pricing is a good way to go.

What you do is bundle benefits together in ways that you can support based on member use data, adjust the pricing to be favorable, and market to the right members.

An example from one of my clients: We were able to identify that member firms either didn’t attend their annual conference at all or sent teams of five or more people. So we offered a tier of membership that included five pre-paid conference registrations, at a rate slightly lower than the early-bird registration rate. We then marketed that option specifically to the firms that regularly sent teams of five or more people, with the pitch that it would save money (lower rate) and time, by not requiring them to go through another round of payment approvals. And they took us up on it.

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Is there a “tipping point” when too many benefits start to get lost in the shuffle? 

People associate because they’re trying to accomplish something or solve a problem that they’ve been unable to do alone. So yes, your members come to you looking for something in particular – help solving a particular problem that has so far proved intractable or achieving a particular goal that has so far proved unattainable.

Each member is likely joining because of 1-3 key benefits that particular member is looking for. The trick is to figure out what those 1-3 key benefits are for any given member, and then to clearly show her how those benefits solve her problem or help her achieve her goal.

But yes, you can offer too much stuff. Clues that a benefit is a waste of resources include:

• Few members use it (you find that out from behavioral data)
• Those members that do use it aren’t passionate about it (you find that out in member satisfaction surveys)
• The cost to provide the benefit is out of line with use (which requires fully weighted cost center accounting to accurately calculate)
• The benefit is tangential to your mission
• Someone else is providing an equivalent benefit both better and cheaper than your association does
• The benefit is a major drain on staff

Don’t be afraid to eliminate under-performing benefits. That’s the only way you free up resources for the new things your members are going to need to face tomorrow’s challenges.

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Are members who join with a price incentive more or less likely to renew membership the following year?

Less likely. Don’t offer pricing discounts unless your audiences are EXTREMELY price sensitive or your membership is declining and you’re desperate to get people in the door by any means necessary.

Does offering a discounted membership based on time of the year (i.e. a summer sale) dilute the value of membership?

Yes. Also, when you start offering discounts, you train your members to bad behavior: “Well, I waited to renew last year, and they offered a discount, so I’ll wait again this year and see if I can get another deal.”

Now that’s different than pro-rating membership when everyone’s renewing on the calendar year. If a new member joins in July, one school of thought says “charge that member 50% of your regular rate,” but I’m not a fan of that because then that new member is going to start receiving “it’s time to renew!” notices almost immediately. I encourage clients to offer “18 for the price of 12.” That is, the new member pays the full rate NOW, but isn’t solicited to renew until next year’s renewal cycle.

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You’ve got questions – I (may) have answers!

Now that the Membership 101 Series has concluded, it occurred to me that folks might have some more questions about membership I didn’t think to address.

I have some membership FAQs my clients have asked me over the years that I’ll address, but you might have questions too, and might want the opportunity to ask them in an anonymous setting (rather than on ASAE’s Collaborate community or other public forum).

Now’s your chance.

You’re welcome to email me, call to text me (202.468.3478), @ me on Twitter, or drop me a message on LinkedIn, and I’ll answer your membership questions here.

No question too big – no question too small, and if I don’t know the answer, I promise I’ll try my best to get it for you.

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