How do we measure member engagement?

The required elements to drive increased membership engagement come in both tangible forms and intangible forms.

The tangible are those processes and offerings that visibly and materially increase membership value by bringing new resources to the table.

Intangible requirements stem from the overarching effect of improving and tailoring the membership offering to increase engagement over time.

Examples:

The membership journey

Engaging with your members at every stage of their journey with your association is the best way to ensure longstanding relationships and membership retention, the life-blood of successful associations. The needs of your members will change according to their professional experiences, working environment and lifestyle. Needless to say, your fledgling members, younger members or student members will have very different pain points and requirements from your retired, invested or committee members.

Learn from your longstanding members

Map the journeys of your longstanding members understanding their member persona and member path. Examine and understand their personal data. Which events do they like to attend? What workshops have they signed-up for? Have they joined committees? This enables you to see their engagement over time, its peaks and troughs, and therefore understand what encourages their renewals and engagement.

Where possible, use this information to personalise their experience with your association. To do this you need to make sure that every piece of communication that is sent out contains information or resources that are valuable to each individual that receives it. You may also need to adapt the channels and platforms that you use to reach out to your members in accordance with where they are in their membership journey.

Whilst your values and mission statement need to remain consistent, your offering and how you provide it will need to adapt in accordance with every stage of your membership journey. For them to continue to invest in your association, you need to invest in them at every stage.