In simple terms, member participation is the continuous interaction between a member and an organization in exchange for significant value. This means keeping in touch with your membership, posting frequently on social media, creating meaningful content and inviting their participation, among other approaches. A member engagement strategy is an ongoing initiative. A successful engagement strategy includes ongoing opportunities for members to participate.
This requires a constant effort on the part of your organization to deliver ongoing value to your members while making adjustments to your plan when necessary. Simply put, member engagement is the ongoing interaction between a member and the organization in exchange for meaningful value. In general, member engagement is a two-way investment between an organization and its members. The organization's most ardent supporters contribute money, time and passion, and the organization devotes energy to the member experience.
Gather benchmarking surveys that reveal trends and best practices among a specific industry or demographic group, and then promote them to your members. Ongoing communication helps ensure that members move forward with membership renewal and donations when needed. In simpler terms, successfully managing (and growing) any membership organization boils down to two key goals. Job boards are an essential tool if you are a professional association, but they could also work for other groups of members.
Maintain positive member engagement by continually communicating your appreciation for your membership. Your membership base is likely to be comprised of a diverse group of people with different goals, time commitments, and budgetary constraints. Send opinion polls regularly, routinely reevaluate benefits, and always let your members know exactly what tangible results you are achieving because of your membership. All organizations will build their member engagement plans differently, depending on their missions, size, and operational structure.
All non-profit organizations serving visitors want to increase their membership to generate more revenue and expand their advocate base. The fundamental goal of any membership website is to get members to the site and keep them coming back for more. The big difference is to apply a funnel to it and take the time to define what goals you want each of your membership segments to adopt. This is because the return on investment is greater for renewal than for outreach, your team has to spend far less money marketing the organization to people who have already experienced the benefits of membership.
Once you know what your members are looking for in your membership program, you can start designing and testing the changes and improvements. Associations, NGOs, zoos and other organizations with high member participation have not only increased member retention, but can also leverage their active members to attract even more new members to their organization. But what exactly is member participation? In the world of membership marketing, it all comes down to attention, specifically to the amount of attention from its members it can attract. While these metrics are important, they are only part of the participation equation that you need to track for your membership organization.
