Many of you might be wondering what the heck we mean by membership engagement.  Hey, completely understandable... but sorry to say that there isn’t a clear cut answer.  Membership Engagement isn’t just the newest buzzword that people like to sling around - it’s a real thing, but it will mean something different to each association. 

So, you are wondering if you are offering enough membership value as an association.  That is awesome that you are even thinking about it. Having it at the top of mind is so crucial because, as you know, your members are the life blood of your organization.  You HAVE to keep them happy.

Attribution is a huge buzzword in the marketing space right now, and for good reason. For many companies, metrics-driven challenges (such as generating leads and proving ROI) continue to be the biggest challenges in their organizations, and they lack tools to help them track concrete results for their spends.

Similarly, members of associations struggle to attribute the results of their association membership fees. Without attribution, members don’t see the value and your association might be on the chopping block for their investment in coming years.

If the biggest issue you face as an association is membership retention and growth, then congratulations - you’re in the majority.

As the driver of association membership, you’re well aware that retaining current members is preferable to recruiting new members plus regaining ones you’ve lost during the past membership drive timeframe. It’s very related to how businesses think about retaining current clients: according to Gartner, it costs 5x as much to acquire a new customer as it takes to keep an existing one satisfied.

So, to start off… what the hell is membership engagement? I know a lot of you might have been thinking that.  Well, that’s ok because there isn’t a clear cut answer.  Membership Engagement isn’t just the newest buzzword that people like to sling around - it’s a real thing, but it will mean something different to each association. 

We have all been through presentations with lousy speakers where we have sat patiently checking our phones, feeling like time was standing still, wondering what’s for dinner and then left feeling cheated of our time.  I don’t know about you, but I have been through enough of them where, if the time spent was combined, I could have probably hiked to Colorado and back (and enjoyed it significantly more; granted, I do like hiking).

Without members, associations would disappear; but it is important for the integrity of your association that your members are qualified and meet set standards.  So, setting up a way to measure the qualification of your potential association members is important. 

We have all sat through a boring presentation.  Maybe it’s a topic that we are already familiar with, maybe the topic is too far over our heads, or maybe the person giving the presentation just has your sleep number dialed in and is slowly lulling you into a coma.

Membership recruitment and retention is nothing more than building and retaining successful relationships.  So, how do you successfully create these long-lasting relationships and continue to make more of them - and grow the number of your contractor association members?