Best Association Membership and Retention

Most Recent Q&A's

Most Popular Q&A's

Should our association focus on recruiting members or retaining them?

Which is more important to your trade association or membership organization: recruitment of new members or retention of existing members?

Recruitment of new members seems to get all of the attention and budget. It's easy to understand why. Recruitment is exciting and can be a great cause for celebration - it's fun to see those new member numbers grow. But for the long-term health of your association or membership organization, retention deserves more of your focus.

Here are three reasons why retention is more important than recruitment for your association or membership organization:

1. If you get retention right, you will have built the basis for recruitment. High retention rates are the signal that you have happy, satisfied members. And happy, satisfied members tend to share the association story with others, automatically creating a grassroots recruitment campaign.

2. The old saying, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is certainly true for associations and membership organizations. It's true not only because it takes less effort to keep a member than find a new member, but because it is less expensive to retain a member than recruit a new member.

3. Most importantly, if you have a low retention rate, it is a signal that you have serious underlying problems in your association or membership organization. Recruitment of members is primarily a function of great marketing. But member retention is a function of both marketing, and more importantly, a great membership experience. If you can't keep your members, then you are wasting money recruiting them until you fix the association.

The bottom line is that recruitment is important for your association or membership organization. But retention must be your first priority. Get retention right - then move on to recruitment.

Are postcards effective marketing tools for our association events?

Postcards are relatively inexpensive media vehicles for two reasons:

1) They are inexpensive to print, especially given the large number of special postcard programs offered by printers.

2) They are inexpensive to mail due to the lower postage rate for cards that are 4.25 x 6 (or slightly smaller - see http://postcalc.usps.gov/ for exact specifications).

However, the question as to whether postcards are cost efficient marketing vehicles for your association events requires the answer to another question: Are they effective?

The only real answer would be found from testing. However, here are two points that generally hold true:

1) Postcards serve as effective reminders for your association events.

2) Postcards do not work well as the main marketing pieces for your association events.

In other words, postcards can work as teasers or reminders, but cannot replace brochures or other main informational pieces for your association events.

Is your association using postcards in its marketing efforts? Do they stand alone or are they part of an overall marketing mix?

Can we market our association meeting using only email?

Email is undoubtedly a powerful tool. Even better, it can be extremely cost efficient.

But it's unlikely that you will be able to maximize your attendance with email-only marketing for your association event. There are three reasons:

1) As much as you hope you do, you probably don't have a 100% accurate set of email addresses for your members. Email addresses and/or contact persons (in the case of a trade association) change more frequently than any marketer would wish, and the hard reality is that they do change faster than you can probably stay on top of them.

2) Even if your email list is 100% accurate, you probably won't reach 100% of your members due to spam filters at the ISP, company or individual level. Are there ways to improve email deliverability? Certainly. But it is rare that anyone is willing to guarantee 100% deliverability to every member in box.

3) Even if you were able to reach 100% of your member in boxes, some members just don't respond as well to email solicitations as they do mailed brochures, phone calls, letters, etc. That's not to say that email isn't an excellent part of your media mix. But it is better suited to be part of a media mix, not the sole component.

Bottom line, emails are an important, cost-effective part of your overall marketing toolkit. But if you want to maximize your attendance for your association meeting, it is best to supplement it with other media vehicles.

Has your associated ever marketed a meeting using only email? What were your results versus using other marketing mixes?