The biggest mistake you are making at renewal time.

That headline may seem a little misleading when you read through this article, but it’s important for your organisation to have the mindset that your renewal campaign should begin the moment your member pays for their membership. 

Having worked with numerous membership organisations from across a broad range of industries over the years, I always come across the same issue at renewal time.

When contacting members to renew their membership you will always have a group of members that say “I only hear from you when you want my money”.

This means that throughout your membership year your member became disengaged. Here are the top four reasons why a member becomes disengaged. 

1. They weren’t onboarded properly and didn’t feel welcome. 

2. They stopped seeing value in their membership. This could be from a life change or not offering enough value for members throughout their member journey. They may see amazing benefits in the first year but nothing in the second year. 

3. No one asked for feedback on their member experience throughout the year. 

4. Personal and Financial reasons, the member see’s value but changes in their career, location, or financial difficulties can lead to members leaving an organisation.  

How can you stop this from occurring?

Step one: Create a set of triggers to alert your team

We always recommend having a set of triggers that will alert your membership services team if a member is becoming disengaged early on, these typically are:

1. They have stopped opening emails (that they would usually open).

2. They haven’t attended an event in 12 weeks. 

3. They haven’t engaged in an online forum or content for 8 weeks. 

Step two: Reach out to the member

It is rare to receive a phone call from a member organisation during the first three months of your membership year, but we highly recommend trying it!

An appointment for a brief phone or teleconference call that focuses on the member should be scheduled for all members at least twice a year. Your community manager should be taking the time to get to know them a little better, and taking notes for other staff to view before interacting with the member in the future. 

Here are some conversation starters that we love:

"We want to get to know you better! Can you tell us your favourite cuisine? Where was your last holiday? What was the last podcast you listened to or book that you read?"

"We'd love to learn more about your goals. What are some of your professional or personal aspirations for the next year? How can our organisation support you in achieving these goals?"

"Building a strong community is important to us. What kind of people or professional networks are you interested in connecting with here and we can focus on making sure you linked at our next event, or we can send an introductory email so you know a few members a little better before the next event” 

You will start to see strong trends in your community when gathering this information. For example, one organisation that I worked with discovered that 90% of its members' favourite cuisine was Japanese. This information allowed us to create an experiential dining event that was well attended and has become an annual event that everyone looks forward to. 

Step three: Assess your offering 

Many membership organisations only have an option to pay membership fees annually. This is great for organisations that charge a small annual fee, but for organisations that have a higher fee (in the thousands) this can be a barrier to entry. 

There are many pros and cons to offering a monthly subscription fee, but including it in your offering will typically see a larger number of members joining over time, and if you roll over your fees (notifying members a month in advance) you will also see a lower attrition rate. 

We’ve found the best way to structure membership fees is to charge a 10% premium on the monthly fees and 8% on quarterly fees (see example below). The additional fees will cover any administration fees associated with processing the payments. 

Example of a fee structure 

Annual Membership Fee $2,500

Quarterly Membership Fee with an 8% premium is $675

Monthly Membership Fee with a 10% premium is $229

Finally, are you catering for members that have moved overseas, retired or maybe on maternity/paternity leave? Offering a discounted membership that allows these members to receive segmented communications, attend virtual / limited events can help these members stay in the loop and connected to your organisation and move up a membership level when they are ready to. 

At Mesher we can help design your engagement/renewal programs, host engaging events and train your staff on member engagement techniques. We love helping membership organisations thrive!