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3-Steps to Make Your Member Win-Back Campaign More Effective

Posted by Timothy Serafino on Jan 8, 2016 2:03:10 PM

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Year after year, the pendulum of member engagement swings from one trend to the other and back again. And every shift leaves a trail of lapsed members and lost revenue as associations and organizations hustle to spend time and money meeting trending demands.

This year it’s win-backs. Whether you call it recapture, reactivation, re-engage, or some other re-verb, it’s on all of our minds: How can we rekindle relationships with previous members and convince them to join again?

STEP 1: DETERMINE WHAT ADDS VALUE TO YOUR MEMBERS

Go back to the drawing board. Your board members are industry experts. Your team has been with the association for years. But there’s only one group of people who can define what adds value to your members: your members.

Pick up the phone and call every single member and ask them a series of questions to determine what parts of their membership are most valuable, what parts they engage with most (or least). Industry expert Amanda Kaiser explainsthat "Members are very adept at articulating their problem and it is up to us to come up with the right solution." 

Use this data to adjust where you’re spending your time and money. As association leaders, regroup and synergize a membership that brings value to your current members.

You should include lapsed members in this part of the campaign, ask them why they left and begin the conversation of their reactivation.

STEP 2: REACH OUT TO YOUR LAPSED MEMBERS AND TELL THEM THE GOOD NEWS

Now that you’ve done some remodeling, you need to inform your lapsed members about the positive changes. Connect with them again! Send them an email explaining how much more bang they’ll get for their buck by being members of your organization (39% of organizations say that email generates more win-backs than other channels*).

Keep in mind that since they’ve lapsed, they may, for one reason or another, have a bad taste in their mouth and thus will take some convincing. Show them how serious you are by offering a discount on their membership. This small gesture works wonders in changing the psychology of any buyer, and it applies to memberships too.

Consider scheduling this step around a major milestone or event. By reaching out a few months before your conference, you can grab some member win-backs alongside some additional conference registrations by bundling them together at a discounted rate.

STEP 3: REPEAT

Too often, organizations put together a win-back campaign, execute it, and then spend the next twelve months analyzing results, trying to figure out how/if to do it next year. Instead of limiting yourself to learning annually, though, keep doing it. Learn from month-to-month. Every month, pull a report of members who have lapsed, and reach out to them. Ask them questions. Hear their story. What did they like? What did they use? Where were they hoping to find more value?

Not only does this give you a continual flow of data to help guide ongoing member engagement/recruitment initiatives, but it provides an opportunity to ask them back. Show them the benefit of being a member by reaching out, having a personal conversation with them, and inviting them to continue to enjoy the value of membership.

As a rule, it’s always best to take a “sooner-than-later” approach to your ongoing win-back campaigns. Contact them immediately after they lapse with an invitation to come back. The longer a lapsed member goes without hearing from you about how much they’re missed, the less likely they are to renew their membership.

You should also consider preempting the win-back campaign by pulling a report of members who will lapse soon and calling them three months out (71% of members renew more than 3 months from their expiration date*) with an offer to renew before they have a chance to lapse. This sort of consistency is the defining characteristic of exceptional member retention/win-back efforts.

By making this shift from trend-follower to thought-leader, your organization will not only retain more members, you’ll also capture otherwise-missed revenue, and become industry leaders in innovative member engagement.

 

*See 2014 Membership Marketing Benchmark Report

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