There’s no question about it: Whether your organization has had one of its best years this century or one of the worst since its inception, you are faced with raising the member engagement bar once again for 2016.
Where are you turning?
Email blasts? Snail mail? Didn’t you do that last year? Haven’t you been doing that for over a decade? I know – you told your executive director the same thing. And he probably asked, “Well, what do you suggest?” Panic ensues.
Maybe you don’t have the social media expertise to capitalize on that channel. You know the organization can’t afford another full time staff member. Even a part-time intern would run $400/month on the low end.
What if you could make a personal phone call to each and every current member,and reach out to hundreds of prospective members? What if you could do just that in a way that not only is within the budget, but actually drives revenue for your organization?
How? Outsourcing.
Handing off your member care initiatives can be difficult and, if the wrong partner is chosen, potentially risky. So don’t do it all at once! Prioritize the most important, the easy, and the low-risk operations that your internal staff simply can’t do anymore (or aren’t getting to).
Here are three simple things to outsource this year:
1. Social Media
This is likely the most important thing to bring in an expert on. Unless you were born later than 1990, chances are you don’t know all you should about how to engage your members on social media. Don’t pay an intern. Ask for expert help. For less than the cost of an intern, the right partner can manage your social media across two or three platforms, releasing relevant content and having real time conversations with your members on a daily basis.
2. Conference registration calls
If social media is the most important, this is the easiest. In less than a day, you can pull together a list of leads (previous event/webinar attendees, newsletter subscribers, etc.) and send it off to a partner to call through. Usually 45-60 days from the event is the window for a simple reminder call, and 30 days and under is the prime window to capture last minute registrations (possibly with a bit of discount or other incentive). Convert an effective percentage of ‘non-attendees’ into revenue-generating conference participants. (Then, continue to build the engagement wave by calling through the list of attendees afterwards to drive membership or gather feedback).
3. Lapsed member reactivation
Finally, we come to the option with the lowest risk. We all are fully aware that it costs six times as much money to recruit a new member than it does to reactivate a lapsed member. So why aren’t you calling your lapsed members? The number one reason lapsed members stay lapsed is because nobody actively invites them back. Reach out to them, whether they’ve been gone a month or five years. Ask them to come back. They’re a “No,” and they’ll stay a “No” until somebody calls and reminds them of the benefits and what they miss by being on the outside. Once they’ve been converted to a “Yes,” make sure you keep up with your yearly touchpoints so that they renew again 12 months.
If you find yourself nodding along to these three callouts but are at a loss for whom to call, try Incept. The company I work for is a pay-for-results, multi-channel contact center that caters to the membership and nonprofits industries. For more than 20 years, Incept has developed the conversational marketing technique to engage members, donors, customers and more through many different channels, including inbound and outbound phone conversations, social media, SMS, live chat, email, direct mail, retargeting, and more. If one of your organization’s 2016 objectives is to increase engagement with members, consider calling on the experts!
