You’ve done the leg work to recruit, cultivate and grow your membership base. Like many associations, you may find yourself asking what’s next or how can I retain my members? Time and time again the phone has proven to be a successful channel to quickly disseminate information, prevent donor lapse and increase attendance and engagement.
I’m combining our expertise in lead generation and membership organizations to remind you why you should be calling association members right now.
1. Benefit Education
Although many members may be familiar with your mission, we know from experience that many are either not aware or not taking full advantage of the benefits. A short phone call is an easy way to reach out and educate members about a benefit they may not have been aware of or highlight the newest improvement with your offerings.
Related Post: 3 Simple Ways to Show the Value of Your Association’s Membership
2. Build engagement
Like benefit education, building a relationship with your member base is critical for longevity. In a world where media messages are consistently delivered to our fingertips 24/7, the phone provides a personalized touch for one on one interaction. A quick conversation or voicemail can also get out an urgent message faster while continuing to build on that existing member relationship.
Accompanying calling efforts to build membership engagement with Facebook marketing adds additional member touch points, which results in a more active community.
3. Lapse Prevention
We all know the highest costs in membership come from initial acquisition and then having to reengage those same members who have lapsed. Once we have the members in house we need to do everything we can to retain them.
Once again, the phone provides a cost-effective way to reach our members whether in the form of blast messaging, targeted voicemails or personalized conversations. These conversations go a long way in keeping the member engaged and active.
4. Event attendance
Every week we hear from organizations who state one of their biggest challenges is getting members to attend their events. Often, they are only reaching out via one channel. To truly reach your members the way they want to be contacted and increase attendance you need to get the message out in multiple channels—email, social media and phone.
Think of invitations you receive for a party—following up with a call to make sure they are coming lets them know how much they will be missed and how important they are to your organization!
We also strongly encourage combining these efforts to increase membership engagement with a social media campaign. Our clients have had success with using Facebook to drive members to events, or even reaching them through a custom audience on LinkedIn!
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