Member Engagement, Member Growth

Is Your Member Segmentation Strategy Wrong?

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Is Your Member Segmentation Strategy Wrong?

Most associations segment their membership in the same way: by career stage. So young professionals might be one segment, mid-career folks another, and so on into retirement. They do it this way because it seems obvious, and it’s easy – but is there a chance it’s wrong? When determining whether or not your member segmentation strategy is helping increase member engagement, ask yourself: Do our different segments act differently?

The Problem With Career-Stage Member Segmentation

If career stage has been the category used for your member segmentation, it’s likely been difficult to spot any trends or changes. For example, do mid-career and late-career members respond to different messages or engage with different things? They probably don’t.

Career-stage segmentation does not work because it doesn’t tell you how to treat people differently to get the best response – It is not actionable.

What you need to know are the ways your audience is different, which often falls into two distinct categories: what interests them and their relationship with you.

These groups were very distinct. For example, many physicians were not interested in advocacy, but those who were were extremely passionate. So, talking about advocacy to the wrong people may have led to unsubscribes while talking about advocacy to the right people got an enormous response.

Segmenting By Interests

One of the most effective ways to segment your audience is by interests – after all, people will always respond better to things that interest them. Moreover, some things your association does are far more interesting to certain people than others. So how can you know which things and which people? For starters, let your email be your guide. Cluster your email by topic and look at which members respond to what. You will begin to see patterns and that’s where your member segmentation should start. In an analysis we completed at Sequence for the American Medical Association, we found that there were four principal areas that physicians responded to:

Understanding Interests Through Action

How do you know what people belong in which segment? If you know what emails and content a member responds to, that will tell you. If you don’t, you can analyze your data for “look-alikes.” That is, members likely to respond to advocacy because they look like advocates in other ways. For example, they may open the same emails or visit the same pages. They may even have similar demographics. Taking it one step further, an outside data shop can help you use consumer data to segment non-members by interest, too. For example, the medical society in the story above doubled its member growth rate in this way.

The Loyalty Ladder

The other member segmentation strategy that always applies is how engaged your members are with you. Picture a ladder with your most engaged members on the top. These are your Super Fans. They are longtime members active in everything you do. They are your governance and volunteers. You wish every member were like them. On the bottom are the unengaged. They joined but have not done anything. These are your Window Shoppers. In between are increasing levels of engagement. Members have more lifetime value at each level and become more likely to renew, which is why your goal is to move your members up the ladder. Members at each rung of the ladder will react to different things. But, more importantly, you want them to respond to different things.

Lower on the ladder, you want them to engage with the “stickiest,” most high-value things you have to offer (Your data can tell you what the high-value things are, which will be the topic for our next article.) For example, volunteering, free webinars and resources, along with member benefits including insurance.
Higher up the ladder, you do not need to drive more engagement; you want to appreciate them and keep them excited. Part of your strategy should be a concerted effort to recognize them and give them special opportunities.

This approach allows you to concentrate your resources where they will do the most good and engage the members methodically to increase loyalty.

Don't Ignore Non-Members Either

You can also extend this approach to non-members. People come to your events, subscribe to publications, and contribute to journals – yet they aren’t members yet. More often than not, these non-member “constituents” make up a larger group than members.

For example, you can look at non-members who attended your event and infer their interests from what they did there or how they are similar to members whose interests you know. Once you have that information, your segmentation strategy can be to send more of those resources via email with a call to action aimed at turning them into members.

Thinking about non-member interactions as rungs on the ladder gives you a pathway to walk them up to a membership.

Member Segmentation In Action

You do not have to choose between these approaches. Some of the most successful associations combine these segmentation strategies to attract new members and increase loyalty as effectively as possible. A winning acquisition and retention strategy allows interests to guide messaging and loyalty to inform offers.

It used to be that only the largest, data-savvy associations could achieve this kind of member segmentation. That is not true today. Better technology makes data analysis easier and less expensive every day, even in-house.

Could you be doing your member segmentation wrong? There is no reason not to start doing it right.

This article originally appeared in Sidecar as Is Your Member Segmentation Strategy Wrong?

3 Steps to a Great Nonprofit Brand Strategy.

other popular client stories

Our Successful Client Stories

David Wickenden

SVP Enterprise Strategy, AARP

What Sequence Consulting delivers is excellence. I’d recommend them for anything related to the organization's strategy.

Chief Membership Officer

American Psychological Association

Our results with Sequence Consulting were phenomenal. It was massively successful. They have great experience they deliver a lot of value.

Chris Gloede

CMO, American Bar Association

When we needed help evaluating marketing automation, Sequence Consulting led the way. They developed the business case, and they helped us identify the fastest path to revenue and profit.

Dave Austin

CEO, Influent50 an AARP Services Company

We took a new business from zero and grew it to $47 million in three years. We could have never done it without Sequence Consulting.

Tami Brehm, CAE

VP Member Services, American College of Rheumatology

Sequence brought focused expertise to our partnership and invested in our success. We are a complex organization. Sequence helped us easily leverage our unique differences to create new growth opportunities.

Cris Gardner

VP Corporate Strategy, AARP

I look to Sequence Consulting when I have a tough puzzle and need actionable recommendations. If your challenge is understanding a thorny problem, getting internal consensus, and moving forward, Sequence is your people.

Bernie Hengesbaugh

COO, American Medical Association

If you want a turnkey approach, then go with the big firms. But if you’re interested in someone very credible working with you on a personal level, I would go with Sequence Consulting.

Christine Donohoo

Chief Communications Officer, AARP

Sequence always over delivers.

Todd Unger

CXO / SVP Marketing and Membership, American Medical Association

It’s been a dramatic impact. Transformative. Our rate of growth last year tripled. They’ve been critical in achieving what we have in two years. We could never have done it without Sequence.

Mark Nylec

Director of CRM, AARP

Other firms fly at 100,000 feet; Sequence tells you how to land the plane. I say: here is my idea, and Sequence takes it and runs.

Christian Kuhn

Director of Partner Strategy, AARP Services

Sequence Consulting is the kind of firm that adds value and totally gets it. They figure out things that have never been done before that have repercussions for years.

Andrew Smart

Chief Membership and Marketing Officer, SAE International

Most companies have that one really great consulting experience. Sequence Consulting is that one-in-a-million consulting group.

David Schutt, PH.D.

CEO, SAE International

Working with Sequence, our organization grew ten times over, we entered entirely new industries and expanded our industry consortia by five times. All within three years.

Tom Nelson, Ph.D.

Chief Operating Officer, AARP

I think of Sequence as the paradigm busters. We get superior thinking every time.

Barbara Burgess

COO, The Wright Foundation

Sequence gave us an entirely new way to think about our business. They gave us the confidence to move forward and showed us the way. Our organization is dedicated to creating transformational change. Sequence has been transformational.

Mark Carpenter

Director of Web Strategy, American Chemical Society

I recommend Sequence Consulting for their non-traditional approach to solving problems. They understand my culture and the realities I’m facing, and they come up with practical solutions I can implement.

Arthur Evans, Ph.D.

CEO, American Psychological Association

Our strategic planning with Sequence was incredibly successful. They gave us great confidence that where we ended up was the right place for the organization.

Daryl Thomann

COO, Make-A-Wish Foundation

Sequence has extensive not-for-profit expertise. They made the project a complete success for our organization.

Julia Fitzgerald

CMO, American Lung Association

Sequence helped us chart a strategic path that empowered our team and produced better-than-expected results. We are still benefiting from their work years later.

Rich Harwood

Founder, The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation

Sequence helped us make a leap – and we’re grateful for it. We got much greater clarity about our value proposition and a strategy we’re still using years later.

Want Ideas For Association Growth? Let's Talk. →

Follow us on social media

Is Your Member Segmentation Strategy Wrong?