Author: Jeff Spring
Many membership organizations operate on a reactive model, tracking renewal rates to see who has already left or waiting for members to complain before addressing a problem. Waiting to fix issues leaves value on the table and risks member churn.
On the other hand, proactive engagement is a core part of a modern strategic plan. It’s the process of building a journey that prevents those problems from happening in the first place. It’s the difference between sending a “we miss you” email to a lapsed member and providing so much consistent value that the member would not dream of leaving.
The key to sustainable member growth and retention is shifting from a reactive to a proactive mindset. This requires you to stop making assumptions about what members want and instead build systems to understand them better. This strategy moves your organization toward a state of continuous performance improvement. Let’s explore actionable strategies to help you make that shift.
Systematically Monitor Member Needs
The first step to being proactive is to stop guessing what members want and start tracking what they actually do! Systematically monitoring members involves looking at their engagement data in your membership management system. This gives you a clear picture of what they find valuable and worth interacting with, allowing you to anticipate their needs.
Look for patterns in a variety of data points, including:
- Email open and click-through rates
- Event attendance and webinar registrations
- Content downloads
- Participation in professional development offerings
- Community or forum participation
These patterns are your cue to act. For example, if new members engage heavily in their first month and then drop off, you can build a proactive check-in campaign for day 45. If a specific segment ignores your event announcements, you can test new topics or formats for them.
Use Surveys to Monitor and Anticipate Engagement
A large annual survey primarily measures past satisfaction. A proactive satisfaction survey helps you anticipate future member needs, too! Include forward-thinking questions in your annual survey, such as “What professional challenges are you expecting in the next six months?” or “What new topics do you most want to learn about?”
You can also send timely pulse surveys. For instance, send a short, two-question survey immediately after a member attends an event or downloads a report. Ask for their key takeaway or what they plan to do with the information.
This feedback is a goldmine for planning future content, events, and member benefits.
Personalize the Member Journey
True personalization means delivering the right content to the right member at the right time, not just referencing their name in a mass email to your entire contact list.
This is where member journey mapping comes in. This process plots out the member’s experience from their perspective, from their first day to their renewal date. Your map should identify:
- Key touchpoints, including member-initiated interactions (like registering for events or participating in your online community) and organization-initiated interactions (like sending a renewal reminder or inviting them to an event).
- Member sentiments, which are the emotions that members experience at each touchpoint.
- Pain points that your members experience during their journey with your organization.
- Actions that members take to achieve their goals, such as joining your organization or taking an online course.
- Insights, such as patterns, process improvement opportunities, and gaps in the member experience.
Once you have this map, you can use segmentation to deliver a personalized experience at each stage. Your membership software is key for managing segments based on both who they are (like job role) and where they are in their journey.
Consider segmenting members by:
- Career stage (student, early-career, mid-level, executive)
- Declared interests or specialty
- Committee or volunteer participation
- Engagement level (highly engaged, at-risk, unengaged)
With segmentation, you can send targeted communications that match their current stage. For example, a brand-new member at the start of their journey needs a structured onboarding series. Meanwhile, a 10-year member would get more value from an invitation to mentor or join a leadership forum.
Proactively Improve Member Benefits
A reactive approach to your offerings is waiting for members to complain that they are stale. A proactive approach uses the data you are already gathering to guide your benefit strategy in real-time.
Aim to find gaps in your value proposition. After all, only 11% of associations describe their value proposition as “very compelling,” and stronger benefits are the way to enhance your value.
As you review your offerings, consider refreshing your member benefits with these ideas from iMIS’s guide to member engagement:
- Job boards
- Mentorship programs
- e-Learning courses and certifications
- Members-only publications
- Industry-related deals and discounts
Proactively Improve Member Benefits
Leverage even more benefits from your engagement data and member segmentation by using them to automate outreach. In this context, a trigger is an automated rule that performs a specific action when a member’s data meets a preset condition. For example, a “join date” (the data) can trigger a “welcome email” or a “membership anniversary email” (the action). This system makes your data actionable, allowing you to engage members at the right time, at scale.
Here are some examples of triggers you might create:
- The “Welcome” Trigger: A new member joins, automatically triggering a 30-day automated onboarding email series.
- The “Disengagement” Trigger: A member has not logged into the member portal, accessed your association’s mobile app, or opened an email in 45 days. This triggers a personal check-in email or a “here’s what you’ve missed” digest.
- The “Milestone” Trigger: A member hits their five-year anniversary with your association, triggering a congratulatory note.
Consider using different channels to trigger outreach. While email is common, you can also use text or, if you have one, your association’s mobile app. As Clowder’s guide to association apps explains, push notifications keep your association top of mind and deliver timely opportunities directly to your members.
Some membership software also offers individual engagement scoring. This score automatically adjusts based on a member’s actions, such as attending events, participating in forums, or opening emails. You can then monitor your database to flag at-risk members long before they consider lapsing.
You might even use engagement scores as a powerful condition for a trigger. If a member’s score drops below a certain threshold, you can automatically trigger a re-engagement campaign, flagging at-risk members long before they consider lapsing.
Final Thoughts on Proactive Member Engagement
Shifting from reactive to proactive engagement requires a fundamental change in your organization’s mindset. It moves your team from putting out fires to strategically building long-term association sustainability and member loyalty.
As a result, you’ll transform your relationships into continuous, value-driven partnerships. Ultimately, a proactive strategy is the foundation for a healthy, growing association where members feel consistently understood and valued.
