Why Members Matter and How to Increase their Number

Many associations ask me: “We think having Members is old fashioned and we want to stop our efforts to raise Membership Fees, do you agree?”

Members are your most loyal customers.

The good thing about Members is: you do not need to find them anymore, you do not need to convince them to pay for your services for the first time,... Members are already part of your customer base and they are pretty loyal!

Hence: Members are the first in line to purchase the (new) services you offer.

What’s more: as they are loyal and motivated, they should be the first to provide useful feedback about your services. This feedback allows you to improve/adapt your services quickly to your (future) customers’ needs. This, in turn, enables the creation of better services that will convince less loyal and new customers.

Spoil your Members.

For all these reasons, Members should be spoiled. They should receive real value for money for their Membership and they should be invited to actively provide their feedback on your association and its services/products.

Your entire association and its future Members will benefit from it.

Thus yes, Members do matter and increasing their number, starts with being transparent as an association about what you do and why and allowing your current Members to express their opinion on all aspects of it.

Next, it’s about clearly developing the financial and non-financial benefits you offer to your Members. Ask yourself: What added value do you offer and is the value in line with the Membership fee?

If Members can actively provide feedback and they get services that add value for themselves, you can start implementing Membership Management Processes. How to do that? Just read one of our next blogposts.