Blog: Tips & Insights

MGI recently released our 2019 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report. While it’s filled with nearly 80 pages of data, one stat in particular stood out. 22% of associations experiencing an increase in the number of new members this year recently adopted a new membership model.

IPMA-HR, the leading public sector human resource organization, knows the impact of a new membership model firsthand. Faced with a declining membership, concern grew that their offerings were no longer meeting the needs of public sector HR professionals. To turn the tide on their membership, they knew that something needed to change.

And change it did — within one year, IPMA-HR’s membership grew by 21%.

So how did they…

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Flowers are blooming, butterflies are all aflutter, and days are getting longer, which can only mean one thing. Spring is here and we’re already nearly halfway through 2019!

If you’re wondering where the time went, you’re not alone. The good news is that right now is the perfect time to look at your 2019 plan and ask yourself if this year’s results are meeting expectations. If you wait until your year-end review, you are missing out on more than six months to course correct.

It’s time for your mid-year marketing check-in.

Not sure where to start? Here are five tips to guide your mid-year marketing review:

1. Look at results.As it’s commonly said, to know where you’re going, you have to know where…

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Tony Rossell, MGI Senior Vice President

Inaction is the single largest enemy to association membership marketing success.

Over the years, I have been in more meetings than I care to count where statements like, “we cannot do that because,” “we need approval,” or “we need more research” has shut down the marketing process.

To many, it may sound like heresy, but very often the right course of action is to simply do something. I call this the Ready, Fire, Aim solution. By doing something, an association may very well discover that they are sitting on some big opportunities.

One group that I am familiar with has 100,000 opt-in emails from prospects who have registered on their website. However, the…

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Actual Photo of the Iceberg that Sank the Titanic

The Hidden Obvious – Search and Discover it Before Adding another Layer of Complexity.

I said this in the last Tipster I wrote: I am nearing retirement after 41 years of professional marketing. It has been an invigorating, aggravating, and enervating run. I vowed never to become “that guy” who pretends to aphorisms and witticisms about the many experiences I have had in this field.

But…

Finding the Problem to Fix Instead of Fixing the One that’s Not There.

More than one membership client has approached Marketing General and said: “Membership is dropping, our renewal rates are dropping and we can’t seem to grow.” We’re not rocket scientists, we’re…

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Tip #1 – Engage!

If renewal time is the first time throughout the year you’re checking in with your members, you’ve just become the relative no one talks to because he only asks for money. Have an on-boarding and ongoing engagement plan in place, check in with your members at various points throughout the year, and increase your efforts with your at-risk member groups.

Members who engage even one additional time with an association throughout the course of the year are significantly more likely to renew.

Tip #2 – Personalize your renewal communication to the user’s experience.

Know what your members did that year and remind them. Include the points of engagement someone had with your…

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