Member engagement is crucial for any organization’s growth. Achieving member engagement allows you to promote your organization as it helps content and loyal members to encourage potential members to become actual members. In this article, you will find all the necessary information on how you can increase member engagement and therefore, achieve greater growth.
What is Member Engagement?
Member engagement is the ongoing interaction between a member and an organization in exchange for meaningful value. This means keeping in touch with your members and keeping them up to date on news about your organization. To put it differently, member engagement means getting your members’ attention and reminding them of how you add value to their lives whilst building strong relationships with them.
Benefits of Increasing Member Engagement?
When handled successfully, member engagement provides you a chance to increase retention and renewal rates, but the benefits don’t end there. Let’s take a deeper look at how focusing on increasing member engagement can help your nonprofit:
1) Member Retention
Members who are comfortable and feel important to your organization remain with you longer than those who are unhappy and feel unimportant. If you were to connect with them on a deeper level and understand their needs, they are more likely to stay with you. Therefore, increasing member engagement will also increase member retention.
2) Relevancy for your Organization
Your organization’s message should be delivered correctly and at the right time to your members. By increasing member engagement, you will be getting more feedback from your members and therefore, providing them the right message at the right time. This way, you will have members stay with your organization as they feel that they are an important part of it.
3) Member Loyalty
Members that feel heard and important to your organization will become loyal members who give referrals to potential members. That means increasing member engagement will result in an increase in your overall memberships and growth.
5 Ways to Increase Member Engagement
Now that you know why focusing on increasing member engagement is important, it is time to discuss the ways of doing so. There are many ways to increase member engagement. So let’s focus on some of the essential ones.
1) Hold Events:
One of the essential ways to increase member engagement is through holding events. During these events, your members get a chance to get to know your organization and other members on a deeper level. This way, as they network during the event, they will feel more involved in your organization and become more connected to it.
2) Regularly Communicate:
It is also important to regularly communicate with your members. They should feel like they can contact you whenever they need to. One of the effective ways to maintain this is by having a live support chat on your organization’s website from which they can get the help they need whenever they have a question or concern in their minds. Another way is by having a social network platform that allows members to communicate with you and fellow members through tools like discussion boards. You can use your organization’s social media accounts for this as well as create a private social network platform solely for your organization.
3) Personalize Content:
Each member has a specific need from your organization. Therefore it is important to personalize each of their experiences with you. This can be done by personalizing and expanding your content. One message you deliver may be just the right thing a new member needs but the same message may not apply to members who have been with you for a longer period of time. By having personalized content, you will be reaching out and connecting with all of your members on the same level.
4) Payment Options:
Additionally, to increase both member engagement and membership growth, you can make payment-related adjustments. One of the things you can do is to have different types of memberships and maybe even include a free version. You can also offer discounts to certain groups to make them feel more comfortable in joining your organization and staying in it.
5) Automated Messages:
You can also send automated messages to your members such as thank you messages, payment reminders, and special occasions. This is a good way to show the importance of members to your organization and seeing this will make them more connected and loyal to your organization. You can send surveys to them through your messaging tools as well. This way, they will be able to provide you feedback and believe their opinion matters to you.
Conclusion
Now that you have all the necessary information about the importance of member engagement and the ways to increase it for your organization, it is time to get action. You can achieve every item on our list by using membership management software like Raklet. Raklet is an all-in-one membership management software that offers comprehensive solutions including a live support chat, a social network platform, a powerful CRM, and tools to create events along with sending out automated messages. You can check out our extensive features and our transparent pricing plans for more information.
If you enjoyed this article, you can check out other articles from our blog as well:
