How to Leverage Technology to Boost Member Retention

As an association leader, you’re no stranger to the increasing need for technology. The right solutions can address many of your organization’s pain points—from streamlining administrative tasks to broadening your marketing reach to increasing member engagement.

Member retention is critical to your association’s long-term sustainability and success. Even if you’re operating with limited resources, the right technology can offer a plethora of helpful tools that engage and motivate your members to keep coming back.

Let’s review a few ways your association can boost member retention through the tools in its tech stack.

1. Promote Engaging Content

Considering that continuing education and accessing specialized information are among the top reasons members join an association, your learning content is a critical piece in the member engagement puzzle. An association learning management system (LMS) can deliver personalized and interactive educational experiences that enhance member satisfaction and foster long-term retention.

Here are some of the practical ways your association can use its LMS to boost member retention:
 

• Member education and training
• Certification programs
• Continuing education credits
• Professional development courses
• Onboarding new members
• Conference and event management
• Knowledge sharing and collaboration
• Revenue generation through course sales
• Tracking member learning progress
• Compliance training

2. Personalize and Automate Communication

While your association’s offerings should be enticing enough to garner member attention, it’s up to you to reach your audience with messages that compel them to participate. Tradewing’s guide to member engagement puts it like this: “Members who know what your association offers and are excited about it are more likely to stay members long-term.”

Fortunately, your technology can help with this, too. Streamline your marketing efforts using learning management system features such as email tools or virtual event hosting capabilities. Let’s look at these functionalities in more detail.

Virtual Events

Your LMS should integrate with web conferencing tools to make it easier for your team to host virtual events. This feature should also allow session recordings, small group discussions, and event attendance tracking. This way, you can host events that align with your content offerings, such as:

• Webinars
• Conferences 
• Workshops
• Q&A sessions
• Networking events

Email Marketing

Your association’s outreach plays a significant role in retention. Email marketing tools enable you to promote your offerings, deepen relationships with members, and even broaden your reach to grab the attention of non-members.

Here’s how:

• Personalization: If you’re already tracking member data in an association management system (AMS), you can easily segment members into groups based on shared characteristics. Then, craft unique messages for each group that are more likely to prompt action. 
• Urgency: Capture your audience’s attention with urgent invitations to take action before a deadline. For example, encourage them to sign up for a course before registration closes. To make your message more enticing, highlight other membership benefits, like access to gated content or discounts on certain courses.
• Automation: Draft personalized messages for each audience segment and schedule them to be sent at specific times. These features ensure you reach as wide an audience as possible while reducing the manual work needed to write out each message and send it to its recipient.

Integrations

While your LMS is a powerful tool, it isn’t the only one your association uses. As such, it should offer robust integrations to ensure your association can use its various systems seamlessly. Ideally, it should integrate with your:

• AMS
• Video conferencing software
• Payment gateways
• Credentialing platforms
• Constituent relationship management (CRM) systems

Additionally, having an LMS that integrates with industry-specific credentialing solutions ensures members can achieve their learning goals. For example, a healthcare association might use an LMS that can submit required data to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education’s (ACCME’s) Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS). This way, members can earn relevant credits or credentials that further their professional development.

3. Foster a Sense of Community

In addition to accessing educational content and credentialing opportunities, networking with others is a primary reason members join an association. Fostering a sense of community helps members feel like they belong, which deepens their loyalty to your organization.

Your LMS and community engagement platform offer numerous features to facilitate this sense of community, such as:

• Discussion forums: Members can ask questions or share their perspectives in topic-based threads.
• Member directories: Encourage members to connect one-on-one through directories and individual chat features.
• Subcommunities: Facilitate smaller groups based on topic, region, job role, or any other differentiator members can bond over.
• Livestreaming: Enable real-time interaction through live virtual events where members can actively participate and respond.
• Polls or surveys: Directly ask members for feedback on your learning content, outreach, and other aspects of their engagement.

The key to increasing retention through community-building features is combining technology with intentional engagement efforts. Monitor members’ interactions with each other and any subcommunities among your member base to determine what content most interests them. The right association platforms will gather relevant data, which you can analyze to see which groups are most active.

For example, evaluate which discussion forum topics yield the most responses. Or, identify groups of members who aren’t currently represented in subcommunities and encourage them to connect with each other.

While member retention is critical to your association’s success, you need a comprehensive plan for sustainable growth. As you assess your technology and invest in new tools, consider their functionalities in light of your overall goals. With a well-rounded library of tech tools, you’ll be well-prepared to tackle and improve member retention.

About the Author: 

Mark L. Jones, CAE, Chief Revenue Officer

Mark L. Jones is a Certified Association Executive and proven leader in revenue and membership growth, association best practices, and education technology solutions. As the Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Sky eLearn, an industry leader in innovative learning solutions, he is helping transform the way associations think about learning to turn education and training into their competitive advantage.

Mark spent over twenty years leading a successful strategic consulting firm guiding and implementing association strategic initiatives while making a significant impact on these organizations to drive revenue growth and innovation, accelerate performance, enhance member satisfaction and engagement, increase adult education, uncover new sources of revenue, and provide a fresh perspective for growth.

Volunteering is a passion that Mark brings as part of his business philosophy. Like most people who are intimately involved in the non-profit industry, Mark understands the true joy of giving back.

Mark enjoys spending time with his wife and son. His favorite venue is the great outdoors, whether hiking through rugged terrain, skiing down a snow capped Colorado mountain, or, on less “high adventure” days, simply working in the yard. Mark also enjoys traveling with his family; exploring new places, like Newfoundland, or revisiting familiar spots, like Italy, and meeting new people along the way.