The Return on Member Feedback

The ROI:

Often times, the hardest part of any service or platform is pointing to the return on investment. When it comes to capturing the Voice of the Member, there are tangible revenue opportunities as well as some that are more difficult to measure. The more tangible and easier to measure opportunities include the following:

1. New Member Retention by hearing what new members want and need and responding to it directly in customized response campaigns. Now we’re creating value for the member without any guesswork. Over the course of the year, you’re also giving yourself the opportunity to find new members that are unhappy and change their perspective before they choose not to renew. This is quite possibly the #1 VoM campaign across all our customers.
2. Lapsed Member Retention by triggering a series of questions over a period of time going out to lapsed members starting with the biggest and most valuable question: Did you know your membership lapsed? If no, set up an action to send them the renewal form. Alternatively, find out why they left and look for opportunities to solve the problem.
3. Past Member Recruitment - Slightly different from Lapsed Members are members that left over a year ago. Although it’s a small percentage, some associations have found success at figuring out the missing link through questions and bringing them back.
4. Overall Member Retention will start by improving member satisfaction easily measured by NPS, but it will also help identify the individuals that need special attention so we can reach out to them personally before they choose not to renew.
5. Learning/Education Sales through customized marketing and program analysis campaigns. When you ask what a member wants to learn, have an automated email respond immediately with registrations for those specific programs. Additionally, ask your members as a whole what programs appeal to them and what they’re missing. Ratings and Reviews, another form of feedback, will also help you identify your top programs and allow you to market them and remove the low performers.
6. Conference Sales through customized marketing and program analysis campaigns. Send a registration link for the conference in response to those members that show interest when asking conference related questions. Design the programming to the conference based on the questions in your education related questions to identify what members want more of and what’s not selling.
7. Prospective Member Marketing Campaigns to increase membership. Many associations using social media or other lead generation tactics can nurture prospective members with questions to identify what appeals to them specifically.
8. Partner/Sponsored Questions - Some associations sell the results of specific partner-related feedback to sponsors as part of a package.
9. Member Upgrade Prompts - Depending on your membership types, there are opportunities to improve the student member experience and therefore retention, increasing the pipeline of full members. Or perhaps there are different levels or tiers of members so you can help them or figure out how to help them along the member journey, leading to increased dues revenue.
10. Membership Referrals in the form of referral requests are a way of asking your members to refer a friend in the industry. The best way to get a referral is to ask for one.

The less tangible, but still effective ROI opportunities are:

1. Marketing content creation driving member stories
2. Improved Member Satisfaction
3. Volunteer Engagement
4. Learner Segmentation
5. Profile Data Collection