Some of the best organizations are personalizing the onboarding of new members in order to improve retention and engagement. Drip marketing is helping. This is good! And certainly better than the past when new members were just put in a bucket with everyone else. But it's still a broken process. Here's why…
Kaiser Insights recently released a New Member Engagement Report stating that 74% of associations have implemented a new member retention program to focus on the relationship in the past 4 years, whereas only 9% of associations had a new member program 10 years ago.
That's really cool that associations are acknowledging that new members need some personalized attention. But here's where things have gone wrong:
Everyone is inundated with information. It's ubiquitous. Content is no longer king. We send people invites to conferences, educational programs, news, newsletters with more news, webinars, access to community platforms, job postings, more stuff and more emails to read. We're saying a lot to themembers. Of course, personalizing it makes sense! But there's a HUGE missing piece to thepuzzle.
The two way relationship.
No one is LISTENING to the members. Where is the voice of the member? Is it in the annual survey? meh.
Associations offer lots of value, but it's not the content. Good, qualified information is all around us. That is not a differentiator. The differentiator in most cases is that feeling of connectedness. Therelationship. Relationships are not one sided. Your members need a voice and should be heard regularly.
There are not many ways to do this. PropFuel is one. PropFuel allows you to target specific groups of people with specific questions to drive a dialog. To not only talk AT your members but to listen to them as well.
So that's what's broken. The new member drip campaigns are just another way to talk AT your new members. Why not start asking them questions and seeing what they have to say? Why not ASK them what they're most excited about? Why not ask them how they're going to contribute back to the collective? Ask them why they joined?!?!
Start a conversation. Stop talking at them.I'd love to show you how PropFuel helps drive effective New Member Campaigns among many other campaigns. Take a look, set up a time to see a demo with me.
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