There is no solid data on what an industry standard membership rate should be. For example, private gyms estimate a retention at around 66%, which makes sense as gym membership are often impulsive and fade toward years end. HOA/COA memberships are often 90% or higher, generally because people do not move often from their homes (Obviously it’s a forced assessment so it’s different than a traditional membership). With individual trade organizations, MembershipMarketing.com estimated the retention to be 78% (2012). There are always members who leave the trade, move to another region, become apathetic and drop membership, and unfortunately, some may die. It is my professional opinion that a solid number to aim for in retention is 80%. If you can hit this target and grow by 0.41 each month then you will have a 5% overall growth each year.
Simple Math:
If you have 100 monthly renewals: You will likely lose 20 each month. Thus for steady growth, you will need to roughly add 24.1 members each month (20 to replace the 20 members lost) and 4.1 to have steady growth. In another blog, I will outline the dozens of programs that worked for my past organizations in RECRUITING NEW MEMBERS. Today I will concentrate on a tactical strategy in RETAINING MEMBERS. The hope is this strategy will help elevate your retention rates by a few extra percentage points and give your organization an edge in growth.
The strategy I suggest is called: The Membership Engagement Dashboard (MED). Here is how it works:
Create an excel list of ALL of your members. I would then create columns based on annual engagement opportunities. For example: Committees, Events, Networking Sessions, Donations, Office Visits.
Here is the tricky part. Each of these engagement touch-points should have a numeric value to them. This part of the dashboard is subjective based on your organization. If your organization in centered on monthly networking meetings then the point value emphasis on your MED should reflect a higher amount. Perhaps your organization is centered on educational opportunities then your MED should reflect that too.
The point of this exercise is not to award, signify or recognize high engagement scores but rather an exercise to identify those who are NOT as engaged. Every Membership Director will tell you that the worst kind of call to make is to collect dues of members who have spent the entire membership year NOT doing anything for an organization that they paid dues. We can’t expend energy spinning our wheels and chasing dues. The point is to identify and find opportunities for your ALL of your members early on.
The point of the exercise is to concentrate on contact with low-engaged members, find out their interests in the organization. Why did they join? Where can they fit in? Is there an area where you can recommend they get more involved? It is your responsibility as an association professional to find a reason for all of your members to belong.
This may seem like a simplistic approach to retention but it can also analyze other elements of your organization. Maybe you realize that certain areas of your organization do not get a lot of involvement in certain areas. Maybe there are programs or events that can use an energy boost or simply be sunset. Perhaps there are areas that have high engagement value. Obviously this may be an area the organization can increase or concentrate upon.