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The #1 Content Piece Associations Need for Effective Membership Marketing

Want to remind members that your association is THE source for vital, up-to-date industry intel? Need to attract new members with exclusive content that proves you are an authority in your space? Looking to reassure members and prospects that you’re committed to their success? A “Top Trends” content piece can help you do all this and more.

What it is

A Top Trends content piece contains 8-10 predictions for your industry in the year ahead. Trends might include economic or market insights, new tools or technology, emerging threats, best practices, and more. Content can be rolled out as an e-book or website and repurposed throughout the year in social media, ads, emails, TV spots, and more.

How to do it

Follow a set format to make trends easy to create and easy for your base to read, digest, and act upon. Each trend should have a brief overview paragraph, bullet points describing the impact, and resources to help navigate it.

Pro Tip: Include a featured article from one of your members or industry partners for each trend. This serves a dual purpose of delivering extra insights while providing valuable exposure to the author. You can even sell these articles as sponsored content to generate additional revenue.

Sample Trend Format

Overview Paragraph

Write 3-4 sentences describing the trend and what’s ahead for your base.

Bulleted List

Create a subhead for each trend titled “How [TREND] affects [INDUSTRY].” Write 5-8 concise bullet points with tangible, real-world examples of exactly how each trend will impact your membership.

Sample Bullets
  • An increase in cyberattacks will cost widget companies and average of $XXXXXX in downtime in 2025, according to a new survey.
  • Many companies are taking XYZ steps to educate employees on new phishing scams that will be prevalent in the coming year.
Resources List

Identify 3-5 resources your association offers that can help people navigate each trend by either minimizing a pain point or seizing an opportunity. Include at least some free, ungated resources so prospects can see for themselves what your organization offers.

Example Resources
  • Whitepapers
  • Webinars
  • Certification programs
  • State of the Industry Report
  • Partner organization
  • Newsletter or magazine
  • Conference or event
Sponsored Content

Add a full-length article on a specific topic related to the trend.

How you benefit

Increase renewals: Trends content can help you drive renewals by reminding your current membership that you are the top industry authority. They also showcase a broad range of your exclusive resources that members might not be aware of.

Membership accruals: Trends get prospects’ attention with industry-specific intel and forecasting. They speak to your credibility and also emphasize the value of your association by offering useful tools and resources to help people prepare for the year ahead.

Why it works

People love “Top 10” lists. The headline alone will get attention and pique curiosity to encourage clicks and time on your website. The format is also compelling. A trends content piece breaks down in-depth information into small, digestible bites for busy people. Readers can quickly and easily scroll to the topics that interest them most and gain instant insights.

Ultimately, trends are powerful because they show off everything great about your association in one place and they compel people to engage—no sales pitch needed. Members and prospects alike can see your value, be inspired, and lean in to your organization.

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5 Steps to Easier Membership Renewals

5 Steps to Easier Membership Renewals
It’s time to get fired up about membership renewals!

Easier membership renewals happen when members see your association as more than a line item that can easily be cut from the budget.

Sure, you’re up against some challenges—people are busy, money is tight, and uncertainty hangs around every corner. But you’ve also got a lot going for you—people want to connect, they’re looking for solutions to their challenges, and they see your organization as the heart and homebase of their community.

This renewal season, focus on nurturing relationships, delivering value, and communicating that value to hit your numbers and minimize lapses.

Convince the Check Writer

Often, the people using your resources and attending your events aren’t the people paying your membership dues. The check writer doesn’t experience your value firsthand. This could spell trouble in a tough economy when that same check writer is looking to make budget cuts. Do you have a way of definitively showing the value of your association to someone who deals only in facts and figures?

One way to show value is to set up member engagement tracking. This will track where members spend time on your website, how many questions they ask in your forums, which events they attend, and more. It will also give you the ability to generate a report for each member to show them exactly what they got for the membership dues in the past year.

If you suspect your members aren’t taking full advantage of your association and the report will show a lack of engagement, start there. What can you do to entice people to lean in?

Speak to Trends and Pain Points

The best way to fuel member engagement and improve that report is to make sure your editorial calendar mirrors current industry trends and pain points. In short: Stay relevant.

You might think you’re already doing this, but are you really? What are you doing to look ahead? To innovate? Can you honestly say your members should renew every year because you have new, different, and amazing offerings they can’t afford to miss out on?

Relationships vs. Transactions

Once your content is on point, consider your relationship vs. transactional messages. How often are you asking your members to do something (e.g., pay dues, attend an event) compared to sharing valuable resources with no strings attached? In addition to the message itself, you’ll need to optimize how you package and deliver it so members see it and react.

Maintain Momentum

Don’t wait until September to start showing value. You must nurture relationships starting with onboarding and continuing all year long. New members are often enthusiastic initially but need a reason to maintain momentum. Think about the last subscription you paid for—maybe a gym membership or video streaming service. At first you’re thrilled and eager, but it’s all too easy to lose interest or forget about it entirely. If your members don’t see your value, they decide not to renew long before you reach out to them in the fall.

5 Proven Steps to Fuel Renewals

Once you have a solid strategy, it’s time for action. Here are five tried-and-true ways to get attention and move people to renew.

1. Segment: Divide your audience into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behaviors. For example, large and small enterprises. Why? Because a one-size-fits-all message is the quickest route to the spam folder.

Purpose: To tailor your messages and offers to the specific needs and interests of each group.

Implementation:

  • Analytics: Use detailed analytics to understand member demographics, engagement history, and preferences.
  • Customization: Create specialized content and offers for different segments. For example, in-depth industry reports for seasoned members and orientation resources for newer members.

2. Use Technology: Tech is your ally. It can help streamline, automate, and enhance every aspect of your renewal campaign.

Purpose: To increase efficiency and member engagement through advanced tools and platforms.

Implementation:

  • Automated Email Marketing: Set up drip campaigns that adjust messaging based on member behavior.
  • CRM Systems: Use CRM software to track member interactions and personalize communications.
  • Analytics Tools: Employ data analytics to monitor engagement rates and refine your strategies.
  • AI Personalization: Use AI to offer personalized content recommendations based on past interactions. Highlight key features dynamically to maintain member interest.

3. Humanize: People connect with people, not with faceless entities. Humanizing your campaign makes it relatable and engaging on a personal level.

Purpose: To connect with members emotionally by showcasing the human side of your organization.

Implementation:

  • Member Stories: Share real-life testimonials and success stories that illustrate the impact of your organization.
  • Engaging Tone: Use a warm, conversational tone rather than corporate jargon. Focus on community, not transactions.
  • Visible Faces: Highlight team members and other faces of the organization to create a personal connection.

4. Offer Unique Benefits: You must give people something really good that they need that they can’t get anywhere else. Your value proposition must be crystal clear and compelling. This is what makes members decide to renew rather than lapse.

Purpose: To communicate the unique benefits of renewing membership.

Implementation:

  • Articulate Benefits: Focus on key pillars like brand value, community, networking, and personal growth.
  • Exclusive Perks: Offer exclusive access to events, valuable resources, and special discounts.
  • Clear Communication: Make sure members know exactly what they’re getting by renewing.

5. Remove Barriers: Even the most compelling offer won’t work if you don’t address the obstacles standing in the way of renewal.

Purpose: To identify and mitigate potential reasons for non-renewal.

Implementation:

  • Feedback Loop: Conduct surveys to identify common barriers like cost, time constraints, or perceived lack of value.
  • Address Concerns: Proactively solve these issues by offering flexible payment plans, showcasing clear value through success stories and benefits, and providing easy access to customer support.
  • Flexible Options: Provide a range of membership options to cater to different needs.

Renewals don’t have to be a struggle or a year-end scramble. Keep the focus on relationships and measurable value all year long. Use proven strategies and tactics to get more from what you’re already doing. You’ll will better serve and delight your members while also pleasing the check writer who ultimately makes renewals happen.

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Manifesto

Trust provokes, entices, and motivates.

Trust provokes, entices, and motivates.

It’s also the only thing of value remaining once the noise recedes.

So why not start there?

This is what we do. We start with what is true. And we stick to it.

Converting people to members and customers is not a magic show. Forget the smoke and mirrors. It should be a transparent process. One that’s relevant, data-driven, and measurable.

If your organization is still clinging to remnants of how you did things before, let them go. You must be in the present with your members. Their behavior drives everything.

And you? You need to be real. Authentic. Straightforward. You must answer members’ questions, allay their fears, speak their language, and know their goals and challenges. You must deliver value and be rock solid for people, in good times and bad.

To do this, you need purposeful marketing, not wishful thinking. That means having bold, powerful messages that flow from the trust. A marketing plan based on the science of conversion with the art of storytelling. And an agency partner like us that will never mislead you.

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Visual Branding Best Practices for Membership Marketing

What to say visually and when to say it to reach your association’s membership and retention goals

These days, the social media canvas looks like a Jackson Pollack splatter painting. There are more fonts, colors, and graphics than ever. More politically charged messages. More impersonal ads. More videos. More virtual offerings. More noise.

Your audience has more going on too. More screen time. More responsibilities. More uncertainty. More stress. Amid all this “more,” people are craving, well, a little bit less—less clutter, less distraction, less dog and pony show, less B.S.

If your association wants to have any chance of cutting through the chaos to reach your audience—and reach your membership goals for the year—you have to strengthen and simplify your visual presence. Here are five best practices to help you fine-tune what to say visually and when to say it.

1. Take a minimalist approach

Simplify your branding to include only the most compelling, essential, easy-to-grasp elements. Go back to the basics and focus on composition, structure, and form. Take a lesson from history, when language was simpler. We heard about one designer who used ancient rune symbols from 150 AD for font inspiration.

2. Don’t be fooled by trends

Stay away from trendy design elements that can quickly be overdone. At the moment, everyone is jumping on the gradient bandwagon. You might think being trendy shows that your association is fresh and modern. The reality is that you’re just blending in with everyone else on social media, and your conversion rates will suffer as a result. A simple, clean, bold approach will go farther than the latest design fad.

3. Humanize your visuals

People relate to other people better than to impersonal organizations. Your visual branding must show your human side to attract members and prospects. A tip from neuroscience: Show people’s faces. Human faces enhance a website’s visual appeal, efficiency, and trustworthiness. One study determined that users find it easier to perform tasks on websites with faces.1

4. Go easy on the illustrations

Illustrations can be useful for depicting technical subject matter, complex emotions, or difficult topics. Use them sparingly, however, as too many cartoons can hurt your professional image.

5. Refine your timing

Recognize that people need different types, lengths, and formats of content depending on where they are in the buying cycle. Tailor your visuals and comms accordingly: 

Awareness phase: Providing entertainment can capture your audience’s initial attention and entice them to view more of your message.1 From there, blog posts, social content and e-books can address an acute problem your audience is trying to solve. Keep things simple and fairly brief. People don’t necessarily know you or trust you enough to watch long videos, read lots of text, or interpret complex data.

Consideration phase: Provide meatier content to help people evaluate your association’s offerings compared to competitors. Use visuals such as graphs, infographics, and illustrations to aid comprehension of complex topics. Consider adding email marketing in addition to retargeting and social media ads. 

Decision phase: Ask for action. By this stage, people have already made up their minds about your organization. They just need a nudge to convert or go another direction. Messaging and visuals at this stage should be clear, concise, brief, and straight to the point.

6. Be purposeful

Keep in mind that the wrong visuals can damage your brand and credibility. One study of Instagram posts by orthodontists showed that personal images of family members hurt the office’s credibility and decreased the likelihood of being selected by patients.2 Only include images if they truly show the value of your association.

The power of visuals

Don’t overlook the power of visuals in your membership and retention marketing. Great visuals communicate on their own—sometimes better than text. They can also work in harmony with your marketing copy to drive home key points. Fresh, bold, clear, simple visuals can make or break your campaigns and your goals for the year.

Sources:
  1. Consumer Behaviour through the Eyes of Neurophysiological Measures: State-of-the-Art and Future Trends, Patrizia Cherubino et al.
  2. The Effects of Images Posted to Social Media by Orthodontists on Public Perception of Professional Credibility and Willingness to Become a Client, Thiago Martins Meira, et al. 

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