Growing Your Memberships Sustainably: 6 Principles To Live By

Has your new-membership rate stagnated? Have you started a new association and need some advice on membership growth? Or just looking for inspiration on how to grow your membership base? Look no further.

Growing your association memberships is not an easy task. Growing memberships sustainably over a long period of time, can feel impossible. Good news: It isn’t.

Now, while we don’t have a magic wand or a secret code that will make your business grow exponentially over night what we do have are certain tried and tested principles that we ourselves follow which have continuously helped us grow our membership base. 

The true secret, though not much of a secret, is following these principles as well as any tips and tricks you pick along the way with consistency and unrelenting tenacity.

1. The Strength Of Your Technology Affects The Strength Of Your Business — We believe that your tech can propel you forward or hold you back. The first piece of advice we can give you is get software you can trust, and then let it do majority of the hard work for you. Great software enables your business to thrive by letting you do what you need to quicker and with more efficiency. In fact, It is that ethos that lead us to constructing the Colossus software.

2. Consistently Is The Key To Retainment —Once you find your target audience keep them engaged. This may sound obvious, but consistency is key. To keep their attention you have to keep finding ways to reach them. Time after time, target them from different angles. From events, to webinars, to email marketing, to social media posts, and website content. Keep them engaged by changing the topics of discussion and promotions constantly, giving them useful and engaging information keeping their needs central at all times.

3. Host Events Would Interest Them —Events, when successfully done, can attract hoards of new members and re-engage your existing ones too. Whether your goal is to revitalise your organisation, establish a membership base, gain more relevance, or keep a good-roll going events can be useful tools to achieve these goals. However, when done badly it can have negative consequences with equally lasting effects.

   Here are 3 top-tips to attracting new members through events:

   • I. Put your target-audience first — Host events that reflect the needs and wants of your target audience.

   • II. Have fun with it— Make the event fun and creative, but keep a steady level of professionalism. No one wants to go to another event with a monotone host, about a boring product that lasts four hours.

   • III. Allow your members to socialise during events— Chances are that if you let new members, or prospective members, socialise this will incentivise them to remain in or join your organisation. Psychologists have found that we are most likely to become friends with people who are like-minded, use that to your advantage.

4. The Power of Webinars —Webinars are video presentations, workshops, or lectures hosted online. On the other hand, a learning management system or LMS is a software application or the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation and delivery of educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs. Both, are tools for learning. Both can be instrumental in attracting new memberships.
   Here's how they can help:

   • They provide you with a list — every person who signs up to your webinar will be a new contact in your database, giving you an in to using it to market your organisation to them and secure them as a client.

   • You can establish yourself as an expert in the topic of the webinar, creating a sense of reliability which will greatly benefit you when trying to secure them as members.

   • You can use a webinar, if you record it, in the future as content for your website or utilise it in marketing campaigns. This will generate more of an interest in potential members and will serve to build your credibility.

5. Build An Impressive Website — Your website represents who you are and what you can do for your current and prospective members. So, it’s important that you build it strong and impressive.
   A good website is not just about how good its interface looks (although that is a big part of attracting new members). A good website is a strong marriage between looking good and being powerful. The pretty face might pique some interest, but your members will stay for how you make their lives easier. You need features that help them navigate through day to day life more easily.

Follow these principles and attract new members to your organisation. We hope that at the very least you get some inspiration from the our principles.

If you want effective and sustainable growth, retention and engagement we invite you to trial Colossus Systems' ever-evolving membership management software for free for 14 days. It does it all. It’s so good, you won’t look back.