membership management

When we’re managing an association’s community, we do far more than keep current members informed and run an annual recruitment campaign. We’re constantly exploring new and improved ways to add value to your association – making it more attractive for professionals to join, providing more reasons for them to stay and making it more likely they’ll promote the group within their professional networks. In today’s environment, you can no longer simply say you’re great. With the popularity of social media sharing, you really have to be great and earn the endorsement of your members, interest from your industry and the accolades of the media.

What we’re saying here (and we’re trying to be sensitive since for some it’s a message that can be a bit harsh to receive) is that competing for new members and reducing member attrition means you can’t merely offer the same old resources, services and networking opportunities they could easily find in other places — sometimes for free. The good news is, if your association isn’t growing, or perhaps is even declining, we can help change that by thinking differently.

You see, clients choose us because we won’t merely manage the status quo. They’re looking for a partner who can breathe new life into the association in ways that produce lasting results. For some, we may recommend implementing an automated communications platform to increase member engagement and satisfaction. For another, we might recommend developing new and products and member services that differentiate them from the competition and fuel a powerful member recruitment campaign.

We’re all about solving problems and answering unmet needs.

Similar to the way Steve Jobs introduced trail-blazing products to resurrect Apple and turn it into a highly respected brand people are willing to pay a premium for, we look to create innovative benefits and programs that build value, elevate your brand and make an impact in your industry and on your balance sheet.

Case in point, the experiential marketing campaign we’re working on to support the beekeeping industry through entertainment-based education at popular food and music festivals – enlightening consumers on the vital role bees play in the health of our food supply and motivating them to “feed the bees that feed the world.” We invite you to take a look at The Wildflowers Tour because it’s like nothing else anyone has done before. We developed a completely different way of addressing a problem and offering a solution that gets people excited and want to get involved. And of course, achieve a number of business goals – including creating collaboration opportunities that could bear fruit exponentially. Pun intended.

So where would we start in your case? Well, we’d start at the beginning, with research and discovery to get a below-the-surface understanding as to the wants, needs, motivations and behaviors of your current and prospective members. Once we’ve gathered the necessary amount of data and insight, we brainstorm ideas. Sometimes with subject matter experts, and other times with a group outside your industry in order to hear a completely fresh perspective. The best ideas are then developed into tangible strategies. Many of them we can’t necessarily promote as they are intellectual property. And some we speak to openly, such as how we create value by thinking differently about their available memberships. We develop new revenue streams with digital memberships, tiered memberships and special interest group memberships.

Our clients think of us as their innovation-led, value creation partner, bringing new ideas to the board room and new offerings to members. We’re proud to say that our “inspired ingenuity” approach to our clients’ businesses has delivered as much as 60% growth.