Focusing on Quality in Future Members

As associations know, quantity of new members is vital for successful growth of the group, but quality is key when it comes to maintaining a solid, reliable membership base. Quality, in this case, would be members that want to attend the current events happening within the association, that are involved in projects other members of the association are working on, and are engaged with other members in terms of opportunities within the field.

 

Luckily, a case study done on IMA, the Association for Accountants and Financial Professionals in Business, found how to address growth problems that associations with very niche focuses face: specific targeting and use of existing social media platforms.

 

Increasing the growth of these associations can be done by specifically targeting people that would be interested in joining. Marketing General Incorporated, for example, has a system called Intellilead that uses B2B sales prospects to narrow down the search of potential members by looking for key words that would make the association and potential member a good match for each other. In the long run this will save time and money as well as increase the likelihood of quality members.

 

The next step is to take those potential quality members and turn them into engaged, “forever” members. One of the best tools for doing so is by taking advantage of the associations’ own platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, or LinkedIn. Having engaging content for those already interested in the association is almost a guaranteed way to get more active, new members. Compared to the costly technique of taking a shot in the dark with direct mail to many people who may not be interested in whatsoever, this allows associations to narrow down those who are more likely to join and even more likely to be quality members.

 

IMA’s case study used those tactics in hopes of upping their membership and increasing engagement, and to their pleasant surprise they yielded results of a 50% increase over previous efforts.

 

Is your association taking advantage of these tools to attract more engaged, quality members? If so, let us know how using such tools has impacted your association as a whole in the comment section below!