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eBookEssential Guide To Member Engagement

Contents

Member Engagement is Essential 3

Defining Member Engagement for Your Organization 4

Increasing Member Engagement 5

The Member Advocacy Trifecta 10

Conclusion & Additional Resources 13



Member Engagement is EssentialMember engagement is a hot topic among association and nonprofit leadership. And it’s no wonder. In a time of decreased participation in organizations and civic groups, as well as shrinking budgets and fewer grant opportunities, member engagement is a way to increase membership renewal rates and revenue. Member engagement builds loyalty and creates “ambassador members.” Ambassador members are those mem-bers who renew automatically, engage consistently and spread the word to others. Studies show that involved members are far more likely to renew their membership than passive members. These days, the most important statistic about an organization is not the total number of members, but the number of engaged members.

What is member engagement? Essentially, member engagement is defined as people taking ac-tion on behalf of your cause—making phone calls, sending emails, posting in forums, at-tending events, donat-ing money and so on.

When your members interact and relate to your organization, and to one another, they are more inclined to renew their member-ships and become ambassador members. There are other benefits too, of course, such as increased visibility and success for your objectives.

In order to build and maintain high membership renewal rates, your organization must focus on increasing member engagement. That requires time and attention, and pref-



erably, a budget. It requires you to do exactly what the term implies: you must engage your members.

That means: • Figuring out who they are and what they do • Talking to them through your website, social networks and other media • Providing a way for them to talk back and take immediate action

Defining Member Engagement for Your OrganizationWe recommend that you define member engagement internally and develop clear met-rics for measuring success. It is important to develop an internal definition that is spe-cific and measurable. Measuring results allows see if your engagement activities are having an impact on renewal rates and loyalty. Start by asking the following questions:

WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR MEMBERS TO DO? What actions do you want them to take? Are there some actions you value more than others?

WHERE DO YOU WANT THEM TO ENGAGE? Do you want them to attend in-person events or take action online?

WHEN DO YOU WANT THEM TO ENGAGE? When and how often you want members to engage? Do you want them to attend one event a year, or send an email every month?

Based on these answers, you can begin to define what member engagement looks like for your organi-zation.

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Create an Engagement SpectrumYour organization has an engagement spectrum, from prospective member to passive member to actively engaged member to ambassador member. Define each stage and identify what members in that stage need to move along the spectrum.

For example, your prospective members need to be educated about the benefits of membership. Your passive members need to be motivated to take action. Your actively engaged members need to be thanked and reminded of the difference they are mak-ing. And your brand ambassadors should be nurtured and celebrated.

Creating this spectrum will help you segment your members and give you the ability to target them with messages specific to their needs.

Increasing Member Engagement

1: Member Persona Profiles Your first step to increasing member engagement is to create member persona profiles. Member persona profiles are fictionalized representations of your ideal members. They help you tailor your content to those people you want to attract.

Think about the top 3-4 types of members you’re targeting—the types of people who are most active and most beneficial to your cause. Examine your ambassador and actively engaged members, and look for patterns. You may want to survey your mem-

ProspectiveMembers

PassiveMembers

EngagedMembers

AmbassadorMembers



ber types to get an accurate picture of who they are, what they do, how they consume information, and how they make decisions.

Let’s say your most active types are wealthy retirees, middle-aged parents and ide-alistic college students. Take these categories, and instead of using generic terms to describe them, give them a face and a name. Create characters that represent each of your target groups.

Your Wealthy Retiree category becomes Retired Rita. Retired Rita lives in Boca Raton with her Pekinese, Mitzi, and a live-in house-keeper named Sandra. She watches a lot of TV and listens to talk radio when she goes to sleep. She uses a desktop computer to check her email and shop on Amazon. Her son Michael, who lives in Boston, gave her an iPad, but Rita can’t stand it. Rita has a full social schedule. She has lunch dates, bridge club, Pilates, dance lessons on Tuesday nights, and she volunteers at church. Rita doesn’t like to rush decisions, but takes time to gather information and discuss things with her friends before taking action.

Look how much you know about Retired Rita! Isn’t it easier to talk to Rita than to Wealthy Re-tirees? What does Rita like? What makes her

smile, laugh, cry, or care enough to take action? Create profiles like this for all of your top target member types. Then you can start to identify the issues that are most impor-tant to them, and they ways they like to communicate.

We have several resources devoted to helping you understand and create member profiles, which you can find in this Member Persona Profile Kit from our marketing part-ner, 19 Oaks.

http://www.19oaks.com/member-persona-profile-kit

http://www.19oaks.com



2: Compelling ContentYour second step is to develop content that speaks to and attracts your member pro-files. Your intent is to drive your current members, as well as potential future members, to your website. Once they reach your website, you can provide simple ways for them to take action and become engaged in your cause.

The content you develop to attract your mem-bers should be educational, informative and compelling. It should provide real value to your members and prospects and always paint the picture of why they should care. Here is how to get started:

START WITH A BLOG

If your organization already has a blog, that’s great. If not, start one immediately. You should publish blog posts at least twice per week. The content can be varied—you could do a video blog, for example—but your posts should be substantial enough to provide value. Remember to speak to your member profiles: What do they care about? What do they want? Most importantly, what do they need? What can you do to move them along the engagement specturm? Include compel-ling images and links for more information, and a clear call-to-action (CTA) that allows your readers to engage. A blog is the single best way to drive traffic to your website, establish your expertise and develop relationships with your members.

CREATE DOWNLOADABLES

Create downloadable content that appeals to your member profiles. Offer free PDFs,



eBooks and other higher-level content that goes beyond your blog posts in both depth and detail. Let’s say you’re a Chamber of Commerce. Create a New Business Guide that details everything a new business owner would want to know about establishing in your town. Create a Marketing Guide. Provide your members with free expertise and guidance. House your content on landing pages on your website, so that every time a person downloads your content, you collect their information. Email addresses are gold!

EMAIL CONSISTENTLY

Establish consistent email campaigns to stay top-of-mind with your members. Your blog should have an email subscription option, and you should email members with new content offers, events and other happenings. You should also have a monthly newsletter. You don’t want to overwhelm you members with too many emails, but email marketing is still the most effective way to reach people and motivate action. Remem-ber to include a CTA—preferably just one—that drives members to your website and allows them to take simple, immediate action.

LEVERAGE SOCIAL MEDIA

Use social media to amplify your message, make new connections, establish relation-ships, and drive traffic to your website. Most organizations need to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, but use the social networks your member profiles pre-fer. Retired Rita may use Pinterest, and your idealistic college students are probably on Snapchat. Interact with them as much as you can: Ask and answer questions, pro-vide relevant information and news, and link to other people’s content, such as affiliate organizations, government agencies and so on. While you want to link back to your website regularly, don’t be overly promotional on social media. Use it to have a conver-sation, curate information and build your reach.

A running theme throughout all of your content should be the difference your members are making through their actions. Provide details of achievements, share goals and metrics, and most of all, thank your members for their efforts and contributions.



3: Advocacy ManagementYour third step to increase member engagement is to have a mechanism in place that allows your members to take simple, immediate action to benefit your cause. You want them to be able to email representatives, sign petitions, tweet links, and make dona-tions—all with a minimum of effort. The best solution we have found so far, is to incor-porate an online advocacy platform into your website.

Online advocacy software reduces the time and money it takes to manage your ad-vocacy efforts manually. For example, Votility is an online advocacy software solution that gives you the ability to provide your members with vital information about pending local, state or federal legislation that affects their membership. Members are able to cast their vote, comment, and write letters and emails within the Votility platform. You can measure member activity and analyze results according to your internal definition of member engagement. Votility enables groups and individuals to rally their represen-tatives to take action by keeping track of bills, and showing them they are engaged on the issues—with transparency and accountability being the goals.

Providing your members with easy ways to take action is essential to building member engagement. We have more information on member advocacy platforms in the following section.

4: Build a CommunityAll of the above steps to increase member engagement culminate in this one. The fundamental reason people join your organization is the desire to be social—to be part of something, a group with a common interest, a whole that is larger than its parts. Focus on providing a community of shared val-ues and benefits.

CommunityCommunity



FOLLOW THESE STRATEGIES FOR FOSTERING COMMUNITY:

• Give your members easy, fun ways to interact in person and online • Share your members’ pictures, stories and questions • Encourage comments and responses• Allow members to engage with and join your leadership• Ask for input and respond to feedback • Celebrate successes, and turn losses into rallying cries

The Member Advocacy TrifectaIn spite of the challenges of engaging an over-informed and fragmented public, some organizations are succeeding at affecting change in important and significant ways. The most successful organizations are employing the “Member Advocacy Trifecta” to educate, engage and empower their members.

EDUCATELooking at effective organizational campaigns to influence public policy reveals a striking similarity between each of their efforts, regardless of the issue; they each energetically strive to educate their membership about the issues that matter most to them.

It seems like a pretty simple, common sense thing to do - yet few organizations do it effectively. Perhaps a key reason is that many organizations seek to educate their members about every issue, whether they’re interested in it, or not. What efficient organizations have learned to do is get really good at identifying where various types of member engagement already exist.

The simple act of asking your members what issues matter most to them increases engagement exponentially. Breaking through the communication clutter today means delivering messages that are relevant to the recipient. While organizations are getting better at this, it can be a cumbersome process, filled with spreadsheets, e-mail lists and frustration.



The Votility platform helps you segment member lists by interest and structure your communications accordingly. This ensures that interested members receive crucial updated information that they really care about.

ENGAGEOf course, it’s one thing to draw attention to something members are predisposed to be interested in, and another to actually raise their consciousness on this subject. Education efforts that connect seem to all share one big thing; they demonstrate how this information directly impacts a member’s life. When someone sees how an issue they’re interested in has changed in a way that affects them, you really have their attention in a way that will make them want to contribute.

The key is to go past the broad generalities of a subject and provide details at a level that inspires action — not getting down into the weeds of statistics, but providing high-level, meaningful information. “Thanks to you, 500 more kids can go to summer camp this year” is a much more compelling message than, “Thank you for your support” or “We raised 30% more money last year.” See the difference?

When members get an affirming message that they are likely to respond to, we call it the “zone of action”. Leading organizations recognize that this is the best time to ask for additional support. Another advantage of the Votility platform is that it lets you queue up outbound communications to your members right at the moment they are most likely to respond.

EMPOWEREvery individual in an organization realizes that their voice is much louder and compelling when heard in unison with everyone else’s. Yet even that voice can be too broad for some members, leaving them feeling removed from any real influence on the precise issue they hold to be most vital.

The first thing effective educational campaigns within organizations accomplish is making each member aware of how many other members share their concern on a particular issue. By doing so, your organization is formalizing a network that already exists, but few members are aware of. The value of making this connection explicit is that it immediately gives every member a tangible feeling for the persuasive influence they have.



By asking members what they are interested in, then revealing the strength of member engagement that already exists on an issue, you transform individual frustration into group excitement and empowerment - Yes!, We can do this together!”

Suddenly, the dispersed and fragmented efforts of many like-minded individuals can be articulated as one compelling message that leverages the potentiality of the many, into the force of the one. Now each individual knows that the right audience is hearing their voice in the most effective way. This is the very essence of effective empowerment.

By targeting existing member engagement with education and communication,and directing the result into focused action, organizations become players in creating change.



Conclusion & Additional ResourcesWith today’s increasing political awareness, your members expect to be brought into the public policy process. Member engagement is essential to building a strong and influential organization with an active and devoted membership base. Taking the time and effort to cultivate a strong member community will:

• Strengthen your ability to effect change• Improve your visibility and reputation• Increase your appeal to prospective members and • Bolster your finances through member retention and acquisition

Organizations can’t afford to ignore the power of online communication and advocacy platforms that provide avenues for member engagement and interaction. Implement these strategies today to start reaping the benefits of increased member engagement. There is no better way to ensure the success of your mission and enact meaningful change.

http://www.19oaks.com/member-persona-profile-kit

http://www.votility.com/online-advocacy-software/request-demo?&__hssc=161645987.1.1399337944869&__hstc=161645987.0888d9d1e4d115d4196cb834feaf2adc.1390402855766.1399049812848.1399337944869.54&hsCtaTracking=44b8dc9d-45d7-44b6-b850-60e9d76bb996%7C10f8f669-c052-41a3-bca8-78b0902bbbae


ABOUT 19 OAKS 19 Oaks is a sales, marketing and service alignment firm based in Portland, Maine.

19 Oaks provides a full range of strategic, creative and com-munication services to help businesses and organizations of all sizes cultivate lifetime relationships with members, donors and other stakeholders.

ABOUT VOTILITYVotility is far different than simply purchasing or displaying legislative information on your website or giving members the capability to write a member of Congress, which seems to be a longstanding Industry norm.

Our interactive platform allows Trade Associations, Advocacy Groups and Chambers to take a spe-cific member, from a specific voting district, allow them to take specific actions on a specific piece of legislation and to aggregate and communicate a specific message on policy with a member, or all members, of specific legislatures ahead of their vote. Imagine how this can influence public policy in your favor.



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