3 Ways Associations May Be Deterring Prospective Members

I’ve spoken to many association leaders looking to increase their membership roster. They are very clear on what they want – but not very clear on how they can appeal to those prospective customers. Your priority must always be what has value to the prospective member; if your focus is somewhere else first, the prospective member will sense that very quickly.

Here are three ways to show your value that you might be overlooking:

1. Be easy to contact

When someone reaches out to you about joining your association, you have already passed the biggest hurdle in marketing – getting someone interested. The prospective member has already decided you have value; now they want confirmation. The most effective way to do that is by having a real person contact. If you want to send people to competing associations, direct your visitors to an online form or a generic voicemail.

Lived experience note: If you are unwilling to change your online form as the key point of contact, have someone complete it as a test – think secret shopper – and get an idea of the customer experience you are providing to a prospective member. In my work with clients, the following has happened:

• The web designer did not have the contact form forwarded to anyone to respond, so no one ever replied to the inquiries. This went on for seven months before it was discovered. Almost 1,000 inquiries had gone unreturned.
• The web designer had the contact form forwarded to two employees – A and B. A decided she would be the main contact, so B never looked at the emails. A left the organization a few months later and B never picked up the contact form inquiries. The president didn’t know because the policy wasn’t written down anywhere. The result was 490 messages left sitting.
• An employee was tasked to check the generic email address in addition to his own email, but after a week of not getting any messages, he stopped checking. When he finally did check, there were over 200 unread messages.
• The association changed website hosting providers and the new provider didn’t enable the contact form.
• An employee diligently forwarded the completed online form to the appropriate person in the association, but due to the formatting, it ended up in their spam filter, so no one ever replied. This had been the practice for more than two years.

2. Be easy to understand

There is a trend of creating content to rank high in searches. Unfortunately, this can come at a cost of being appealing to the prospective member. Make it easy for someone to join by clearly and concisely detailing the advantages of being a member, the cost, and how to make the payment. Have your forms easy to complete, requiring only the important information. Membership recruiting is not a market research study of 50 questions.

Lived experience note: I decided to join an association and started completing the form that had 8 questions. However, once I completed a section, other hidden sections appeared. After 5 minutes and only completing the second question (i.e. section), I quit the form. That’s when I knew this association wasn’t about my interests; it was about them gathering information. And, no one ever followed up on my partially completed form.

3. Be easy to feel welcomed

Oftentimes, associations miss the basics of letting new members know where to find information and how to participate. As part of joining, make sure each member gets a cheat sheet of where to find the information they need. It’s hard to look at your association through the eyes of a new person – you might know where to find everything, but a new person will not know. Make it easy for them to feel like they made a good choice by sending that information as part of their welcome package. IT’s also an easy follow-up a month later just to make sure they’re finding everything ok. Use the same content for an easy second outreach.

Lived experience note: one association I belong to automatically sends an email to every member about their weekly events – there’s no need to register in advance, just click the Zoom link when the meeting is happening. The reminder comes out once for the week, and then once on the day of the event. I attended more meetings with an automatic invite than trying to remember to sign up ahead of time.

The Theme: Make It Easy

Sometimes, having a lot of content can be mistaken for speaking clearly and concisely to your members and prospective members. Many elements of association websites are overcommunicated and easily dismissed because of the repetition. Be intentional with what you say, when, and how you say it for a better result in showing your value.

It’s not how much you have to say that wins members, but the quality of what you say.

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