As an association, you aim to
realise your social objective. Fe: you offer professional education in order to
improve patient care or you collect money to improve the living conditions of
the most deprived.
The good thing about Members
is: you do not need to find them anymore, you do not need to convince them to
pay for your services for the first time,... They are already part of your
customer base and they are pretty loyal!
Hence: Members are the first in line to purchase the (new) services you
offer. What’s more: as they are loyal and motivated, they
should be the first to provide useful feedback about your (new) services. This
feedback allows you to improve/adapt your services quickly to your (future)
customers’ needs. This, in turn, enables the creation of better services that
will convince less loyal and new customers.
Spoil them.
For all these reasons, Members
should be spoiled. They should receive real value for money for their
Membership and they should be invited to actively provide their feedback on
your association and its services/products.
Your entire association and its future
Members will benefit from it.
Thus yes, Members do matter
and increasing their number, starts with being transparent as an association
about what you do and why and allowing your current Members to express their
opinion on all aspects of it.
Next, it’s about clearly
developing the financial and non-financial benefits you offer to your Members.
Ask yourself: What added value do you offer and is the value in line with the
Membership fee?
If Members can actively
provide feedback and they get services that add value for themselves, you can
start implementing Membership Management Processes. How to do that? Just read
one of our next blogposts.
