From events to online courses, your association provides a variety of content and activities for your members. However, these offerings only have an impact if your members actually engage with them. Even for associations with high participation rates, engagement can drop significantly in between major events.
To help your trade or professional association consistently engage its community, this guide will explore ideas and strategies to energize your members.
But first, let’s define exactly what member engagement means and why it matters.
What is Member Engagement?
Member engagement includes all the ways members interact with your association. When members attend events, comment on your blog posts, or message one another, they’re engaging with your association. Associations with high levels of member engagement tend to be dynamic, financially healthy, and positioned to expand their offerings.
Member management and member engagement are closely related concepts, and strong member management often helps facilitate positive engagement. The main difference is that member management focuses on organizing members by collecting data, managing dues payments, and planning activity logistics. With this foundation, your association can host engaging events, create engaging content, and encourage members to engage with one another.
Member Engagement Benefits
Members who sign up but don’t engage with your association may contribute to your dues revenue, but these individuals likely won’t stay members for long. By creating valuable content and promoting it to members, you can increase engagement and reap several benefits, including:
- Higher Retention. Members who know what your association offers and are excited about it are more likely to stay members long-term. Conversely, low engagement is often a key sign a member is about to lapse.
- Increased Revenue. The more activities your members participate in, the more they’ll spend. This might involve upgrading to a higher membership tier, buying event tickets, or purchasing your association’s products or services.
- Better Recruitment. Professionals want to join associations that have lively networks, so they can expand their professional contacts. If your association has an active base of highly engaged members, new members are more likely to want to join to participate in your community.
Essentially, member engagement measures your association’s health. If you have high member engagement, your community is likely loyal, valuable, and eager for your next offerings.
10 Member Engagement Strategies
1. Maintain an online community.
Many associations host just a handful of events every year, and these organizations tend to see flagging engagement during the months between in-person meetups. Increase your memberships’ value and maintain engagement throughout the entire year by building an online community.
On your association’s website, provide access to an online platform just for your members behind your member login. To create this platform, invest in community engagement software for associations. These tools allow trade and professional associations to create personalized social media sites just for their members.
For example, here’s what Tradewing’s very own community engagement platform looks like:
Platforms like Tradewing arm associations with several features for fostering lively online communities, such as:
- Member feed. Your association’s staff and members can post content, comment on others’ posts, and scroll through a chronological timeline of the latest content. If there’s anything you need your members to see, your association’s team can create an announcement post and pin it to the top of all members’ timelines.
- Groups. Members can reach out to one another and form groups where they can chat, plan events, and share. Tradewing’s platform allows users to create posts and schedule events that are visible only to their fellow group members. This means once members form connections, they can continue the conversation and arrange meet-ups right on your association’s platform.
- Event hosting. Expand your association’s offerings by hosting virtual events on your community engagement platform. Many community engagement platforms like Tradewing come with basic event management software, allowing you to announce, promote, and host events all in one centralized hub.
Some associations use publicly available social media sites like Facebook to host their communities, but there are several downsides to this compared to a specialized community engagement tool. These include:
- Limited moderation. Platforms like Facebook offer group organizers some moderation tools, but these are severely limited compared to a platform your association controls. This applies not just to moderating discussions but also to protecting members’ privacy, fighting spam, and maintaining your association’s branding.
- Decentralization. By sending members to a third-party platform, you’re encouraging them to navigate away from your website and its content. This divides members’ focus and makes community engagement hard to measure. Not to mention, on social media sites like Facebook, your association will have to constantly fight for attention against all of the other posts in your members’ feeds.
- Lack of professionalism. For professional and trade associations, using free social media platforms to manage your community can seem unprofessional. By investing in an online platform branded to your association, you’ll also invest in your association’s image and reputation.
There’s definitely still a place for social media in your association’s engagement strategy. Instead of hosting your online community on social media, you can use these sites to post enticing content that draws members to your website and private online community.
2. Create an onboarding process.
Joining an association can be overwhelming, and new members will appreciate a helping hand. Ensure these members have a positive first impression by creating a new member welcome series.
For many associations, this will take the form of an email series. For example, your messaging series might consist of:
- An introductory email thanking new members for joining your association and providing a brief overview of your offerings
- An email recommending offerings for members to explore, such as a mix of popular and new content
- Encouragement to complete any new member tasks, such as publishing their profiles, finishing questionnaires, or signing up for community alerts
- A personal invitation to your next event and instructions for how to RSVP to events in general
- A survey asking about their new membership experience and if they have any lingering questions
Outside of emails, there are a range of other ways to onboard new members. For instance, you might create a welcome video, host new member welcome events, and announce new members to your community. Some associations even mail out new member kits containing mugs, pens, a welcome letter, and other branded merchandise.
3. Encourage user-generated content.
Your association should regularly create content—whether it’s blog posts, training courses, virtual events, or something else—to maintain engagement. However, even with a dedicated content creation team, you’ll likely be unable to produce a continuous stream of posts to keep members engaged throughout the year.
Fortunately, you don’t have to. Consider how social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook very rarely have posts for the actual site maintainers. Instead, users are invited to create posts of their own. Your association can do the same! By encouraging user-generated content, your members can create content to engage one another.
User-generated content can take many forms, including:
- Photographs
- Graphic design
- Videos
- Reviews
- Written opinion pieces
- Research reports
- Discussion sparking questions
To boost user-generated content, maintain an online community where members can easily share their creations and receive feedback from other members. You might also jumpstart the process by hosting competitions, posting discussion questions, or spotlighting model user-generated content.
4. Facilitate networking.
Many members join trade and professional associations to expand their networks. However, some members may need help figuring out where to start when it comes to reaching out. Additionally, associations have to balance encouraging member connections while protecting members’ privacy, which might make some members difficult to contact.
You can help members get around these obstacles and streamline the networking process by leveraging:
- Suggested connections. Some associations set up programs where members can complete a short survey and have connections suggested to them or even have meet-ups arranged by your association. This process intends to pair up like-minded individuals and can be especially useful for new members entering your association with zero pre-existing connections.
- Welcome events. If multiple new members join at once, host a welcome event or take time at your next event to introduce your new members to the rest of your community. This provides new members with a face-to-face opportunity to mingle.
- Members-only spaces. In your online community, give members the opportunity to post publicly and engage with others in a low-stress environment. For example, you might invite discussion in the comments below a recent blog post. This gives members a natural opportunity to find others with shared interests and start conversations.
To help all members continually network, maintain an online membership directory where members can search for one another and send messages. Enable members to decide what information they want visible on their profiles, such as their contact information, job position, alma mater, professional interests, and personal hobbies.
5. Leverage gamification tools.
Gamification is the inclusion of game design elements in non-game contexts. For example, an association might create a reward system where members can earn points for posting content, attending activities, and logging into their online member portal every day.
Gamification incentivizes member participation in your association, pushing them to make additional comments, posts, and content to hit the next level, rise on the leaderboard, or earn a badge. A few gamification features you can add to your association’s online community include:
- Badges. Acknowledge the actions your members take to engage with your association by awarding them badges, ribbons, trophies, stars, or any other virtual marker of success. These can be displayed on member profiles or next to their usernames when posting or commenting in your online community.
- Leaderboards. Instill a sense of friendly competition by creating a leaderboard of all of your members. This allows members to see how they are performing in the “game” of engaging with your association compared to others and see their names rise up the ranks.
- Rewards. While some gamification systems have no payoff other than the innate satisfaction of winning a game, you can attach tangible prizes to your gamification strategy. For example, you might show your appreciation for your community’s top posters by sending them a box of branded merchandise or offering a discount when it’s time to renew their memberships.
These elements boost engagement by adding an extra reward to participating in your community. Members have a record of their engagement, helping them quantify their participation and fostering a desire to continue adding to it.
6. Provide a late payment grace period.
The membership renewal process is a key moment for maximizing member retention, but it can also be used to boost engagement. In your association’s membership renewal letters, emphasize your various membership benefits, upcoming activities, and anything else valuable they can engage with if they continue their membership.
Additionally, offer members a grace period for missed payments before cutting off access to benefits. This gives members one final chance to see what they’ll be missing, which can encourage them to commit to another month or year of membership.
7. Contribute to a good cause.
Many businesses host corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs to boost their reputation and engage customers and employees. Associations can similarly engage their members and staff by scheduling activities related to giving back.
For example, your association might host an annual volunteer day related to your cause. To partner with a local nonprofit to organize a team volunteer activity for your members, follow these steps:
- Survey members. Reach out to your members to learn what causes they want your association to support. Consider suggesting specific organizations in your local area or letting members share what types of nonprofit missions they prefer supporting. The cause you ultimately decide to go with might be related to your association’s regular offerings or simply something the majority of your members believe in.
- Reach out to nonprofits. Contact nonprofits ahead of time rather than just showing up with a group of members to volunteer. This allows them to plan volunteer activities that accommodate a large number of people.
- Work out logistics. Prior to your volunteer day, get a head count of the members committed to participating. Additionally, share other logistic details like you would with any other event, such as meet-up time, if food is provided, what attire participants should wear, and so on.
While volunteering might not be directly related to your association’s main benefits, it can still give members more than just a personal sense of fulfillment. After all, team volunteer activities are the perfect opportunity to network and build a sense of camaraderie. In fact, 35% of individuals volunteer specifically to socialize, and your members can do the same amongst themselves.
8. Stay up to date with industry trends.
Nearly a third of members at professional and trade associations say access to specialized and up-to-date industry knowledge is one of their reasons for purchasing a membership. As such, you should ensure you provide your members with relevant, valuable offerings that will aid them in their careers.
You can refresh your knowledge and develop expert content by:
- Following industry blogs and news sites. Subscribe to journals, news sites, and industry blogs related to your association. Regularly reading up on the challenges, discoveries, and developments in your members’ fields will help you create offerings that speak to their interests, concerns, and questions.
- Attending conferences. Participate in discussions in your industry by attending relevant conferences. This gives you and your association’s team opportunities to connect with other industry leaders, attend expert-led workshops, and hear on-the-ground stories from professionals.
- Working with experts. Consider bringing in a variety of professionals to present at events, submit blog posts, and develop educational courses. This helps your association present different viewpoints and provide additional value to your members. Plus, advancing your association’s network of professionals benefits both your members and your organization as a whole.
When your association has cutting-edge content and activities, share them with members. Highlight these offerings in your email newsletter and through community announcements. This can also be useful content to promote on social media to attract new members.
9. Survey members.
If you’re not sure what type of content will engage your members, ask them. Create surveys that ask members about their experience with your association. You might ask them questions like:
- In the past six months, what type of content have you engaged with from the following options?
- What types of content have you found the most useful for you professionally?
- How do you usually find out about current community offerings?
- What types of member benefits would improve your experience?
- On average, how often do you engage with community content?
Ask a mix of multiple-choice and short-answer questions. This allows you to quantify members’ responses while also giving them space to elaborate on their experiences.
10. Revamp your email strategy.
Many associations dedicate their resources to communicating with prospective or new members. However, your ongoing communications with existing members should be just as captivating.
Reinvigorate your email campaigns with eye-catching visuals and enticing subject lines. Break out of the traditional email format with interactive elements, like eCards, image carousels, or videos.
Additionally, determine a cadence for sending creative emails. For example, design holiday eCards to send on Valentine's Day and Christmas. Or, plan an email series around the anniversary of your association's founding that includes images and videos of founding members and background information on the organization.
More Member Engagement Resources
Associations with highly engaged members set themselves up for growth, earn more through their offerings, and cultivate a positive reputation in their industry. For professional and trade associations looking to improve their membership rates, start experimenting with engagement strategies and invest in the software you need to connect with your community.
For more member engagement resources, explore these guides:
- Member Engagement Platform: Getting More out of Memberships. Member engagement platforms provide a place for your community to congregate and network. Discover what to look for in these vital platforms.
- Community Management Software for Associations: 10 Options. There’s a wide range of community management solutions available. Check out our top recommended vendors.
- Boost Your Association’s Membership Engagement in 7 Steps. Looking for more strategies to boost member engagement? Discover how to create a structured member engagement plan.
