Member engagement is one of the most commonly used phrases in our industry and appears in almost every organisation’s business plan. It is often used as a synonym for “the business of membership” but this broad definition is not especially helpful for informing our strategies.

What is Member Engagement?

In its most basic sense, engagement is a measure of how much the member and the organisation mean to one another. It examines how each has invested in that relationship and tracks the ways that this manifests into everyday activities. While this might sound relatively ambiguous, the reasons that it matters are not.

Most commercial organisations will tell us that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a current one. There is little reason to assume this situation radically differs for professional bodies. Engagement is the mechanism by which we create loyal and satisfied members.

The first step to achieving this is ensuring that the services we provide are those that our members truly need and value. This is only possible if the value proposition is based upon an accurate understanding of our members’ lives, businesses and real-world challenges, and we can use two types of data to acquire this.

Quantitative Data

Firstly, we need quantitative data. With the right choice of technology, we can easily track a huge variety of touchpoints between our organisation and its membership. A well-designed analytics dashboard will tell us which areas of the website are most trafficked, what actions each member takes when they get there, how they respond to our emails and in which events or courses they take an interest.

To be useful in setting strategy, this data needs to be intelligently joined-up so that we understand how one action might impact or be a consequence of another. Documenting properly researched user journeys can tell us which parts of our offering are working, which have issues and in which areas member engagement is being eroded.

Qualitative Feedback

Secondly, we need qualitative feedback. If quantitative provides the “what”, this provides the “why”. Surveys are an easy way to start and should cover all groups including new members, satisfied service customers, disengaged members and people that are choosing to surrender their membership and leave. The value here comes from hearing a subjective story, but this also creates a challenge.

Building an objective strategy requires a significant breadth of understanding so we need to have many of these conversations, and we need to keep having them regularly. Fortunately, this process generates other benefits than just data collection. All people appreciate being heard, and an organisation that is able to do this is likely to generate exponentially more goodwill and loyalty.

Whilst collecting this data is essential in defining our value proposition, it is only part of the solution for maximising member engagement. To complete this, our focus needs to move from strategy to execution. All of the positive work in defining an offering to maximise member engagement can be undone if we fail to deliver them effectively.

There are a number of questions to ask as we design, deploy and maintain our services, including:

• Are our digital services being built and delivered in a way that is simple and intuitive to use?
• Are they just as rewarding to engage with on mobile devices?
• Are our events and training as accessible to people with health conditions or impairments?
• If members run into an issue, how well are we supporting them in solving it?
  
  

Combining Data for Continuous Improvement

The answers here combine with our quantitative and qualitative data collection to create a feedback loop that informs and enables continuous improvement. After addressing an issue or introducing an upgrade we can use this process to validate the effect on member engagement. The next service iteration learns from this, brings us closer to an ideal solution and the process repeats.

Member engagement begins as a theoretical objective for membership organisations. It’s what we all aim to achieve because intuitively we know it to be synonymous with success. However, with the right technology and approach, member engagement also becomes a precise tool for optimising our value propositions, driving member retention and facilitating continuous organisational development.