Blog: Tips & Insights

By Tony Rossell, Senior Vice President

One of the most significant challenges to managing an effective membership recruitment program comes down to the lack of staff time and expertise. Respondents shared some of these challenges in the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, “We do not have the &hellipl staff capacity to have someone focus on membership growth. I do the membership, partnership, engagement, social media, marketing, website, and events.” Another membership manager affirmed this, saying their biggest challenge was “Having enough staff to execute effectively. Staffing is at a bare minimum.”

Marketing was more straightforward in the past; some staff phone calls or emails…

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By Tony Rossell, Senior Vice President

Inflation over the past several years has challenged associations’ cost structure. For membership, discussion of dues increases has become a top consideration. So, how have associations responded to this pricing challenge? The answer comes from associations’ experiences and benchmarking research, which offer reliable guidance on the best practices for raising dues.

How often do associations raise dues?

In this year’s soon-to-be-released Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, 52 percent of associations reported raising dues (up from 47 percent in 2023 and 30 percent in the 2022 reports). Overall, seventy-two percent have raised dues in the past four…

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By Tony Rossell, Senior Vice President

Recently, I participated in an online conversation about data analytics methods to evaluate and track member engagement. Understanding how to engage members is critical for associations. In fact, according to the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, lack of engagement is the number one reason why members do not renew. Highly engaged members can be relied on to renew and are more likely to volunteer, attend meetings, and make purchases from the association. Identifying members who are not engaged provides an association with the opportunity to intervene before renewal time.

In this discussion, the question was asked: how can engagement best be…

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By Tony Rossell, Senior Vice President

We received a lot of good feedback from our recent webinar presenting the results of the 2023 edition of the MGI Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report. If you missed the webinar, you can access it here. Some of those who attended asked for additional information on the significant findings from our study. So, here is a short recap.

Certainly, the most significant finding from our research was the substantial rebound respondents shared with us in the membership counts. A total of 49% of associations reported an increase in their total membership numbers. In contrast, only 22% of respondents shared that their membership had declined, and this declining…

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By Tony Rossell, Senior Vice President

The American Psychological Association published an article last year titled "Burnout and stress are everywhere." The piece maintained, "Burnout and stress are at all-time highs across professions."

Through our research over the past 15 years with association staff, we have seen substantial increases in the challenges of managing ever more complex membership programs and the demands of doing more with less. These difficulties grew even more intense with the radical adjustments brought on by COVID.

So, in our 2023 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, we once again questioned respondents about their stress levels. Specifically, we wanted to know, "With…

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