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Building a loyal member base takes a lot of time and effort. You’re constantly marketing your organization to get in front of potential members, hoping to acquire them. But what happens once a new member joins? Do you stop exerting energy on them? Hopefully not!

If you want your organization to grow, you need to engage members through a membership engagement strategy continuously. To increase participation, organizations must execute various tactics to keep members involved and active. Putting in place an engagement plan can powerfully impact your membership results. The most recent Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report highlighted that associations reporting increases in membership…

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Managing a membership organization is no small task. It can feel like there’s more to do than there is time in the day: database management, marketing, reporting, outreach, event management, payment processing, etc.

How can a member organization keep track of all of these elements? By using an association member management system, which we’ll explain in more detail.

One of the most time-consuming but crucial tasks of running a member organization is event management. Events help raise awareness and funds for organizations, as well as recruit new members that provide long-term support.

This blog answers three primary questions:

1. What is association membership software?
2. What is event management?
3. How…

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Membership growth relies on both new acquisitions and renewals–not one or the other. An organization can’t grow solely off of member renewals. And if your membership modely relies soley on recruiting new members but fails to retain existing members, there’s likely something broken in the member lifecycle journey.

The “lifecycle journey” we’re referring to is the five stages a prospect goes through before and after they become a member of your association:

1. Awareness
2. Recruitment
3. Engagement
4. Renewal
5. Reinstatement

This article explores the five stages of the membership lifecycle journey and what they mean for you as a membership organization.

Member Acquisition

Member Acquisition is an ongoing effort that…

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By Tony Rossell, Senior Vice President

Associations Evolve: 2022 and Beyond was just released under the editorial leadership of Belinda Moore. The publication includes articles from  50 leaders in the global association community. I was honored to be included in the group. With over 100 pages of content, I thought it might be helpful to share some selected quotes from the publication. Of course, you can download the entire document with this link. 

Here are some highlights from Associations Evolve.

"Associations who embraced the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to innovate are already seeing benefits. Many are reporting increased engagement, higher retention rates, and overall membership…

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By Tony Rossell, Senior Vice President

The past year and a half has presented associations with significant economic challenges. Many have realized lower revenue from meetings and less dues revenue.  

One association executive summed up the situation this way.  “It’s a lost year (and maybe two). . . The impact on our financial health may extend well beyond the pandemic as it takes years of careful financial stewardship to build reserves and we’re spending it now.”

To help offset the reduced revenue, associations are exploring increasing dues. Based on data and experience, here are some best practices to consider when implementing a dues increase.  

How often do associations raise dues?

Data…

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