What ASAE Annual 2026 Reinforced for Me About Membership Growth and Marketing

By Jana Darling

 

As I’ve been reading the post-ASAE Annual recaps, I’ve found myself thinking about the many conversations I had around growth.

Not because growth is a new topic. Far from it. Membership growth has been a challenge for many associations for years. What felt different was the urgency around it.

This year’s MGI Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report gives us some context. Only 34% of participating Individual Membership Organizations reported membership growth, down from 49% the previous year. Overall, just 51% of participants describe their value proposition as compelling or very compelling, down from 57%. And while Millennials and Gen Z continue to make up a larger share of association membership, the shift isn’t happening quickly enough to offset the decline in Baby Boomer members.

Those aren’t just membership statistics. They’re signals that the environment has changed.

And after a few days of conversations in Indianapolis, I came home believing something even more strongly:

A harder growth environment doesn’t make membership marketing less important. It makes doing it well more important than ever.

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There is less room for average marketing.

When growth gets harder, it’s tempting to search for the next channel, technology or tactic that will turn things around.

Sometimes we do need something new. But I’m not convinced that most associations need more tactics. More often, we need to raise the bar on the marketing we’re already doing.

Are we reaching the right audiences? Is the segmentation meaningful? Is the message relevant to where they are in their career? Are we testing enough to know what’s actually working?

In a tougher market, execution matters. And perhaps nowhere is that more important than new member acquisition.

If associations aren’t bringing enough new members in to offset those leaving, the growth equation simply doesn’t work.

At some point, the generational challenge becomes an acquisition challenge.

We’ve been talking about attracting younger members for a long time. Long enough, in fact, that the oldest Millennials are now well into their 40s.

So perhaps it’s time to change the question: If Millennials and Gen Z aren’t entering membership quickly enough to replace the members aging out, is that still a generational challenge? Or is it an acquisition challenge?

That distinction matters because an acquisition challenge gives us something to solve.

Are we reaching professionals early enough? Does our recruitment messaging reflect what they value today? Are we investing enough in acquisition to move the needle?

And, very simply, do we know how many new members we actually need?

Associations should know how many new members they must recruit each year to replace expected losses and meet their growth goals. If you’re unsure of your targets, use our membership math calculator to determine them.

That’s the acquisition target. And membership marketing needs a strategy built to achieve it.

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Membership marketing needs to market more than membership.

But acquisition is only part of the equation. What we’re asking those prospective members to join matters just as much as how we’re reaching them.

Maybe we’ve defined membership marketing too narrowly.

Membership isn’t experienced as a list of benefits. It’s experienced through everything the association does.

The conference someone attends. The credential that advances their career. The education that helps them solve a problem. The advocacy work they may never see firsthand. The research they rely on. The person they meet who becomes an important professional connection.

That’s the product we’re marketing.

Great membership marketing makes the full value of the organization visible. That doesn’t mean every campaign needs to promote everything. It means understanding which parts of that value matter to different audiences and bringing the right value forward at the right time.

And to do that well, marketing can’t simply be brought in at the end. Too often, marketing gets involved after the important decisions have already been made.

Here’s the membership model. Here’s the dues structure. Here’s the program. Here’s the conference. Now go market it.

But marketing teams sit on an incredible amount of intelligence about the people associations are trying to reach. They see what prospects respond to, which messages convert, which audiences engage, which channels perform and where people drop off. Combined with research and member data, those insights can reveal where the strongest growth opportunities exist.

So, one question I’d encourage association leaders to ask is:

Are we asking marketing to promote our growth strategy, or are we asking marketing to help shape it?

There is a meaningful difference.

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The fundamentals matter more when growth gets harder.

There were plenty of conversations at ASAE Annual about AI, new technologies and what’s changing across our industry. We absolutely need to pay attention to all of it.

But I came home equally convinced that we shouldn’t confuse “new” with “better.”

Membership growth still requires reaching the right people with a compelling reason to join. It requires understanding what they value, communicating it clearly and investing in the strategies that move people to act.

The tools will change. Expectations will change. Our audiences will change.

The need for great membership marketing won’t.

If anything, the numbers tell us we’re going to need to get much better at it.