Revamping your Association’s Recruitment Strategy: What to Know

Recruiting new members can be a difficult task. With everything going on in a person’s day to day life, grabbing and keeping their attention long enough to become a member can almost seem impossible!This is why having a solid member recruitment strategy in place is essential for any association. With a strong foundation, recruiting new members becomes less of a hassle and can see more long-term success.

‍So, does your association need to rethink its recruitment strategy? If you’re seeing a dip in your association’s member recruitment rates, it might be time to think about how you’re recruiting your members. Are your tactics becoming stale? Could you be doing more to attract the attention of audiences?

‍There’s a variety of reasons your member recruitment strategy is starting to fail. Whatever the reason, we’re here to help you pick it back up and turn it into a huge success. If you’re looking to revamp your association’s recruitment strategy, here are a few things to consider.

Make your benefits irresistible

Ever seen a deal that was too good to pass up? This is how your benefits should be to potential new members.

‍As an association, you need to make sure that the benefits you provide are ones that are highly sought after by professionals. Audiences should find everything they’re looking for in a membership with your association. When assessing your association’s benefits, be sure to look at every aspect of your offers.

‍For example, how do your events hold up with attendees? Are members enjoying your educational/career services? And what about your content offers? It’s important to go in and identify where your benefits are working and where they could use some renovation. One of the best ways to do this is to survey your current members.

‍According to Folio Magazine, surveying is important for associations today because it is the “most reliable” source for feedback from your members. Reaching out with a survey will get your association the best feedback in order to enhance your benefits for future recruitment. You also want to incorporate new, appealing benefits into your membership plan. If you’re missing something that would attract potential members, it’s time to start offering it as a benefit. Survey members on what they’d like to see from your association in the future.

‍Finally, once you’ve assessed your benefits and made any necessary changes, you need to make sure members are up to date. Be sure to promote your new, enhanced benefits to current and potential new members. Include them on your website, send them out in a newsletter, and constantly remind members of any changes made. Enhancing specific benefits is a great way to gain credibility as an association and attract new members to join. Work on tightening the screws on your events, offers, and discounts, and you can see an increase in recruitment success.

Enlist the help of members

Did you know your members can actually help bring in a new crowd? Acording to Marketing General’s 2017 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, word-of-mouth recommendations have topped the charts for 3 consecutive years as being the most effective form of recruitment.

‍Inviting your members into your member recruitment strategy is a no brainer. With word-of-mouth recommendations, you can bring in new members who trust the word of your current members and are ready to join. But how do you get your members to start talking?

‍Collecting member testimonials is a sure fire way to get the recommendation of your association’s dreams. A member testimonial is a true statement from a member of your association about their time spent being a member. This can be a generic statement about their overall experience. Or, it can be a statement about specific aspects of the membership.

‍Member testimonials are powerful because it allows potential buyers to put a face to an opinion on your association. It also allows your current members to communicate the value of your association, in turn increasing their overall engagement. You can add your collected member testimonials onto your web page for audiences to check out when they visit. You can also include them in recruitment packet or any materials your association might have.

Looking for another way to incorporate word of mouth recommendations into your member recruitment strategy? You can start offering incentives to get new members. This tactic has been used by companies before. If your members recruit someone new to join your association, they can get a discount or a free offer from your association. This gives them a reason to bring in new members, making recruitment that much easier. Give your members a reason to recommend your association, and you could see your recruitment rates skyrocket.

Reach out personally

Want to get on the minds of your prospective members? It’s time to get personal with them. Contacting audiences on a personal level can bring up your recruitment success. And the best way to start is a personalized email. With 269 billion emails sent every day, you need to make sure yours stand out among the rest. By using a personalized subject line, you can ensure this happens. Personalizing your email subject line can enhance the way audiences read your emails. A study done on the Hubspot blog shows that 33% of email recipients open emails based on subject lines alone.

On top of that, emails are 22.2% more likely to be opened with a personalized subject line. You can personalize your subject lines using a name, location, or any other appropriate piece of information you know about your email recipients. Here’s a great example of a personalized subject line: “(your member’s name), we think you’d really love this…”. You’re inviting your members by name to check out content inside the email.

Want to get a little bit more personal? You can provide potential members with personalized information and materials.If you know what your potential members like and what they’re looking to learn more about, you can create materials they might find useful in order to bring them into your membership.

For example, if you have a potential member who wants to enhance their professional life, you can send them free content full of career enhancement tips or educational services. Or, if you have someone looking for networking opportunities, you can invite them to one of your association’s networking events.

‍Using these strategies, as well as making the effort to have your association’s team reach out to new members, will get your member recruitment strategy on the right track.

Create long-lasting relationships

And finally, it’s important to realize that recruiting a new member is a long road. It doesn’t happen overnight, so you need to make sure you lay the foundation early in your relationship. When you first make contact with potential new members, you want to make sure you engage with them from the very start. If you leave a good first impression, it will set the scene for a steady course of engagement all the way up to obtaining them as a member. Keep prospects up to date with your association’s moves at all times. If you make them feel apart of your association, becoming a member will feel like the right move for them.

‍Your association’s recruitment strategy can be freshened up with a few new tips and tricks. Consider following this advice and see how your member recruitment strategy can bring in more new members in the near future.