Holiday Gifts for Members, Staff, Volunteers and Boards
The goal of membership organizations is to create an engaging and effective member experience. However, designing your organization's member experience can be a long and confusing road. Read about two members of my Member Experience Design cohort and how their expectations lined up with their realities.
Member Experience Design – Expectations vs. Realities
The goal of membership organizations is to create an engaging and effective member experience. However, designing your organization's member experience can be a long and confusing road. Read about two members of my Member Experience Design cohort and how their expectations lined up with their realities.
Three Things Members Wish Organizations Would Do Better
Members often have specific ways in which they would like to see organizations improve. However, articulating those ideas can be difficult. After years of listening to member feedback, here are three things I've discovered that members wish organizations would do better.
Why a Free Level Doesn’t Typically Work (and What To Do About It)
Free levels are meant to entice potential paying members to purchase your membership. However, you may be giving away too much and sabotaging your business' growth.
Why Don’t Members Just Tell You What They Want?
The feedback you ask for from your members may be slowing down your growth. To truly see your membership business thrive, focus on asking the right questions to understand what your members really want.
Buying Membership – Over and Over and Over
To keep your clients renewing and buying memberships year after year, think about whether what you offer is something they need over and over again.
4 Things You Can Learn from Your Competition
Sometimes the best tool you have is your competition. Learn how to use the opposition to help you identify weaknesses and grow your business.
How to Sell Your Membership to Skeptics
A growth problem can always be traced back to an aspect of the member experience that isn’t working. Study your business to improve membership experience.
Personalizing the Member Experience: Lessons from an ATM
A growth problem can always be traced back to an aspect of the member experience that isn’t working. Study your business to improve membership experience.
Why Can Some Obscure Memberships Thrive, While Others Struggle?
A growth problem can always be traced back to an aspect of the member experience that isn’t working. Study your business to improve membership experience.
What Even Smart Organizations Do That Sabotages Membership Growth
There are a million ways to sabotage success, but recognizing when this sabotage is happening and taking action to address it is how you move forward.
Should We Really Under-Promise and Over-Deliver?
Have you ever heard that old saying…that you should “under-promise and over-deliver”? On the surface, it makes total sense. If you tell people that something will take two weeks to do and you get it done in one, they’ll be surprised and delighted, right? Or it’s like...
Is This Missing from Your List of Member Benefits?
Marketing is more powerful when you speak in the language of your audience and your benefits offerings solve the challenges that they face at the time.
Building Value Through Deep Understanding of What Members Want
As many of you know, I'm currently leading a new cohort of leaders through a six-week Member Experience Design Program. Together, they are working through the material to assess the experience currently being delivered by their organizations and deciding where...
Leading Your Membership When You Don't Really Feel Like It
This week's article is later than usual. There's a good chance that no one would notice, but I mention it because this leads to a topic that I think membership leaders probably need to talk about more often: What happens when you run out of energy to lead anyone...
Running Buddies – Building Membership Value Through Shared Experiences
As I’m writing this, it is absolutely gorgeous here in Central Illinois. The sun is beaming down and the sky is a gorgeous shade of blue. It has been the kind of morning that makes me wish I could go out for a run. Alas, I’ve been nursing a persistent heel...
Members Want the Taco Bell in Front of Them, Not Behind
Last week, I got to enjoy a little down time with my family in the Rocky Mountains. I have always been awestruck by the beauty of the mountains and this trip did not disappoint. However, one of the highlights of the week wasn’t related to the scenery at all.It was the...
Cake or Frosting: How to Serve the Perfect Member Experience Every Time
In life, I think there are two kinds of people – those who adore the frosting part of the cake, and those who prefer their cake without all that sugary fluff on top. My husband is a just-the-cake kind of guy while I would take a whole plate of frosting, if I could....
All I Really Needed Was Popcorn Salt: Is Your Membership Like the Supermarket?
A few weeks ago, I ran out of popcorn salt at home, so I ran to the supermarket to buy some. Popcorn salt comes in teeny-tiny grains so that it dusts the popcorn and gets in all the little nooks and crannies, rather than simply falling off and ending up in the bottom...
Chicago Area Business Aviation Association Is Ready to Soar to New Heights – Thanks to Their New Wild Apricot Membership Platform
Congratulations to the Chicago Area Business Aviation Association on their recent transition to the Wild Apricot member management platform. Taking on such a significant project is a big undertaking for any association, but especially one that relies heavily on the...
I Didn't Ask for a Lumpy Bumpy Bed (and Members Don't Want One Either)
This week's post was inspired by a recent hotel stay while I was in St. Louis to facilitate a client's strategic planning retreat. Imagine my surprise to walk into the room and find a bed that looks like the picture on this post. Yes, that's the actual bed from the...
What I Learned About Membership in Two Minutes at Pizza Hut
When I was in college, I had a summer job as a server for the local Pizza Hut in North Platte, Nebraska. It was a great summer gig – flexible hours, uncomplicated menu, extra cash from tips. Plus, I worked for a great boss. One morning, as we gathered for our weekly...
Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pops & Delivering Value to Members
Do you remember the old TV commercial for Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pops? A boy wanders about, asking an important question, "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?" If you don’t remember the old commercial, you’ll find it here:...
What does it feel like when someone really listens to you?
Years ago, when I was relatively new to my career, I had a mentor who was the most amazing listener I’ve ever encountered. To this day, when I think of what it means to truly *be engaged* with someone, she is the person who comes to mind. As a social worker, active...
The Perfect Trifecta of Membership Building
I don’t know if there’s ever been a membership in existence that hasn’t struggled, at some point, with at least one piece of the membership-building trifecta. Want to know what those pieces are? 1. members who pay 2. members who play 3. members who stay Master all...
Are You Serving Members a Peanut Butter and Jelly (and Broccoli) Sandwich?
I’ve always been curious about the strategy of bundling membership with event registration. Over the years, I’ve run into several associations that include their membership fee along with registration for an annual conference. While this strategy could legitimately be...
Do Members Really Know What They Want?
“We just aren’t sure what to do at this point… it feels like we’ve tried everything.” There was clear frustration in her voice. The association had tried a variety of different learning programs. They did member surveys. They upgraded their website. They spent more...
My Favorite Strategic Planning Exercise (That Also Makes Me Super Nervous!)
Perhaps the only thing more frustrating than people NOT knowing about your membership is when the perfect prospect DOES know about it but doesn't take action. One of my favorite things to do is to facilitate live retreats. There’s something powerful about getting away...
Too Many Prospects Still “Thinking About It”?
Perhaps the only thing more frustrating than people NOT knowing about your membership is when the perfect prospect DOES know about it but doesn't take action. It's as if the prospect gets stuck in the "thinking about it", so instead of joining quickly and starting to...
How Membership-Based Service Organizations Can Stay Relevant
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak to a local gathering for Optimist International, a worldwide volunteer organization with 2500 local clubs working to bring out the best in children, their communities and in themselves. In just my brief time that I...