Tips from the expert - 5 tips on boosting membership recruitment

Abby Wright-Parkes, owner of Optimist Consulting, is a membership development and marketing consultant. She has written a free guide for SRA members on membership growth and development. As an introduction to the guide she shares her top five tips for sports clubs and recreational organisations that want to recruit new members.

The SRA are all about supporting their members with their membership challenges this year! As you will have seen the Alliance have recently held the first of two sold-out events titled,  ‘Member TLC - boosting recruitment and retention in a competitive world’ and to complement these events I have written a guide entitled ‘Developing and growing your membership’. The guide is an in-depth look at the three essential elements of membership:

• The membership offer
• Membership retention
• Membership recruitment

You can download the guide here.

From my 17 years of working in marketing and membership development I know that member recruitment is often one of the biggest challenges for membership organisations. So, I wanted to provide my top five tips for membership recruitment to give you a taster of the contents of the guide:

1. Test different messages
When you are sending out recruitment messages, you need to try different things. Try to think about why your potential members would want to join and tailor the message accordingly. If possible, try to segment your data so you can amend the messages for the audience – a teenager will respond to a different message to an 80-year-old, for example.

2. Use all your channels
You will have various ways to spread your ‘Join us’ message. Make sure you use them all. From existing members through to your social media streams – these communication channels are an important way to reach your audience. If you are asking others to promote membership on your behalf (eg other members) ensure they have all the materials and information that they need.

3. Mention joining everywhere
This sounds a bit obvious, I know, but you need to put yourself in your potential members’ shoes. When they approach your organisation, either in person or online, the ‘Join us’ message needs to be obvious and welcoming. I often see membership organisation’s social media channels that don’t even mention joining!

4. Capture data
It is likely that your organisation will come across potential members in a number of places and ways. If you want to help push those members along the membership journey from a prospect to a member you need to capture their data so you can market to them. Map out all the ways you reach your audiences and think about processes to secure their details to add to your database.

5. Be relentless
You need to be relentless about your recruitment activity. Some potential members may well join on the first contact, others will need more convincing. You need to continually plan and refine your recruitment activity.

I do hope you enjoy reading the guide, I’d be interested in your comments and thoughts. Good luck with your membership challenges this year.

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