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Membership expert, Frank Kenny, explains three of the hottest member benefits trends out there. If you want 2020 to be the year you adjust member benefits, we have some ideas for you.  While individual membership benefits depend largely on your type of association, you can use these membership trends for some brainstorming. Members expect a lot these days. Simply offering networking events is not enough. Members are able to do things on their own that they couldn’t decades ago like […]

An association’s member onboarding program is the ideal litmus test for gauging success in member engagement. Many say onboarding is the foundation on which member engagement is built. The key to building a successful foundation is to regularly evaluate what is (and isn’t) working and make adjustments based on the evaluation. Quick tips for gauging onboarding success: ASK FOR FEEDBACK. Is the association meeting the new member’s expectations? Fingers crossed, maybe even exceeding their expectations? The answers will guide you […]

FREE CAE Course! Join GrowthZone for a live presentation with membership-expert, Amanda Kaiser. Key insights and stories will bring you right into the middle of the member experience. Amanda will educate attendees about: How members from small to large organizations become engaged. The specific value members need, based on their membership-stage How members articulate the barriers to engagement. Live presentation attendees will receive 1 hour of CAE credit. Can’t make it? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording. As […]

Wishing you a prosperous and productive 2020!

Each year as we plan for the upcoming year, our focus is on how we can best serve associations and chambers of commerce and improve on the year before. There is never a year that goes exactly according to plan, and this year was no exception. But sometimes when things don’t go as planned, the results are positive. Here are two quick examples. New Headquarters For instance, at the start of 2019, we certainly weren’t planning on moving offices. However, […]

May the joy and the wonder of the season be yours.

More tricks and tips for association new-member onboarding planning. SET A BUDGET. Statistics show that it costs 7x more to obtain a new member than to retain a current one, and that first-year members have the lowest renewal rates. New-member onboarding is a process that is clearly worth investing in, and with some planning and organization, it will make a big difference in an association’s success. The above-referenced research shows that organizations that earmark as little as 1% of their […]

Association industry vernacular defines onboarding as a process through which new members move from being organizational outsiders to becoming organizational insiders. Translation? Onboarding is a party and your association is the host. Consider the following two scenarios: In one scenario, you’ve recently met a new acquaintance and invite them to your party. When they arrive, you don’t greet them, you don’t point them to the buffet, you fail to introduce them to other guests, and when it ends, not only […]

Word-of-mouth is so powerful because “we trust each other so much more than we trust businesses.” – Jay Baer WHAT Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is defined as: An unpaid form of promotion in which satisfied customers tell other people how much they like a business, product or service and is triggered when a customer (member) experiences something beyond what is expected. WHY 83% of Americans have recommended a product or service to someone else. 55% of Americans make product […]

In an article recently featured in Minnesota Meetings and Events magazine, GrowthZone Association Management Software explored benefits that attract young professional members to join associations. This demographic has high expectations for their association memberships; with the influx of millennials and Gen Z into the workspace, associations must continue to manage their offerings carefully. Providing association benefits that young professionals really want is critical. But more importantly, communicating these association benefits is key. Of all the benefits associations should promote in […]

In essence, scalability is to associations as fast internet is to streaming.

GrowthZone Staff Guest Post Our annual sponsorships were filled by January! One of the most successful tools I used while working for an association was a “sponsor playbook”. The purpose of the association sponsor playbook was to help members and supporters choose the best sponsorship opportunities for their businesses, and to give them the first chance to renew their association sponsorship each year. The win for our association management was that I had less selling to do because it was […]