Five Ways To Find Members For Your Association

We’ve seen it all before. You are a great association that has a clear standpoint and you’ve suddenly come to a standstill with association membership. Finding new members for your association can be extremely difficult. Especially if you have a smaller scale association. However, there are very simple, and cheap, solutions for associations to gain new members.

If you have active members, make sure you take advantage of that. Tell them to get involved in the membership process. Word of mouth is especially helpful to gain new members, even with smaller scale associations. Think about incentivizing the act of word of mouth membership to boost morale and get members motivated to get other people to join.

Need some more tips on how get more membership? Keep on reading to find out five ways to find members for your association.

Avoid message overkill

We know that it might sound like a good idea to keep sending messages to your new followers on social media or the people who visit your website, but it isn’t. Message overkill can definitely turn new followers off, and make them opt-out of becoming members. Be sure to streamline your communication plan with new social followers or website visitors. Make sure this communication plan has one goal, to get this audience to become members.

You don’t want to annoy these new followers and make your association seem overbearing or desperate. Send one or two emails, and monitor how they react to each email. Perhaps you send a different email to the people that click on a link or read your blog posts.

Get some face time

Although you may have your email messaging all figured out, it is actually really beneficial for audiences to see and talk to you in person. Hold a meeting, panel, conference or exhibit at a conference and start talking to new people. Invite current and soon-to-be members so that they can talk and get to know you better aside from email communication.

This will help audiences not only put a face to a name, but begin to trust and get to know you on a personal level outside of association communication.

Market where your current members are

Make sure you know what your current members are interested in and where you connected with each member. If you found that you met an overwhelming amount of current members at a specific conference, make sure that you continue to attend that conference and build connections. Get to know what your members are reading, if they’re on LinkedIn, if they’re involved in other groups and try to align your marketing efforts with their interests.

This is where you can get really creative. If you find that a lot of your members read a certain publication, try to get published in it. If you are where your current members are, then you will definitely find even more members that will correlate with your association’s beliefs.

Create a sense of urgency

Try to create some sense of urgency for soon-to-be members. By advertising “Join Now” with a promotional offer, you will kick audiences into high gear to join your association as soon as possible. By creating urgency, you are telling your new audience that a certain offer won’t be around for long, and that they should sign up for their membership as soon as possible. This urgency will help push those on the fence people to join and get involved .

Having an offer like “join now for one month of free membership” can really help membership rates skyrocket. This doesn’t mean that you can’t nurture the new, free members like you do the others. If anything, they should receive in more relationship nurturing because they are joining for free for one month, and have every opportunity to leave once the next month hits. Make sure that you continue to build relationships with each and every member, whether or not they joined with a promotional code.

Keep current members happy

Increasing your memberships doesn’t mean that your current members should be left at bay. Make sure you keep your current members as happy as possible. This means getting them involved and keeping them up to date as all of the exciting new members flood in. You’d be surprised how much current members have an impact on new memberships. If they are talking to new people and raving about your association, you will begin to see their contacts join the association. However, if your current members are unhappy, you will see a stunted membership growth.

It can be increasingly difficult to get more members to join your association. Don’t be afraid to get creative and use your current members to help boost memberships. For more association related tips and tricks, subscribe to our newsletter!.