What does your association do when a member fails to renew their membership?

Does the membership team rush into action with phone calls and special offers, making every attempt to save the relationship? Or do you change the membership status to inactive, hope the member will come back eventually, and wonder what could have gone better?

 Many associations take the second approach because their focus is on recruiting new members rather than saving lapsed members. The risk in this approach comes when you don’t replace all the members you’re losing. Even small decreases in membership can, over time, destroy your association. For example, if you lose 20% of your members each year without gaining new members, soon enough you will have no members at all.

We understand the impulse to concentrate on recruiting new members – after all, no one member is irreplaceable – but we’d like to make a case for trying to save non-renewing members at the same time you recruit new members. With this dual approach, you keep a stable membership base while adding new members to it, thereby growing your membership and strengthening your association’s position.

 Fortunately, you already have the data you need and the ability to analyze it so that you can better understand your lapsing members before they drop. We’d like to show you several simple ways to help you uncover the trends that exist in your data.

Examine a member’s stated reasons for not renewing

Many associations have a formal process for members to terminate their memberships. In that process, associations often use drop-down menus or open comment boxes to ask members why they are leaving. If you use a system like that, compile those comments and sort them into major themes – financial, not receiving enough value, not meeting needs, lack of engagement, etc. – and see what emerges.

To make analysis easier, you can create a word cloud from those comments to provide a graphic representation of the words your former members used most. Microsoft Word or similar apps have that capability. The most frequently used words will appear larger in the word cloud, easily showing you the reasons former members left the association. We recommend that you delete simple words like “a,” “and” or “the,” so they don’t display as the most common words in a selection.

Be aware that someone who is leaving your membership may not want to spend a great deal of time expressing their dissatisfaction. You might only capture surface reasons or those that are easy to express. If you think something else is contributing to their termination, you might want to explore further.

Ask “What do these lapsed members have in common?”

This type of research doesn’t require high-tech methods. You can analyze data in an AMS or a spreadsheet, and either one will work. The key to success is being able to sort your members by a variety of variables. Try these suggestions for sorting data about lapsed members and those who might be thinking about not renewing their memberships:

1. Length of Membership – If most of your lapsed members are leaving after their first year, examine how you interact with them in those first 12 months. Check your onboarding process for problems. Ask if you’re meeting expectations in the first year. Discover what is discouraging membership in that first year.

 If your members are leaving after two or three years, you might have problems with competition or your value proposition. Members need to find value in your association to keep renewing year after year.

 If your members are leaving after 10 or more years, determine if retirement is a factor. Can you keep older, more experienced members engaged during the last years of their careers?

2. Job Titles – You might find that members resign if their contact within the association leaves. This is especially true for trade associations where personal relationships are strong between the primary contact at the member company and an association staff member. If you have members with the same job title resigning, check to discover if something else is influencing them to leave your membership.

3. Meeting Attendance – Have current members skipped your annual meeting, regular meetings or training sessions? Lack of attendance can indicate a lack of engagement, which could signal a problem. This group could be ready to disengage entirely.

4. Product & Educational Purchases – Have purchasing patterns changed for current or lapsed members? Look at educational offerings like certification and credentialing, as well as product purchases, and compare the purchase levels for all members year over year. See if you see trends in reduced purchases over time. These might be members who are ready to resign.

5. Fundraising Contributions – If strong contributors to your foundation or other charitable efforts stop giving, ask why. Check all members for changes in their contribution levels. This is one of the most telling changes we see, and it often leads to non-renewal.

6. Location – Where someone works can have a big role in their ability to engage with your association in person. You might have hot spots where engagement is high, but you also may have areas where engagement is more difficult. If you’re losing valuable members because of location, consider expanding your offerings or addressing the need in other ways.

7. Birthdates – We have found that collecting birth dates can be difficult unless the association has a valid reason for needing them. Members can be reluctant to provide personal information that could be stolen online or shared indiscriminately. Even so, knowing members’ ages can help you segment age cohorts and market more personally and effectively. If members in a particular age group are leaving your membership, you should dig deeper to discover the reason.

These are not the only methods to analyze your membership data, but they are easy ways to learn about your membership. Once you can identify problem areas, you can start to formulate your responses.

Act On Your Findings

With new understanding from your research, you can take a deeper look at what your association offers. Your value proposition and member benefits may need an overhaul, but knowing who is leaving and why can help you strengthen both.

By examining the data before members leave, you can reconnect with them, strengthen the existing relationship, and perhaps save the membership. They might also be able to share new ideas for better serving your members.

At Intellidata, we love to help associations better understand their members with the help of data analysis. Contact us at info@intellida.tech if you’d like to discuss your data needs.