For growing associations, a “good enough” approach often won’t get you very far with recruitment. Trade and professional associations have to keep up with changing trends in their industries, meaning what causes members to join your organization one day might change the next.
As such, your association needs a robust but flexible member acquisition strategy. To continue building your community with new members, you need a strong approach to marketing, communication, and partnerships.
In this guide, we’ll explore five ways you can reach prospective members and persuade them to join your association.
1. Create a dedicated member recruitment email cadence.
Email marketing is a key tool for recruiting new members. Ensure prospective members have opportunities to join your mailing list even if they aren’t ready to commit to a membership. This allows you to stay in touch with them and eventually push them toward becoming a member.
For example, you might collect non-members’ emails through:
For example, you might collect non-members’ emails through:
- Event registrations. If you host events that are open to both your members and the general public, use them as recruitment opportunities. For example, you might send non-members information about your next event as well as a sample newsletter to show off your association’s other benefits.
- Newsletter subscriptions. Your newsletter is a key opportunity to showcase what your association has to offer. Highlight new content, updates at your association, and any recent accomplishments. An email newsletter should provide both an overview of current happenings at your association and calls to action to get involved, ensuring current members stay informed and prospective members make the jump to join your association.
- Free memberships. Some associations have a free membership tier where supporters receive limited benefits, such as access to your newsletter. The goal of a free membership tier is to provide a sampling of your offerings to entice these individuals to upgrade to a paid membership.
No matter how you gathered a prospective member’s email, be sure to deliver the content they signed up for and your recruitment messages.
For example, you should send out your monthly newsletter to all subscribers, but you might also flag non-members who are subscribed and send them a welcome email introducing your association. You would then follow up with an email highlighting new and popular content. Finally, you might present an opportunity to join your association at a reduced rate for their first month of membership.
2. Work with other organizations in your sector.
Put your association in front of prospective members by working with other organizations in your industry. For example, you might:
- Run a booth at an industry conference.
- Invite guest lecturers to host webinars for your members.
- Collaborate with industry researchers to create sector reports.
All of these, and other types of partnerships, should be mutually beneficial. For instance, if you host an event with multiple vendors, presenters, and industry professionals, give them space to present their offerings. In exchange, you can do the same at their events.
This not only provides your association with access to your target audience but also establishes your organization’s presence, credibility, and authority in your sector. This means prospective members are more likely to hear about and trust your association.
3. Promote a variety of content.
You can attract new members by creating and strategically sharing a range of content with the public. While you should keep major benefits gated behind paid memberships, prospective audiences can only decide if joining your association is worth it if they know what you offer.
As such, assess your content strategy and decide what should be shared with general audiences. For instance, you might pick recent blog articles with search engine optimization (SEO) potential that could become highly discoverable. Nexus Marketing’s guide to SEO for associations recommends using search engines to promote the following types of content:
- Certifications and training products
- Memberships
- Tools and resources, like educational content
- Recurring events
Essentially, an SEO strategy takes time to generate results, so focus on producing evergreen content prospective members can engage with at any time. For example, a one-time event would likely not do well with SEO marketing due to the limited window of promotion, whereas an ongoing series of networking events would have ample time to attract new members.
4. Consider an “open-door” membership model.
We already touched on the concept of free memberships, which is known as an “open-door” membership model. This approach can help immediately grow your community through free memberships.
Free members can then contribute to your association to improve the experience for all members while they enjoy limited perks. For example, you might invite free members to participate in conversations on your community engagement platform. However, free members would be unable to access your detailed membership directory or message members directly.
This membership model works by enticing free members with partial benefits to show the perks of a full membership and creating moments of frustration or fear of missing out that push them to invest in a full membership.
Remember that a free membership should be a careful balance. Members should receive enough benefits that they see the value of engaging with your association but not so many that they fail to upgrade.
5. Make signing up easy.
Marketing your association to new members can be challenging, so ensure when you do finally push prospective members to your sign-up page, joining is as simple as possible.
You can create a positive sign-up experience and encourage more individuals to join your association by:
- Being clear about benefits. Members should have no questions about what they are signing up for when they join your association. If you have multiple membership tiers, ensure your sign-up page clearly labels which benefits are part of each membership package.
- Providing self-service tools. In the event that a member makes a mistake or wants to change a detail about their membership, they should be able to do so easily. Leverage association management software with self-service member engagement tools so members can upgrade their membership tier, update payment information, and change contact details.
- Asking limited questions upfront. You will need to collect a significant amount of information on your members to create positive experiences for them, but when members first sign up, stick to the basics, such as their name and contact information. Tradewing’s guide to membership directories shares how associations can gather detailed information during the member profile creation process, which can occur later as part of the onboarding experience.
Drive sign-ups by issuing calls to action across external materials. For example, on your website’s homepage, you should have a clearly labeled “join” or “sign up” button. Ensure your sign-up page contains basic details about your association so if members reach it via a link from your email newsletter or social media account, they have proper context for what your organization does without needing to browse your site.
Start earning more members now.
From your email newsletter to strategic content marketing, your association can recruit more new members by improving your promotion, content, and membership model strategies.
To jumpstart your recruitment efforts, evaluate your outreach strategy. Consider how your emails highlight top benefits and persuade recipients to explore your offerings. For example, you might reevaluate your email newsletter’s calls-to-action to drive prospective members to join and current members to renew. Even small adjustments like this will help build a thriving, engaged community for your association.
