4 easy ways to learn more about your members

The more information you have about your members, the more you can provide them with the best possible experience and better meet their needs (even the ones they didn’t know they had!). Data is arguably the most valuable asset for any organisation but in particular, Associations.

So, how do you collect this data without doing resource intensive (time and financial) enquiries?

Data collection can happen seamlessly throughout the member journey with a quality Association Management System (AMS). An AMS allows you to collect information through system and custom fields (learn more about these here).

Below are four ways you can integrate data collection using the Membes system to help you learn more about your members and offer more tailored services.

1. Use renewals time to further engage members

Renewals time is a great opportunity for you to connect with your members and learn more about where their business or personal career is today and what their focus is for the next 12 months.

As well as the standard renewal questions, why not add additional custom fields by asking members what their biggest struggle in the last 12 months has been or what their top three goals for the next 12 months are.

You can then review the responses and use it to help form your events schedule e.g. if members struggled with attracting new clients you could create a sales 101 event series to help them learn new skills.

This information can also be used as a content generator for your blogs page and/or your social media, e.g. the top goal for our members in 2023-24 is diversifying revenue streams – how can you achieve this?

2. Add a question to your event registration form

Maximise the event registration process by adding additional fields to your standard registration form. You can customise the questions asked depending on the subject matter of the event or the expected/intended audience.

For example if you are holding a student event, take the opportunity to find out expected dates of graduation so you can create targeted communications promoting transitioning to a full membership around the time of graduations. Your AMS will allow you to segment your database based on this information e.g. you can pull a list of all students graduating in July 2023.

3. Ask a question in your community forum

Having a community forum allows you to directly engage with your members so asking for their feedback, experiences and thoughts regularly is a great way to stay connected with them.

Membes recently posed a question in the Membes Community asking for wants and needs in regard to a new Employment Hub. Community members answered the question providing great ideas on what they’d like to see and these responses are now being taken into consideration by the Membes team as part of the development process.

4. Remind your members to keep their information updated

Another way to ensure you have the latest information about your members is to regularly remind them to update their profile information. With a good AMS members will easily be able to do this themselves which saves on resources for you.

You can remind them via an automated quarterly email asking them to log in and check their information and why not include a banner in your regular email newsletters so it’s always on their mind.

Undertaking these four easy tasks will enable you to stay up to date on your member’s contact information and also understand what their world currently looks like. Information is power, so use it to segment your database to enable you to develop personalised communications.

You are the centre piece of your industry so the more you know about trends, expectations and challenges the better you can work to support your industry and uplift it.