Where are you in the cycle of membership? Help us grow by understanding what members want and need. This PDF slide show is by a prominent association management professional, Tony Rossell.

1. Circle of Membership Success
The Five Phases of Membership
Engagement
By Tony Rossell

2. Circle of Membership Success
Renewal
Interdependence Awareness
Engagement Recruitment

3. Awareness
• Defined: The process of establishing
your brand in the minds of
prospective members.
• Question: How do people learn
about your organization – Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities, and
Threats (SWOT)?

4. Awareness
• No one enters into a relationship
unless they know who you are.
Awareness is the measure of how
successful your branding efforts
have been to gain share of mind in
your target audience.

5. Recruitment
• Definition: The process of inviting
new and former members to join
your organization.
• Question: How do you get new
members now (SWOT)?

6. Recruitment
Thought: “Successful companies are
learning companies. They collect
feedback from the marketplace,
audit and evaluate results, and take
corrections designed to improve
their performance. Good marketing
works by constantly monitoring its
position in relation to its destination.”
Philip Kotler, Kotler on Marketing, page 34

7. Engagement
• Definition: The process of moving
members from observers into users
of the resources made available by
your organization.
• Question: How do you move
members into relationship with your
organization and its members
(SWOT)?

8. Engagement
• There is very little statistical difference
between non-engaged members and
lapsed members. “Those who are not
involved lie perilously close to former
members in their overarching
assessments of the value they derive from
associations. If former members are
thought of as being dead, the uninvolved
are close to comatose” (DTJ, page 4).

9. Engagement
• Member Engagement comes through
generating interaction between you and
the member using:
– New Member Orientation
– Convention and Meetings
– Product Purchases
– “800” number
– Web site usage
– Survey responses
• Mass Customization – One to One

10. Interdependence
• Definition: The process of growing a
member’s involvement in your
organization through the three glues
of relationship: 1.) Common Vision,
2.) Reward, and 3.) Recognition.
• Question: How do you enable your
members to grow and reach new
levels of interdependence (SWOT)?

11. Common Vision
• Common vision is a very powerful
force that ties many of us to an
organization. Many charitable
groups are fully supported by selling
their vision.

12. Reward
• Reward is something that we all
want. It is getting something back for
our dollar. The most common
reward that members look for from
their professional association –
according to Decision to Join -- is
valuable training and information
resources.

13. Recognition
• Recognition means that you know
me, and I want to be known as one
of you. Social media and Web 2.0
are perhaps the tools that will best
help members connect with their
association and build recognition
going forward.

14. Renewal
• Definition: The process of confirming the
value that has been delivered to the
member over the past year and requesting
the continuance of the relationship.
• Question: How do you continue the
relationship (SWOT)?
• Thought: "Look not where you fell, look
where you slipped." - African Proverb

15. Renewal
• There is a unique challenge to
renewing members. Any renewal
program needs to take into account
that people are very busy and
overwhelmed with communications.
They need to be regularly and
creatively asked to continue the
relationship.

16. The Presenter
• Tony Rossell serves as the senior
vice president of Marketing General,
Inc., in Alexandria, Virginia. A
frequent writer and speaker on
marketing topics, he is a contributing
author to two books, Membership
Marketing (ASAE 2000) and
Membership Essentials (ASAE
2008).

17. Contact
• Contact Tony at 703-706-0360 or
Tony@marketinggeneral.com. Tony
blogs at:
http://membershipmarketing.blogspot.com/.