How do you create a customer experience that meets (or exceeds) today’s member expectations? Start with engagement scoring.
Don’t let a disappointing member experience turn your members away. Develop an engaging experience that rivals that of today’s leading companies, and your members will stick around.
If you aren’t thinking of your members as consumers, you should be. They’ve come to expect great experiences from companies like Amazon and Netflix, and they expect a similar engaging experience with your association.
Not convinced that your member engagement needs a boost? Consider this: Data from the Community Brands Member Engagement and Loyalty Study suggests there’s room for organizations to get members more involved.
The study takes a close look at what members want from their professional associations and what makes them stick around. It examines member loyalty data by three segments: high (“Super Members”), medium (“Rank and File”), and low (“Value Seekers”). Study data shows that even among Super Members, who are more likely to have participated in most of the association activities tested, less than half say they’ve participated in any single engagement opportunity.
You work hard to serve current members and attract new ones. The last thing you want is for them to walk away. But if you aren’t keeping them engaged, you just might lose them.
So how do you create a great member experience that lives up to your members’ rising standards? Start with engagement scoring to determine how engaged your members and prospective members are with your organization, and then take action to get them more involved.
Member engagement scoring is easier than you might think
Engagement scoring might sound complicated, but it’s well within reach for associations. NetForum association management software (AMS) includes proprietary A-Score technology that automatically measures the engagement level of your members – individuals and organizations – based on your organization’s unique requirements.
Using A-Score, you can easily determine the interactions most meaningful to your organization – such as renewals, donations, products purchased, events attended, committee and advocacy activity, and social behavior – and weight their value. A-Score then automatically scores member behavior on an ongoing basis to show you which individuals are most (and least) engaged. Then, most importantly, you have the insights you need to take action and get members more involved.
What you can do with A-Score
This type of qualitative insight allows you to calculate and measure the health of each member’s relationship with your organization. In turn, you can make smarter, faster decisions and take informed action when it comes to connecting with members.
Think of A-Score as a data-driven way to kickstart targeted engagement campaigns. It makes trends jump out so you can engage more effectively with specific groups of members.
For example, here are some ways you can use A-Score:
- Identify members who have never donated and have high engagement scores. These are great donor prospects because they are clearly passionate about your organization. Target these members with a specific fundraising ask.
- If you see a pattern of increasing engagement among a group of members, cultivate them for volunteer opportunities, speaking at an event, or serving on your board.
- Identify your low-engagement member base and target them with a re-engagement campaign.
TIP: Use A-Score functionality with NetForum’s moves management functionality to automate and personalize communications to targeted groups of people based on their scoring patterns.
Simply put, A-Score helps you make more informed decisions about how to engage with your members. So, without a lot of manual work, you’re able to send the right message at the right time – rewarding engaged members and reconnecting with those less engaged.
2021 Update: getting more out of your member engagement scoring
Here’s something that might surprise you: On average, only 20 percent of an association’s member data is stored in their association management software (AMS) system. The reality is that as you add new member-facing technology systems – such as email marketing, marketing automation, an online member community, event management system, learning management system, and so on – your data can become scattered across your organization.
So, how good can your member engagement scoring be if you’re only scoring 20 percent of your member data? The good news is that there is tremendous opportunity to get more value out of your member engagement scoring by capturing the remaining 80 percent of member touchpoints.
The old approach to this challenge was to integrate your AMS with your other solutions so you could capture all data in the AMS. But this strategy is tough to keep up with as you add more and more systems.
The modern approach is to treat your AMS as another data contributor, using a data analytics solution to link and process all of your data. This strategy allows you to analyze data across all platforms, no matter how it’s formatted. It also greatly enhances your member engagement scoring by allowing you to score your full set of member data, versus just a small segment of your data.
Take the next step
Don’t let a disappointing member experience turn your members away. Develop an engaging customer experience that rivals that of leading for-profit companies, and your members will stick around for the long haul.
Learn more about how NetForum AMS by Community Brands can help you deliver an engaging member experience. Explore NetForum.
Learn how the Nucleus data analytics solution from Community Brands can help you expand your member engagement scoring to include all of your member data. Explore Nucleus.
