MEMBER engagement has always been a challenging task for associations as it straddles right between recruitment and retention in the membership journey. It actually starts during prospecting and accelerates when a member joins. It must be sustained during membership; otherwise, retaining the member will be difficult.
At the recent 9th Associations Summit that my organization, the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE), held virtually, the American Society of Association Executives represented by Senior Director for Member Relations Amy Hemphill and Associate Director for Online Communities Megan Kuhman discussed “Member Engagement: Ask, Capture and Take Action (ACT)” and how ASAE managed to take on a sustained member engagement program during the pandemic.
The technology-driven ACT methodology, premised on the simple notion that “people will talk to and engage with you if you ask them a question,” covers these steps and considerations:
- Ask questions like: “What do you value? What do you need? What are your pain points?”
- Capture these data into the member’s insights of wants, needs, and interests.
- Take action to deliver tools, opportunities, and community to support member growth.
The ACT framework was applied to three key membership engagement tools:
1. On-boarding campaign. ASAE asked 12 questions during a year-long campaign and sent them to 28,000 members. Then individual responses were captured and were relayed to members. Reports were displayed on a dashboard and gave opportunities for ASAE to reach out again when other things open up.
2. The ASAE chat box. This typically asks the question, “Can I help you?” It captures data on whether the chatters are using the tool and what they are asking. ASAE then determines what actions can be taken resulting to the development of more resources for members such as sample practices and policies as well as templates.
3. The ‘Collaborate on-line’ community. The platform, whose tagline is “conversation and community connected by ASAE,” has 17,565 active members and 80 groups across the whole membership. The “ask” is for members to join the community, connect with peers, exchange experiences and solutions, and provide recommendations.
The “capture” consists of data on whether members are joining and staying in the community, are posting in the platform and are getting responses, what are they talking about and are there actions that ASAE can take. The “take action” consists of tagging content for future community search results.
Final thoughts: There is need to evaluate how you are reaching your members and finding ways to create a two-way conversation. Automate, when possible, but the human touch is still paramount in any action taken. Engage internal staff to be part of the actions taken. Capture and analyze data for trends and make changes, based on captured data, to reach more members.
The pandemic has made it more imperative for associations to engage with their members in more ways than one. Those that did have thrived and those that lagged behind have stalled.
Octavio ‘Bobby’ Peralta is the founder and the CEO of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives; the “association of associations.” E-mail: obp@adfiap.org.