Review and Optimize Your Membership Strategy for 2025

2025 has finally begun! A new year brings new opportunities. This proves a time for rethinking what worked in the last year and deciding what resolutions to make for the next year. For many people, it’s a time to commit to making changes that one was previously hesitant about. This should also be the case for your business!

So what did we learn in 2024? As it is important for businesses to self-evaluate, now may be an important time to look over KPIs, with the aim of identifying what worked and what didn’t. Important KPIs will be member acquisition, engagement rates, and churn rates. 

Looking Ahead to 2025

Remember, you want to attract customers to join your membership programs, and keep them engaged, so as to build community! This is about a process of building a long-term relationship with them, one which can continue across many years, rather than just brief ones of temporary convenience. 

To this extent, as you look over such KPIs, you’ll want to identify what strategies worked and what didn’t. As you do so, you should keep an eye on the emerging trends of 2025. 

So what is in the cards for 2025? It’s too soon to tell, but based on the past year, we can already see that some trends can be anticipated. 

Some trends are demographic. The role played by Millennials and Gen Z, as a consumer base, and as part of your team, will be increasingly important as they come of age and become increasingly influential as consumers. It will be key for you to adjust your strategies accordingly in outreach to young people. 

Adapt to New Trends to Keep Pace

Consequently, the trends that drive Gen Z and Millennial purchasing activity are important to keep a handle on. This dovetails with the technology that Gen Z and Millennials use in their daily lives. With businesses operating across vast distances and in multinational markets, meetings will continue to take place on platforms such as Zoom. 

Digital events may come to replace a number of real-world events. But with many hoping for a return to real-life activities, especially after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, you may have to work on developing hybrid events that can offer the best of both worlds–the immediacy of real-world interaction as well as the convenience offered by video calls, in allowing for communication across large distances. 

Mobiles will continue to be used by customers to learn about new products, compare prices, access information on new deals, and stay connected to the world at large. The expansion of 5G networks means that mobiles and smartphones will continue to play an important role. 

Certainly, print media won’t be coming back anytime soon. If you don’t already take a digital-first approach to your business, you should before it’s too late! If there is any utility to print, it will mostly be as a prestige, or antique product, sources of information are already overwhelmingly digital. 

What are Future Trends Likely to Be?

Even if we can predict future trends in technology as suited to specific generational demographics, a key guiding principle will remain constant. That is, you should continue to focus on personalization, particularly with regard to member relationships. 

The Internet offers more choices than ever. As such, how are customers going to connect with you and your business, among the many different options before their fingertips? The answer lies in the strength of connections, in that customers value products and services that they see as having similar values and ideals to themselves. 

Customers will want to feel rewarded on the basis of their connections with such products and services, as though they have a personal connection, that they are rewarded through strengthening. As such, honesty, integrity, and cultivating a sense of community is vital. 

Tier-based subscription models, rather than dues-based models have emerged as one means of cultivating this relationship. Namely. such a model offers different levels of one’s relationship with a product or brand. But as customers develop ties with a product or business and hope to take that relationship to the next level, that proves an important way of driving up engagement, and maintaining a long-term relationship with that customer. 

To learn more about how you can monetize your loyalty program, get in touch with our consultants today!