How can Businesses Increase Membership Engagement?

Membership engagement is a key component for businesses in today’s interconnected business-consumer dynamic. The pathways for membership engagement have evolved with technology, creating multiple channels that businesses can use to keep their members engaged.

What is membership engagement?

Membership engagement refers to the level of interaction that goes on between an organisation and its members. At its core, it is a mutually beneficial investment by both parties to maintain a relationship, and this engagement can take many forms. Membership engagement can be nurtured through various strategies, such as regular communication through socials, exclusive benefits, online communities, and events, among others.

By increasing membership engagement, businesses are able to build stronger relationships with their members, increase retention rates, and create an engaging and active community for their business.

Why is measuring members’ engagement important for businesses?

It is important for businesses to measure members’ engagement for several reasons:

1. Encourage renewals: It is important to keep current customers (who are already enrolled with the business’ members program) happy, so as to encourage and maintain renewals. It also costs less, from a marketing point of view, to retain renewals as compared to acquiring new registrations.
   
   
2. Customer satisfaction: By measuring members´ engagement, businesses are able to identify areas where they are succeeding, and areas needing improvement. This enables a business to better budget their marketing dollar and prioritise the products that customers are more likely to purchase or use.
   
   
3. Referrals: Engaged members are more likely to recommend a business, brand or service to their family and friends. By measuring the engagement rate, businesses are able to identify their most engaged members, and encourage them for referrals through personalised marketing strategies.
   
   
4. Creates a community: The access to an established community enables a business to carry out surveys, pilot testing, and such other activities easily. Businesses are also able to focus on the more engaged members, and leverage on their expertise and interaction to motivate lesser engaged members into participating.
   
   

So, measuring members’ engagement is key in helping a business identify opportunities to improve its customer satisfaction, boost revenue and increase its member retention and referrals.

Effective member engagement strategies

For a business to develop a long-lasting relationship with its members, it is important for it to have in place an effective member engagement strategy. There are several factors to consider in the development of a successful members engagement plan. These include:

1. Creating a member-centric strategy that caters to their preferences, and providing them with an exceptional experience that is consistent.
   
   
2. Ensuring that the business’ engagement endeavours are a constant throughout the year, and remain active. Regular communication between business and members is an effective way to keep members engaged.
   
   
3. Developing member engagement strategies that feature a hybrid interaction model. This means that businesses should consider in-person and virtual activities that encourage participation and engagement. For example, businesses can consider holding a members-exclusive preview for a product launch while also allocating its budget to offering a members´ giveaway on its social media channels.
   
   
4. Using available automation systems to score and rate your members based on most engaged and least engaged, and prepare marketing strategies for the different customer behaviour patterns.
   
   

Using an engagement API to boost membership engagement

Another effective pathway to boost member engagement that many businesses are turning to, (and is cost-effective), is to integrate an engagement API into their existing membership ecosystem. Based on the statistics provided from Ad2iction, a Taiwanese marketing technology company, the company saw a significant increase after it integrated an engagement API from Engagement Lab.

The deployment of a panel network through the engagement API enabled the businesses to achieve a 90% participation rate in its survey programs, three times the usual participation rate (before integration) and a growth of between 100–150 new members per month.

These highly positive figures are reflective of the benefits a business can achieve through the simple integration of an engagement API.

Find out more about how your business boosts membership engagement with the services that Engagement Lab provides.
Talk to our consultants today!