Unlocking Member Engagement: 5 Key Strategies for Success

Remaining relevant to your members

Many associations face an ongoing challenge: maintaining consistent and meaningful engagement with their members.

Why does member engagement matter? Because an organization succeeds or fails based on engagement. Engagement helps your organization accomplish key objectives and demonstrate the unique value that you provide to your members.

Engagement drives member recruitment, retention, event participation, and revenue – making it essential to your organization’s success.

What engagement looks like in most associations

A typical association member engages with your organization in just a few ways:

1. Computer
2. Smartphone
3. In-Person Events

For decades, associations have connected with members on their computers via websites, online communities, emails, and social media. These touchpoints have historically been driven by content and contact data from the association’s CMS and AMS/CRM – and have been successful engagement tools.

In-person conferences and events have also been vital touchpoints for members to advance their industries, grow professionally, and connect with their associations and with one another. Meetings have shifted from in-person to virtual/online and back again, introducing new ways to engage members, but in-person gatherings remain a cornerstone for face-to-face connections.

And for the past decade, associations have supported their conferences and events with mobile apps. In the US, download rates for conference apps are high, often between 80-90% (State of Mobile in Associations Benchmark Report).

Mobile devices dominate our time and attention both during and outside of events, so what’s missing from the engagement picture is that few associations are leveraging the success of their event apps to extend engagement with a year-round member app.

How to amplify member engagement

Why are associations still clinging to outdated approaches in designing member experiences? Member engagement is more than your website and emails.

Mobile is the giant hole in most organizations' engagement strategies. By expanding your event app to a year-round member app, your organization can amplify the effectiveness of your existing website, AMS/CRM, event app, and more.

If you look at the statistics, the opportunity provided by a member app is obvious:

• Smartphone usage is nearly 100% for adults aged 18 to 64 (Pew Research)
• The average American checks their phone 205 times a day (Reviews.org)
• 84% of consumers are either multi-platform (web + mobile) or mobile-only users (Comscore)
• 5.5x more time is spent using a mobile app than mobile web (Comscore)

A member app transforms the member experience by seamlessly integrating the 4 C's of Engagement – Communications, Content, Community, and Conferences – to provide a more wholistic experience that engages members more effectively and delivers greater value than your website, emails, community, and event app alone.

5 Key Mobile Engagement Strategies

Results Direct | RD Mobile recommends 5 key strategies to provide an exponential impact on engagement via a year-round mobile member app. An app enables you to unlock new opportunities to meet members where they are – in a format ready-made for engagement.

By following these strategies, you can future-proof your organization and ensure that you remain relevant for years to come.

Strategy #1 – Identify how increasing engagement benefits members & your organization

Start by assessing how increasing member engagement can help you reach your organization’s objectives. Your strategic plan will lay out goals and priorities for your organization around new member acquisition and retention, attracting the next generation of professionals, increasing conference registrations and sponsorship, generating non-dues revenue, increasing member participation, and more.

How can you leverage a mobile member app to deliver more proactive communications, enhance content delivery and value, and build stronger communities? Your mobile engagement strategy can help you align and achieve your association's goals across all your channels.

Strategy #2 - Determine which engagement types your organization offers & assess their effectiveness

Next determine which engagement types you currently offer your members – Communications, Content, Community, and Conferences – and create measures for success to evaluate how they’re performing. Are your members opening and acting on your emails? Are they accessing – or even aware of – the depth of resources available to them? Are they participating in your communities and registering for your events?

By assessing and then modeling delivery of engagement types, you can optimize the channels and experiences that make the greatest impact on members.

For associations, mobile apps offer a unique opportunity to engage members in ways that were previously unimaginable. Accessibility and convenience, proactive communication, enhanced content delivery, and stronger communities are keys to what makes a mobile app so powerful.

Accessibility & Convenience

Mobile devices are the only technology that people carry with them 24/7. This constant accessibility makes mobile apps an ideal platform for engaging members. Whether it's sending push notifications, providing on-demand content, or facilitating real-time communication, mobile apps ensure that members can access your association's resources anytime, anywhere.

Proactive Communication

Traditional communication methods, such as emails, are increasingly unread by members and are overused by associations. Mobile apps, on the other hand, enable associations to send proactive, strategic push notifications that can immediately engage the user. This ensures that important updates, event reminders, and other communications rise above the noise to reach members in a timely and effective manner.

Enhanced Content Delivery

Mobile apps provide a platform for delivering content when and where members want it. Whether it's news, journals, or on-demand videos, mobile apps make it easy for members to stay informed and engaged with the association's offerings – instead of consulting Google. This is particularly important in today's information-rich environment, where members expect instant access to relevant content.

Building Stronger Communities

Mobile apps facilitate peer-to-peer collaboration and community building. For example, 98.5% of Facebook users access the platform via mobile phones (Statista). By integrating existing communities into a mobile app, associations can create a seamless and engaging experience for their members. This not only strengthens the sense of community but also encourages members to actively participate and contribute.

Strategy #3 - Evaluate a mobile engagement platform to complement your current tech stack

Strategy #4 - Determine where to start & what functionality to go live with based on your audience, staffing & technology stack

Strategy #5 - Develop a (simple) plan to grow engagement across multiple areas over time

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Watch the "5 Strategies for Driving Member Engagement" webinar recording to hear Strategies #3 - 5 and learn more about how associations have amplified member engagement significantly by integrating the Engagefully 365 mobile platform with their existing tech stacks.