4 Tips From the Experts To Improve Member Experiences

If you ask the average association executive about their ideal vision for their organization, they’ll likely mention cultivating a member community that actively engages with the association’s benefits, communications, and resources. To make this vision a reality, your organization must offer more than just a compelling list of benefits. You’ll need to craft member experiences that are intuitive, supportive, and accessible to all. 

1. Map Member Journeys

As Fonteva’s guide to member engagement explains, “Members will respond to your engagement strategies differently depending on which phase they are in—for example, you wouldn’t invite a member of three years to a welcome happy hour.” 

To get started, map the specific journey your average member takes, from their first touchpoint with your association to their renewal decision. Here’s what this journey typically looks like and how you can improve experiences at each stage:

1. Discovery and Joining: Potential members discover your association, visit your website, and enroll.

1. Improve experiences by clearly highlighting top benefits on relevant landing pages and making enrollment paths as simple as possible. For example, add clear CTAs that link to a streamlined form.

2. Onboarding: New members receive welcome emails and onboarding materials, such as an introductory webinar and a recorded member portal tour.

1. Improve experiences by deploying an automated email series to welcome new members and walk them through key processes and resources.

3. Engagement: Once members set up their accounts and familiarize themselves with your offerings, they’ll begin registering for events, taking continuing education courses, participating in discussion forums, and more.

1. Improve experiences by sharing personalized recommendations based on past LMS enrollments or event registrations.

4. Renewal Decision: When it’s time to renew, members will consider the value of your benefits, how often they used those benefits, and their overall satisfaction.

1. Improve experiences by sending renewal reminders and personalized wrap-up reports to illustrate how members engaged with association resources (e.g., “You attended three events, earned two certifications, and made 12 new connections!”). Be sure to include learning program engagement as well, such as whether they earned your organization’s certification, accessed exam prep resources, or completed key professional development milestones.

5. Retention or Exit: Members will choose to either renew or let their membership lapse.

1. Improve experiences by thanking members who choose to renew and sharing exit surveys with those who lapse to diagnose why they are leaving.
   

From here, retained members will cycle through the last three stages repeatedly. If members lapse, you can attempt to reactivate them with tactical messaging that targets their interests and highlights any new offerings or improvements you’ve made.

2. Prioritize User Experience (UX) Design

Good UX design isn't just a “nice-to-have.” It's central to providing superior member experiences, and your association should consider UX anytime you build or optimize a web experience for members. 

A seamless, intuitive website or member portal can mean the difference between an engaged member and a frustrated one. To create one, keep the following considerations in mind:

• Streamline navigation and reduce friction for everyday tasks like event registration, continuing education tracking, and renewals.
• Use visual cues like color, shapes, and imagery to highlight important elements, break up content, improve content scannability, and group related resources or topics.
• Make key content easy to access with minimal clicks or search effort. For example, add a tab to the “Research Reports” navigation bar and create a dropdown menu with the five most frequently referenced reports.
• Use responsive design so members can access resources easily on any device.
• Regularly test and refine based on member feedback.

Use analytics to track drop-off points or identify hard-to-find content. Consider adding a feedback widget or survey to capture real-time comments about your site’s UX.

3. Offer Flexible Learning Paths

The most successful professionals seek ongoing, lifelong learning. Take advantage of this opportunity to support them with learning options tailored to their needs. Create personalized, flexible learning paths by:

• Offering various learning formats such as short-form content, blogs, podcasts, and microcredentials that align with members’ professional development goals. For example, members can listen to a series of educational podcasts on their commute and dedicate time after work or on weekends to more traditional courses.
• Simplifying certification prep and continuing education tracking by allowing members to track progress in a personalized dashboard that shows completed and remaining requirements.
• Enabling progress-based recommendations by using intelligent algorithms or simple branching logic to suggest next steps. If a member just finished a beginner course, prompt them to enroll in an intermediate workshop.

Additionally, offer various ways to connect with the materials, instructors, and fellow learners so members can learn in ways that best suit their needs. This might mean providing self-guided courses, synchronous online classes, one-on-one exam coaching, or discussion groups.

4. Personalize Communications Based on Member Behavior

Your association management solution (AMS) can be a powerful tool for tailoring member engagement and improving communication outcomes. Fíonta recommends choosing a CRM-based AMS that offers membership management, event hosting, marketing, data tracking, and financial management tools. Then, leverage its CRM capabilities to perform activities like:

• Respecting communication preferences. During onboarding, ask members how and when they prefer to be contacted. Then, reach out via their preferred channel when they’re likely to engage with the messages.
• Identifying high- and low-engagement segments. Encourage highly engaged members to continue participating by giving them early access to new content, VIP event invitations, or insider updates. Share targeted re-engagement campaigns with less engaged members that feature reminders and simple calls to action (e.g., “Still interested in healthcare law? Read these three recent blogs.”).
• Tracking and refining email campaigns. Analyze your email campaigns’ open, click-through, and conversion rates, noting which messages perform best for each member segment.  Emulate the most successful subject lines, timing, frequency, and content going forward.

These tactics ensure that the communications members receive are relevant to their interests and current goals. They’ll feel valued and be able to easily find the resources, events, and other benefits that appeal to them.

Improving the member experience starts with small, strategic shifts in designing interactions, encouraging engagement, and gathering insights. Associations that prioritize their online portals’ user experience, promote personalized learning opportunities, and implement member feedback will become essential partners in their members’ professional journey.

Designing intuitive, engaging experiences is a critical first step—but how do you measure the real impact of your learning programs? Learn how the Learning Power Index (LPI) can help your association connect education to revenue, retention, and long-term growth.