Gilmore Doculink is proud to be partnered with many of the most recognized and respected Member based organizations in Canada and the U.S. We deliver a wide variety of services to these partners and one of the fastest growing segments is Cross Media & Direct Mail Solutions; more specifically how it can positively impact membership growth and retention. Moving the needle even a single percentage point in one or both of these categories can represent the difference between a good year and a great year.
One of the common missed opportunities in the plan to impact new growth and stem the tide of attrition is allowing existing members an opportunity to give you a compass to find new members as well as sharing their voice as to why they will stay a member or leave in the future. Who better knows your value than your current portfolio…. so why not ask them? To attract and maintain members, you need to ensure you are meeting or exceeding their expectations and this will likely change over time.
When building a Marketing Strategy you can answer a few important questions before looking for new members by better understanding your current Member base;
- Where are my members? (Geography)
- Why are they still here? (Value)
- How do I explain this to potential new members? (Message)
In some cases our partners engage Gilmore Doculink with these questions answered, but in many instances we collaborate with them to find out this information. There are a variety of ways to mine this information from your current Member base, you can use geographic mapping tools to discover clusters of high penetration in certain areas or dig even deeper to learn the demographic information paired with location details. An often overlooked initiative is to choose a mix of the current portfolio and send them a pointed, short survey asking the questions you have determined as the most valuable and give them a voice in the future of the organizations focus. Often a simple offer of gift card or give away will be enough incentive to gather the most honest answers about your organizational value to your Membership base, this feedback is worth its weight in gold. Gilmore Doculink has a turnkey solution for a very personalized survey process that can help you accomplish this with over a decade of proven success.
Once you have all this investigative work done how do you take the next step? Watch soon for the next posting; New Member Acquisition
Thank you
Scott Cherkewich, Director of Marketing, Gilmore Doculink
