The best measure of membership engagement is a member’s behavior. A member who attends, buys, volunteers, reads electronic communication, posts, etc. is more likely to stay with your organization than one who does not.

You can see my research on this here.

But in addition to a strong communication strategy, what is the value that you can deliver to encourage this behavior? What do members really want?

I think that there are three basic foundations to build upon in order to provide a member with value and retain them with your organization are:

1. Vision – When we cast a vision for members that together we can do more than we can do alone, we create a compelling answer to the question, “Why belong to this organization?”


2. Reward – Members want tangible value to support their continued membership with product that makes a difference in their lives or career. This answers the question, “What’s in it for me?”


3. Relationship – We are a communal people. We want to be around people that we can help and that can help us. Relationship can be with staff or other members and face to face or electronic. It answers the question, “Who can I connect to here?”

Obviously, the hard work is to come up with strong and reliable answers to these questions.

Originally posted @ Membership Marketing Blog