Somewhere between the annual conference and the next renewal cycle, your prospects lose interest because they can't see why the membership matters to their careers, and by the time the renewal season arrives, they've moved on. The result is that your membership growth stalls because of the gap between what you offer and what prospects perceive.
In this guide, we'll explore practical ways to attract new members to your association or professional network and turn that perception gap into a growth opportunity.
Your membership strategy needs more than a sharp brochure or an annual conference. Here are the 5 approaches we'll unpack below.
Membership acquisition has grown harder for associations and professional networks of every size.
Here's what we see behind most of these struggles.
These struggles compound when your technology and community experiences work in separate silos. A unified approach to community and learning, backed by member data, is necessary to separate stalled growth from real momentum.
Once you understand why prospects hesitate, you can build a plan around what actually moves them. Whether you're looking to increase membership in your nonprofit organization or in your professional network, the playbook looks similar.
The following membership recruitment ideas work for organizations of all sizes.
It's futile to assume that your benefits speak for themselves. You'll want to frame every outreach message around what a new member can achieve or access in your organization, but can't find anywhere else.
If you help nurses maintain credentials or give construction finance managers peer benchmarks, you have to state these exact outcomes when you send outreach messages.
Your online community is one of the strongest recruitment tools you have. Let prospects browse discussions and view member directories before they commit.
You can also invite them to a public event. Unlike most organizations that treat community as a benefit that unlocks after payment, use it as a front door to encourage more sign-ups.
Professionals join associations and professional networks that are likely to help them grow both professionally and personally. Start by creating sample courses or micro-credential previews to show the quality of your learning experience.
Your professional learning network becomes the hook that pulls prospects into your organization.
When a new member completes a 20-minute module and later shares what they've learned with a peer without leaving your platform, you've already proved your value.
Your current member data tells you exactly who thrives in your community, so you only need to look at your most active members, then build prospect profiles that match the patterns you'll observe. Use a tool that offers behavioral analytics to show which content topics attract the highest engagement, so you can craft outreach that resonates with the right people.
For instance, if your data shows that members under 35 engage most with career development content, build your recruitment campaigns around those topics.
Satisfied members are your best recruiters once you give them shareable links and referral codes to invite their peers. You can also use recognition programs like member spotlights and featured profiles to reward the behavior you want more of, which motivates your current members to recruit others.
Younger professionals now make up a larger share of association memberships than at any point in the past decade. They expect seamless digital experiences from day 1. These 5 strategies meet those expectations while helping you grow association membership year over year.
If you want to grow membership in an organization without losing the ones you already have, you need systems instead of one-off campaigns. Try the approaches below, which build on themselves with every cycle.
The best membership growth strategies reward patience. When you build repeatable systems around content and community, your membership is more likely to grow with each cycle.
When considering how to increase membership in an association or professional network, you must realize that the right tactics are only part of the picture.
You also need to eliminate the following mistakes because they waste your time and budget.
These avoidable mistakes cost you both members and revenue. The right systems behind your community and learning experience help you recruit new members to an organization and hold onto the ones you already have.
The strategies above only work if your technology can keep up. Increasing membership often depends on whether your tools support a unified member experience.
Your AMS tracks membership records, while your email tool handles campaigns. You then add a separate community solution on top of a separate LMS, and your data ends up scattered across 4 dashboards. Your members feel that friction. Your prospects notice it too.
The most effective approach puts community and learning into one unified experience, backed by behavioral analytics. We bring these elements together at Forj through the following pillars.
Explore how Forj can help you grow your membership.
Here are answers to the questions we often receive from association and professional network leaders.
Member recruitment and member retention serve 2 different purposes. Recruitment targets new prospects and converts them into members. Retention focuses on your current members and their renewals.
You’ll want to treat both as connected efforts because new members who find value quickly become long-term advocates.
There’s no single realistic membership growth rate. The growth rate depends on your size and sector, but single-digit annual growth is a strong benchmark for established associations and professional networks.
If your organization can maintain that pace and improve first-year renewal rates each year, you're on a strong path.
For perspective, TCEA's community-led growth journey took the association from 30,000 members to over 80,000 in 5 years. ICBA built a 5,000-member banker community in just 2 years. Both results came from a unified approach to community, learning, and behavioral analytics.
Free trial memberships can work if you design them with a clear path to full membership. Give prospects enough to understand what they'll gain, but hold back premium resources.
You can expect to see good results from a recruitment campaign within 3 to 6 months, depending on the size of your audience, the channels you use, and seasonal trends in the professions you serve.
For instance, digital campaigns with strong community visibility tend to produce results faster because prospects can see real member activity.
You now have a clear path for how to attract new members to an association or professional network. You can increase your chances of attracting even more members by combining community and learning into a unified member experience. You should also add behavioral data to complete the picture since you can see exactly what your prospects need.
At Forj, we unify community and learning into a single experience for associations and professional networks. Our built-in analytics give your team clear engagement data while your members get a seamless year-round space to learn and connect.
See how Forj can help your organization grow its membership.