6 Proven Membership Retention Strategies for Your Nonprofit

For many nonprofits, a membership program is a fantastic way to raise money and connect with people who are passionate about their cause. While finding new members is usually a priority, member retention is easy to overlook.

But, if you’re interested in building a thriving base of highly engaged members, retention should be one of your top priorities—after all, it’s typically less expensive to retain existing members than to find completely new ones. 

Retention efforts shouldn’t be limited to a once-a-year event campaign or drive. A good membership retention strategy will include a whole series of interactions that reinforces why people should continue to stay involved with your organization. 

That’s a pretty big ask, especially if you’re working with limited resources and volunteer staff. Still, with the right tools, you can deliver regular personalized interactions that improve member retention.

Here are 6 High-Impact Membership Retention Strategies

Many membership renewal best practices center on the things you know you should be doing. You know you should send regular emails, keep benefits up to date, and follow up with renewal offers. 

But that’s so much easier said than done! It’s so easy to put off those tasks or to fall into the “just get it done” mindset.  It’s easy to end up focusing on quantity—like sending out mass emails that don’t speak to individual members’ needs—instead of sending higher-quality personalized communications and planning thoughtful activities that will keep your constituents excited about your organization. 

But people today expect more than mass communications and one-size-fits-all experiences; they want more personalized, targeted messages. In fact, 73% of people report they’re more likely to be repeat customers if a for-profit brand offers personalized experiences. 

You can apply that same lesson to your membership program by using every contact as an opportunity to improve your relationship with your supporters. Here are six membership retention strategies that do just that. 

1. Use Your Connections Strategically   

The average person in your membership database probably receives dozens—maybe even hundreds—of emails every single day. Roughly 45% of that volume is unsolicited spam messages. 

And, while the emails you send to your members aren’t spam, that doesn’t necessarily keep your messages out of the junk folder. Almost half of the consumers who marked an opt-in message as spam reported doing so because they were emailed too frequently by the organization. 

But you have to communicate with your members, and you probably have to do so pretty frequently. You’re probably sending things like:

• Welcome emails
• Member newsletters
• Benefits and perks reminders
• Event invitations
• Renewal reminders
• Lapsed membership emails

When you’re sending these messages, timing and targeting are everything. As a member’s anniversary approaches, for example, you could send an email celebrating a year of engagement and recapping some highlights of their membership over the last twelve months. At the end of the message, you could include a call to action inviting this member to renew their membership. 

This connection is more impactful because it’s not just a one-size-fits-all renewal reminder. It also reminds the member of all the benefits that their membership includes and a reminder of the impact that they’ve made with their support.

2. Prioritize the Onboarding Process

One of the best predictors of how long a member will stick around is how they felt about their onboarding process when they first joined your organization. That’s why it’s so important to prioritize your members’ experiences from the moment they sign on. 

This means taking the time to create an onboarding process that ensures they have the information they need, access to leaders or other members to guide them, and a good understanding of their role in the organization.

The moment a member decides to leave isn’t the right time to start finding ways to get them better connected to your organization. It starts with their first experiences as members! 

Your member retention strategy starts with the onboarding experience. The way a member starts their journey lays the foundation for how long they’ll stay involved. Spend some time making sure it’s an experience they’ll enjoy.

3. Don’t Overlook Direct Mail 

Email is an obvious communication choice for many nonprofits because it’s fast, relatively easy to execute, and can often be automated. However, the average email open rate for a nonprofit is 28.59% and, while that’s a better open rate than you’d see from a retail company, it’s still pretty low. 

Direct mail, on the other hand, is just the opposite. Seventy-seven percent of people sort through their mail as soon as they receive it, while 56% report receiving mail is a “real pleasure.” 

People trust physical mail; it’s viewed as more authentic and genuine than email. It feels personal. And that personal connection can be used to help drive retention and keep your organization at the forefront of your members’ minds.

Direct mail programs are just as customizable as emails if you have the right nonprofit CRM. You can establish a letter template and send it to a list of candidates who meet specific criteria. Using your CRM in conjunction with a mail merge program allows you to send out a ton of highly personalized letters that resonate with your supporters.

Keep in mind that direct mail will always be more expensive and require more resources than email. That’s why it’s so important to target your efforts, include the right information in your letter, and be thoughtful about who receives your messaging. Including impact reports, reporting on your work, or sharing stories about your members can really help your constituents connect with your cause.

4. Build Industry Authority 

Don’t forget that providing members with detailed information about your organization’s industry or sector is actually one of the benefits of their membership. When someone joins your organization, they do so at least partly because they want to stay informed about a cause that’s important to them. 

Beyond showing members the more tangible benefits of their membership, you need to prove that you are a trusted authority or resource in your specific field. This builds an ongoing trust that can be used to drive retention! 

You can do this by creating videos, hosting community forums, and sharing other non-promotional materials like webinars, classes, or workshops. These are particularly in high demand right now; almost two-thirds of organizations have reported massive increases in webinar and social site participation since the start of the pandemic in 2020. 

When you proactively offer your members access to educational opportunities, interesting information, and other perks and benefits, you’ll have an easier time inspiring them to renew their membership when it’s time.

5. Personalize Your Approach to Lapsed Members

According to data from Marketing General Incorporated, email is one of the most effective channels for reinstating lapsed members. However, you should build those emails strategically to appeal to specific groups of members and inspire them to stay engaged with your organization.

Say you have two members who have lapsed, we’ll call them Member A and B (we’re feeling especially creative today). With detailed member records, you know that Member A has three children and works at a local company that was recently in the news because of layoffs. Meanwhile, Member B’s nonrenewal was triggered by an expired card. 

In this case, it’s easier to renew Member B, who may have the resources but just not the time to update their payment information. Sending a simple reminder with an easy way to pay may be enough to trigger retention. Meanwhile, you can consider Member A a possibility for future campaigns involving free programming, volunteer opportunities, and discounts. Both approaches use members’ data in a way that is empathetic to your members’ needs.   

6. View Member Surveys as Opportunities

Many organizations invite their members to take occasional surveys to get a feel for their constituents’ satisfaction. You can do the same!

Try asking your members to answer a few short questions about their experiences with your organization. Then, use their responses to inform your membership renewal campaign. For example, you may note that 35% of members have reported the cost is not worth the benefits they receive. What if that specific feedback triggered a retention tactic? 

If your members say the cost is too high, you have a few options. You could try dropping the price or offering a discount code for people who renew early. You could also consider reevaluating your membership benefits and finding opportunities to add more value to your members’ existing perks. 

If people mention that they don’t see the value of being a member, you could try reminding them of the benefits you offer or identify some new ones to promote to your supporters. 

Surveying lapsed or canceled members can also offer a wealth of information. Think of these surveys as you would an exit interview when someone leaves a job. Exit interviews can provide employers with valuable insight that helps improve the employee experience. In the same way, sending a survey to lapsed or canceled members can help you better understand why people leave and find ways to improve your program, communication approach, and benefits.

Using a CRM To Support Membership Retention

All the strategies we’ve discussed so far come with one big caveat. You need the resources to implement them! Keeping track of something as simple as a member’s address can be a herculean challenge when you’re tracking all of your members manually. 

This is where a Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) system comes in. A good CRM can provide a way to manage your relationships with your members for their entire life cycles while keeping track of small, important facts that could be used to personalize their experience later. 

A strong CRM with good membership management features is capable of pulling off—and in many cases automating— these strategies because it uses your members’ data to trigger events. 

For example, you can use your CRM to create and automate emails that remind people that their membership is expiring soon, then create separate emails for members who don’t renew. Or you could create and send emails to members with lower membership levels and invite them to upgrade to the next tier when it’s time for them to renew.  

Of course, not all CRMs work the same, nor are they all appropriate for nonprofits. There are three specific components that you should look for when selecting an option. 

Simple Interface

A simple interface is a big selling point for many nonprofits. You should be able to create renewal reminder emails, membership forms, and other campaign assets using simple drag-and-drop features instead of needing to hire a web developer or graphic designer to do it for you. 

Simple form and email creation will save you time and money, reduce stress for your staff, and help you quickly create compelling, effective renewal reminders. 

Customizability

Membership-focused CRMs should help you create unique forms, emails, and other renewal assets. Look for a solution that gives you the ability to set your own membership tiers, apply your branding to membership forms and pages, and customize your members’ experience with your organization. 

You’ll also want to look for a platform that lets you track unique metrics and data points that will help you hone your tactics in the future. Customizability ensures you can create effective forms, collect important information about your members, and use that data to build reports and make decisions.

Automation Tools

Automation is a huge benefit for nonprofits, and it’s especially handy if you’re running a membership program. It eliminates the need for many mundane tasks that are necessary but offer a minimal return. 

Many CRMs can trigger tasks based on a variety of events or circumstances, which allows you to create highly customized but automated workflows. For example, you may want to look for a tool that lets you set up a workflow that reminds a member to renew, sends an alert when their membership lapses, and sends two or three emails that remind them of the perks of being a member before linking them to a renewal form.

Membership retention strategies need to center on high-quality messaging contacts, not just lots of messaging. It’s not always easy to deliver the kind of personalized experience that garners results. But a powerful CRM can help you build them and encourage long-standing membership.

Build a Great Membership Renewal Strategy

If you want to build a thriving base of highly engaged members, you’ll want to create a strategy for retaining your existing member base.

Focus on sending personalized communications to your members, especially if their membership has lapsed or is due to expire soon. When possible, use the membership management tools in your CRM to send valuable information and reiterate the value of being a member of your organization. 

By automating those communications based on the specific details of each member’s experience with your organization, you’ll save time and your membership renewal campaign will be more successful.

If you’re interested in using a CRM to manage your membership program, we’d love to talk to you! Learn more about how Neon CRM for Associations can help you simplify your member renewal process. You can also schedule a time to talk to someone about your membership program, your goals, and how we can help.