Member Engagement: 10 Top Strategies for the Digital Age

Two major reasons why members join professional associations include being part of a community of like-minded individuals in their industry and accessing opportunities to develop their skills in the field. Your association can effectively fulfill both purposes by developing a strong member engagement strategy.

An engaged membership base is more likely to feel satisfied with their association experience and stay involved long-term. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about association member engagement, including:

• What is member engagement?
• Benefits of Member Engagement for Associations
• Top Member Engagement Strategies
• How Association Mobile Apps Facilitate Member Engagement

Before we dive into our favorite ways to engage members, let’s begin by covering what member engagement means and why it matters for your association.

What is member engagement?

Member engagement encompasses all of your association’s efforts to encourage active member participation and contributions. When members are effectively engaged, they feel connected to your association and get the sense that their membership is a worthwhile ongoing investment.

While you might have a general idea of what member engagement activities look like—regular communications, events, networking opportunities, professional development resources, etc.—your strategy should be unique to your association and its members. Different members may want to be involved with your organization in different ways and at different levels, and adapting to their preferences will lead to greater satisfaction overall. 

Some associations also cover larger geographical areas than others, and some cater to industries where professionals tend to spend most of their working time working hands-on in the field rather than sitting at a desk. Take this into consideration as you develop your engagement strategy—more spread-out, on-the-go members will benefit most from a mobile-first approach, while close-knit, sedentary communities may enjoy a combination of engagement methods.

Benefits of Member Engagement for Associations

It’s easy to see why member engagement is beneficial to association members. They gain more value from their membership if they take advantage of the various opportunities your organization offers, and they can grow personally and professionally through the connections they create and the career development they go through.

However, an engaged membership also provides several advantages to your association, including helping you:

• Encourage renewals and retention. Naturally, when members see their membership as valuable and are happy with their experience, they’re more likely to renew year after year. On the flipside, in one member experience survey, members who were considering not renewing an association membership cited feeling unengaged and not getting enough value out of their membership as their top reasons for leaving.
• Diversify your revenue streams. Collecting non-dues revenue in addition to membership fees helps your association increase its financial stability. Engaged members are more willing to pay for event registrations, certification courses, merchandise, and other services to round out the member experience.
• Boost your association’s reputation. When members feel engaged, they’re more likely to talk about their experiences with their networks. Not only can this encourage more new members to join, but it also positions your association as an organization that cares about its members and wants to help them achieve their professional goals.

To fully experience these benefits, your association needs to create a concrete plan for member engagement. Set relevant goals that matter to your organization, such as ideal renewal numbers, participation in specific initiatives, or satisfaction ratings. Then, use these objectives as a guide to develop strategies that will help you achieve your definition of success.

Top Member Engagement Strategies

Now that you have the basics down, here are a few of our favorite member engagement strategies for professional and trade associations. As you browse the list, consider your audience and bandwidth, and know that you may need to invest in new tools to get some of these ideas off the ground.

Segment Your Membership Base

Segmentation is one of the best ways to get to know your members and learn what they want out of their association experience so you can tailor your engagement approach. This process involves grouping members based on shared characteristics, such as:

• Demographics like age, gender, location, and family status.
• Career aspects, such as number of years working in the industry, role, specialization, or professional interests.
• Membership tier (if your association has multiple membership levels) and status (new, active, lapsed, potential, etc.).
• Engagement history, including event attendance, course completion, volunteering, online purchases, and interactions with communications.

Track which segments each member belongs to in your constituent relationship management (CRM) solution or association management software (AMS). This way, you can send targeted communications and recommend opportunities for involvement to the groups of members who are most likely to respond positively to them.

Welcome New Members Promptly

New members are among the most important segments to include in your engagement strategy. After all, you want to make a positive first impression and introduce them to everything your association has to offer! 

Here are a few ways to welcome new members into your organization:

• Send a welcome email series introducing them to your association’s values, team, and ongoing and upcoming opportunities to get involved.
• Create a video to supplement your written communications—you could share member and staff testimonials, provide a virtual tour of your facility, or feature any other content you think new members would find interesting.
• Put together a welcome kit with branded merchandise, flyers for upcoming events, gift certificates or discount cards from sponsors, and a physical membership card to tangibly cement their place in your association.
• Introduce new and existing members through networking events, mentorship programs, or direct messaging in your organization’s mobile app to help them acclimate.

Remember to also add new members to your online community and encourage them to visit your digital portal or download your app so they can take control of their membership experience and interact with other members anytime and anywhere.

Cater Your Events to Various Interests

For many associations, conferences are the bread and butter of member engagement. While these events provide essential revenue for your organization and quality professional development for members, you should consider them strategically along with the rest of your engagement plan. Think about how to:

• Plan sessions that appeal to members with various professional interests and levels of knowledge about their field.
• Attract and approve conference speakers your members will be interested in hearing from.
• Incorporate networking into the conference itself and encourage member conversations before and after.
• Improve the logistical aspects of your event like registration, check-in, and session selection so they enhance members’ conference experience rather than diminishing it.

Along with annual or semiannual conferences, you might also host smaller in-person and virtual events to keep members engaged throughout the year, such as local networking socials, webinars, and panel discussions. If you open any of these events to non-members, make sure to have a plan to promote your association to them and encourage them to join.

Encourage Year-Round Conversation

Although events provide great networking opportunities, your members have a lot to learn from each other and may want to find new professional opportunities throughout the entire year. So, your association should also provide digital spaces where members can converse at any time.

Online forums are particularly useful for this, as they allow members to share advice, questions, and industry knowledge in group settings where many others can benefit from their input. Also, make it easy for members to contact each other directly by including their emails in a public directory or leveraging a mobile app with one-to-one messaging capabilities.

Facilitate Learning in Multiple Formats

Events also aren’t the only way for association members to grow professionally—and for some members who learn better when they work independently, they may not be the best way. To cater to different preferences, create a resource library where members can find downloadable eBooks, worksheets, videos, articles, and other materials to help them learn independently. Also, a learning management system (LMS) can help you create courses for members to work through systematically.

Many industries require professionals to complete some form of continuing education to maintain their licensure, and members may also want to earn certifications that they can include on their resumes. Clearly explain which of your professional development opportunities count toward these requirements and which ones are just for members’ edification so everyone is on the same page about how and why to use each resource.

Provide Volunteer Opportunities

Your staff work their hardest to make sure your association operates smoothly and provides the best possible member experience. However, they only have so much bandwidth to complete all of the required daily tasks at your organization. 

To offset some of this work, consider creating a volunteer program for your association where members can contribute their time to take some responsibilities off your team’s plate. For example, you could recruit some volunteers leading up to your annual conference to help you assemble attendee packets and set up the venue so staff members can focus on higher-level planning tasks.

You might also partner with nonprofits to provide volunteer opportunities, especially if your partner organization’s services align with members’ professional expertise. For example, members of an association of athletic coaches might enjoy putting their skills toward a good cause by volunteering with a nonprofit that runs sports programs for children in underserved communities.

Whichever route you choose, association volunteering takes the value of your memberships to the next level by allowing members to make a difference in their communities.

Communicate Regularly Across Platforms

Naturally, members will only know about your events, networking opportunities, volunteer programs, educational resources, and other offerings if you communicate with them regularly. Leverage multiple platforms to create more touchpoints with members and learn about their communication preferences by tracking relevant metrics. 

Here is a quick overview of some common digital communication methods to help you get started:

• Social media. Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn (and even Instagram and TikTok if your membership skews younger) are useful for spreading the word broadly about new opportunities through a combination of text and visuals. To gauge your success, track your association’s follower counts on each platform and data on impressions, likes, comments, saves, and shares for individual posts.
• Email. Email works well for reaching supporters in a personalized way and sharing more detailed information than you could in a quick caption (although relatively concise emails broken up with subheadings and bullet points are more likely to be read than long blocks of text). Consider sending out a recurring newsletter along with email blasts about specific offerings, and track open and click-through rates for each message.
• Mobile messaging. Sending texts or messaging supporters through your association’s mobile app is effective for getting in touch with individual supporters while sharing smaller bits of information (reminders, last-minute updates, confirmations, etc.). Open and click-through rates are also the best metrics to track for these.

You might be thinking, “If email is a tried-and-true way to reach individual supporters, why should I leverage mobile messaging?” As of 2024, 50% of association members felt like they were getting too many emails from their associations, up from 34% in 2023. This finding, combined with the fact that the average American spends 5 hours and 16 minutes per day on their phone, means you’ll likely engage members more effectively if you turn shorter emails into texts or app notifications.

Personalize the Member Experience

Alongside their desire to feel like part of a community, association members want to know that your organization sees and cares about them. Personalization is critical for demonstrating that your association values its members as individuals, not just sources of revenue. Some of the best ways to personalize member experiences include:

• Including members’ names in the greeting or subject line of emails and mobile messages.
• Recommending new opportunities based on past involvement with your organization.
• Responding directly and promptly to any inquiries or comments members send in.

Additionally, if you have a mobile app or member portal, consider adding a news feed feature where supporters can input preferences and receive updates based on their set criteria and past activity so they’re always in the loop about offerings that interest them.

Show Appreciation to Members

In addition to personalization, regularly expressing gratitude to members is one of the best ways to demonstrate you value them (and ultimately retain them!). A few popular association member appreciation ideas include:

• Thank-you notes—while traditional emails work, you can also go a step further with a handwritten note or a fun digital greeting card.
• Small gifts of merchandise, gift cards, app-exclusive discounts, or items members can use at work (e.g., laptop sleeves or digital coupons for purchasing work clothes).
• Appreciation events where members can enjoy food and beverages while socializing with each other and your staff.
• Certificates or awards for years of membership, course completion, or other achievements.
• Social media spotlight posts featuring members who have gone above and beyond in your association, like consistent event attendees or dedicated volunteers.

Some members might enjoy public recognition through awards or social media, while others may prefer being appreciated in private. Always get consent before shouting members out publicly and respect their wishes if they’d rather not be recognized in front of your whole association.

Ask for Member Feedback

Requesting member feedback serves multiple engagement-related purposes. Not only does it encourage members to get more involved by making their voices heard, but it also helps you improve on your other engagement efforts over time.

Establish a regular cadence (annually, quarterly, etc.) for sending out surveys to your members—the fewer members you have, the more often you can ask for feedback, since data analysis will be less complex. Ask about both general and specific topics related to membership, and include a mix of multiple-choice (e.g., “How would you rate your overall membership experience on a scale of 1-10?”) and open-ended questions (e.g.,“If you could change one thing about our annual conference, what would it be and why?”).

Additionally, encourage members to leave honest reviews of your association on its website and third-party platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews so you can get qualitative, informal feedback between surveys. If you accept and respond graciously to both positive and negative reviews, members and non-members alike will see that you take their input seriously.

How Association Mobile Apps Facilitate Member Engagement

As you’ve likely realized from reading through our top strategies, today’s associations need to navigate member engagement in what is not just a digital-first world, but a mobile-first one. Especially for trade associations whose members are often on the go, investing in a mobile app is essential to maximize your organization’s potential for member engagement. And if you’re ready to get started with one of these tools, look no further than Clowder!

Clowder provides everything you need to create a custom mobile app for your association on both iOS and Android. Here are just a few characteristics that set our platform apart as the #1 engagement solution for professional communities:

• A full suite of features that you can customize with your association’s branding, from personalized news feeds and resource libraries to member forums and one-to-one messaging.
• A command center for managing user engagement, content curation, in-app advertising and sponsorships, and analytics with no coding required.
• Ongoing support, monthly client newsletters, and regular updates to help you solve any problems that may arise and always make the most of the platform.
• Integrations with many other popular association tools, including CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics and member management solutions like iMIS and Fonteva.

Think of Clowder as a private social network for your association. You can keep members updated with the content they want to see, and they can respond to you and discuss important topics with each other. But don’t just take our word for it—check out what real customers have to say about how Clowder has helped them engage members in new ways and create thriving communities through their trade associations!

Wrapping Up: Additional Resources on Association Member Engagement

Member engagement is critical for your association to thrive, both financially and in terms of fulfilling its mission. Use the ideas and tips above to get started, and invest in solutions that will help you maximize your efforts—for mobile engagement, Clowder is your best bet!

For more information on association member engagement—particularly in a mobile-first age—check out these resources:

• Mobile Apps for Associations: Everything You Need to Know. Explore the ins and outs of this key association engagement technology, including features, benefits, and development methods.
• 6 Steps to Create a Mobile Engagement Strategy for Your Association. Dive deeper into the process of taking a mobile-first approach to member engagement.
• How to Increase Mobile App Adoption in Your Association. Learn the best ways to encourage members to take advantage of the mobile engagement offerings you create.