January 2026 Roundtable on New Member Onboarding
The presentation slides are available as an attachment at the end of this article.
The session focused on PropFuel’s new product capabilities for associations and practical strategies for new member onboarding and engagement.
The meeting opened with an overview of PropFuel’s first client roundtable of the year, centered on new member onboarding, early engagement, and how that flows into ongoing member engagement beyond year one. The facilitator emphasized that members’ goals and reasons for joining can change over time, so organizations need mechanisms to regularly re-learn member needs instead of relying only on what was captured in the first year. This set up the rest of the conversation around using data and questions more intelligently to understand and serve members.
Allison, PropFuel’s product manager, introduced the newly released Insights Dashboard. She explained that it was created to give organizations a wide‑lens, data‑driven view of what is and isn’t working in their communications. While campaign‑level metrics still exist for a narrow focus, the new dashboard lets users zoom out to see performance by channels and by questions, including how many people are being reached, response behavior, and technical delivery metrics. The dashboard supports custom date ranges and automatically adds comparison data for prior periods to highlight trends over time. It also includes summary tables with drill‑downs to specific campaigns, questions, or contacts. New detailed reports on bounce reasons and unsubscribes move from high‑level “what” on the dashboard to “who,” supporting more targeted cleanup and follow‑up. Allison noted there is more planned for this page and the broader product, and pointed people to two main ways to keep up with changes: the in‑app change log (with a small notification icon in the top right of the app) and PropFuel’s email newsletters for bigger releases.
Dave, PropFuel’s cofounder and CEO, then described the longer‑term product vision, framed as building a “foundation” to fully leverage membership data with AI. He positioned the new insights page as part of that foundation, surfacing data that already existed but was previously harder to access. The vision is to combine data from the association’s AMS, PropFuel’s engagement data, website engagement (including both questions and browsing behavior), and SMS where available, then use AI to better understand members and proactively suggest action. He introduced three key concepts: clarity, direction, and capacity. Clarity refers to the system identifying meaningful behavioral segments and trends—such as members whose engagement is steadily dropping over 60 days, new members who have not yet taken a “next step,” or growing interest in particular topics. Direction means aligning these insights with the organization’s strategic initiatives (e.g., renewal, onboarding, acquisition) and suggesting appropriate PropFuel campaigns or actions to address them. Capacity is delivered by having the system actually build “disposable campaigns” aligned to those initiatives so staff become more like reviewers and managers rather than builders. In the near term, the idea is that AI will generate campaign drafts that staff review and launch, with a longer‑term aspiration that clients will eventually trust more automation. Dave stressed that this “membership AI” functionality will roll out over the next several months and will be included for clients without an extra fee, though website engagement and SMS data sources may require separate purchases. He emphasized that PropFuel will not simply let AI send uncontrolled messages to members; human review will remain central.
The conversation then shifted to a facilitated discussion on new member onboarding. The group used an interactive tool (Mentimeter) to gauge who already had onboarding or engagement campaigns running in PropFuel, who was building them, and who had not started. Many participants already had campaigns but were looking to improve them, while others were in planning or early build stages. Participants were asked to share their “go‑to” questions for new members. Common themes included asking why they joined, what benefits or resources they are most interested in, whether they have logged into their profile, their biggest challenges, and more personal or motivational variants like “What’s your passion?” or “What is currently lighting your professional fire?” One participant described a question asking what the organization had given them that they didn’t expect, followed by a request to record a short video about it using VideoAsk, which then functions as a testimonial for other prospective or current members.
Facilitators introduced the idea of an “engagement gap”: many associations offer a rich set of benefits—career development, networking, mentorship, advocacy, events, conferences, galas, and more—yet members often report at renewal time that they “didn’t see the value.” The group reflected on why this disconnect could occur, focusing on misalignment between what the member came for and what they are actually sent. Examples discussed included a member joining for networking but receiving only advocacy content, someone wanting professional development who receives only generic event promos, or someone most interested in policy news being directed only to a learning library. Without early questions to understand individual goals, organizations end up pushing generic content “at the wall” and hoping something resonates.
Participants were then asked what “engaged” means in their context. Answers clustered around participation and action: replying to messages, attending events, utilizing resources, volunteering, joining committees, offering suggestions, and generally “doing stuff.” One attendee raised the idea of engagement as “flow and reciprocity,” emphasizing two‑way energy: the organization’s trustworthiness, brand recognition, and outreach style affect whether members feel comfortable responding and investing their own energy.
Several client examples were highlighted to make these concepts concrete. Ohio Society of CPAs has an onboarding approach where the initial question determines follow‑on nurture campaigns. Members who express interest in networking are placed into a series focused on networking opportunities; those more interested in learning are pushed into learning‑focused content; those interested in news receive more curated news communications. They also use tags based on responses to build lists for future targeted outreach, even if a specific follow‑up campaign is not immediately ready.
Pennsylvania Medical Society (PA Med) shared that they had strong engagement with their initial onboarding question, but weaker engagement with follow‑up questions a month later. A change in subject line from a generic phrase about interests to something more directive like “One more step to complete your membership” increased engagement by about four percentage points on the initial outreach, and they now see about 8% response there. They also noted that retired members tend to have the highest engagement compared to other segments. PA Med is building distinct journeys for active, retired, and student members. For follow‑up messages that were underperforming, facilitators suggested making questions more direct and action‑oriented, tied to a clear next step (for example, concrete actions around CME rather than a vague “How’s it going?”).
Another detailed example came from NASPO (National Association of State Procurement Officials). Their membership is tied to government positions rather than applications, and membership is free, so their main goal is to increase awareness of the organization and its benefits. In about 90 days of using PropFuel, NASPO used campaigns to ask about members’ career stage and what benefits they most wanted to learn about, then directed them to fitting professional development opportunities and provided tutorials on high‑interest tools. They also discovered that 34% of member job titles in their AMS were outdated. Using PropFuel questions and data integration, they updated those job titles directly from member responses, without manual data entry. NASPO also used a ranking question where members rated their “NASPO member experience” on a scale. Alerts were set to trigger when someone selected a very low (1) or very high (5) score, enabling quick, personal follow‑up with both detractors and promoters.
Participants and PropFuel staff discussed segmentation as a best practice. Several organizations emphasized different onboarding paths for students, active professionals, and retired members, recognizing that these groups have distinct goals. One association described having “communities of practice” (sections and professional learning networks) and using the initial onboarding step to have members select which communities they want to join. This both engages them early and connects them into active online spaces where they can share resources, ask for help, and see newsletters and webinars tied to their interests. The point was made that such segmentation takes more upfront work—multiple campaigns instead of one—but generally yields better engagement and more relevant touchpoints.
The group also touched on small but meaningful ways to humanize onboarding communications. An example from another client (ISD) involved a campaign that simply introduced the staff team to new members, using photos, personal signatures, and role descriptions so members could “put a face to the name.” Facilitators suggested similar tactics, including using website engagement tools that display specific staff photos and titles next to relevant offerings, and sending certain emails so they appear to come from the staff member responsible for that benefit area.
Near the end, attendees were asked to reflect on what signals their onboarding currently sends: “we want your feedback,” “we want you to explore,” “we want you to complete tasks,” or “we are mostly sharing information.” Nearly half indicated that their current onboarding mostly pushes information rather than asking for feedback or inviting exploration. The facilitators concluded by encouraging participants to gradually shift toward more curious, member‑centric first questions whose answers directly influence what happens next, supported by better segmentation and use of behavioral data. The session ended with a reminder that the slide deck (and Mentimeter question content) would be shared afterward and an invitation for ongoing participation in future PropFuel roundtables.The presentation slides are available as an attachment at the end of this article.