Year 2+ Member Engagement Campaign Guide

A member engagement campaign is a great way to keep your members engaged past that initial year with your association. If you haven't yet built a new member onboarding campaign in PropFuel, we encourage you to start there and have a separate, yet similar version so you can ask-capture-act on your existing members' needs (it could even be exactly the same campaign if you keep your email prompt evergreen)!

If you've already done an onboarding campaign with PropFuel, keep reading to explore a few options to keep engaging with your members without seeming repetitive of the conversations you've already had, while also providing members with value to keep the conversation going! 

Members don't just want to be a priority when they are new; they want to have a relationship with their association that feels reciprocal and mutually helpful. By continuing to engage your existing members beyond their onboarding period, you're allowing them to deepen their relationship with your association, share their changing needs and interests, and find value beyond what initially drove them to join. 

A few ways PropFuel can compliment your other member engagement strategies and  foster deeper relationships to drive retention include:

• Allowing easy dialogue between you and your members by having a short prompt with a quick question - which makes it easy for members to share their thoughts and feelings with you.

• Triggering other questions based on the member's answer to capture further insight around their interests and needs.

• Connecting existing members with appropriate next steps through multiple, automated actions that can help you continue the conversation via PropFuel and/or other communications channels.

• Writing back contact info updates or marketing interests using our connectors - making it easy for both you and your member to share updates.

• Supplementing the member engagement process with SMS messaging.

• And most importantly, PropFuel campaigns can be designed and deployed with minimal time and effort. And if you have new staff, your PropFuel Client Success Manager can help you build the campaign.

There are a few different approaches to ongoing member engagement campaigns that our clients have found successful over the years:

1. Continue to get to know your members and their needs as a continuation of their onboarding experience. You may choose to copy your existing PropFuel onboarding campaign and swap in and out some questions based on what could change year after year (for example, you could keep in questions regarding what they hope to get out of their membership this year, if they have any contact info updates, and how they are feeling about their membership). 

2. Deepen member engagement by introducing other programs and resources not covered in the onboarding process. This is a great opportunity to connect members with benefits they may not know about or take advantage of in their first year, and gives you a chance to maximize other non-dues revenue sources more appropriate for members that have already formed a relationship with your association. 

3. Create value by polling members on industry trends. PropFuel allows you to engage in brief, two-way exchanges of information, making it ideal to collect quick feedback from your members. Some clients have leveraged their engagement campaign to get a "pulse check" on what's happening in the industry and collect feedback that can be shared as an additional member benefit via newsletters, blogs, magazine articles, or within the PropFuel campaign itself.

4. Quiz members about their industry knowledge to spark intrigue and promote relevant programs/resources. You can quiz your members about topics relevant to their role or industry, and automate the response of whether they are correct or incorrect. This can be used as a fun engagement tactic on its own, or used in compliment with your programs team to either promote relevant webinars, courses or events, or to learn what additional learning topics your members could benefit from with future programming efforts.

For each of these campaign approaches, you could have them either as scheduled or sequence (drip) campaigns that either last throughout the year, or during most of the year with pauses during particularly busy seasons based on your industry or other communications efforts. We recommend at least one member check-in every 2-3 months, with most clients opting for one check-in per month (unless doing a weekly quiz/poll campaign). 

• What's your #1 goal with your membership this year? or What are you most hoping to get out of your membership this year?

• What type of support do you need at this stage of your career?

• Where do you get your industry news? or On what social media platform do you spend most of your time?

• What kind of professional development are you looking for this year?

• What industry issue is top of mind for you this year?

• Have your goals or needs changed over the last year?

• Do you have any employment updates to share?

• Is _____ still your job title?

• Would you like to share an alternate email address?

• Would you like to opt-in to receiving SMS messages? If yes, please provide your mobile phone number.

• Would you like to get involved in ________ program? or Are you interested in becoming more involved as a member of our association?

• Is there a topic in which you have expertise that you can share with others? 

• Are you interested in ________?

• Would you like to learn more about __________?

• Do you need help with __________?

• Which of the following challenges keeps you up at night?

• How well have we met your expectations as a member of the association?

• To what degree are we giving you what you need?

• What would you change if you were on the board of our association?

• How well does our association's advocacy work reflect your views and opinions? 

• Is there someone on staff you feel comfortable reaching out to if you need assistance?

• On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most, how likely are you to recommend membership in our association to a colleague?

One concern we sometimes hear is that associations are hesitant to add to the volume of emails going to existing members. We always recommend complementing your existing efforts. Sometimes this means replacing one broadcast email with one PropFuel check-in, and oftentimes you can reduce the number of broadcast emails by asking the right questions in PropFuel. For example, instead of promoting 6 programs each in their own broadcast email, you can ask "Which of the following topics is most relevant to you this year?" and based on that recommend one or two programs that would be the best fit. 

PropFuel is great for mirroring the two-way engagement you would have if you picked up the phone or spoke to your member face-to-face. Just like you would in those situations, look for opportunities to retain that information and use it to further the member experience down the road. For example, if your member shared that they are unemployed or looking for a new job opportunity, you could automate an action to add them to another campaign about your Career Center or industry networking events. 

Not sure which option would be best for your members? Try a few different options - either by testing different campaigns with some of your members, or by doing a few months of each type of engagement campaign and comparing the results. 

Some associations choose to limit member engagement communications during their renewal season knowing they will have relevant renewal/retention communications from a separate PropFuel campaign. You can do this easily either with a scheduled campaign or with a sequence campaign timed based on a member's subscription term. 

In this 7.5 month-long campaign, the American Mushroom Institute engaged existing members as a continuation of their onboarding experience to get to know their members' needs, interests, and feelings about their member value. 

• What are you hoping to get from your AMI membership?

• What industry issues are you following right now?

• How are you engaging with AMI?

• Other than AMI, what resources, publications, news media and resources - mushroom or non-mushroom related - do you turn to?

• Do you feel like you're getting value from your AMI membership?

• Looking back on the last year, have your business objectives changed?

• Do you read Mushroom News regularly?

• How likely would you be to recommend AMI to other companies and businesses in the industry?

Out of the 849 enrolled contacts, 346 (41%) engaged with this campaign, with an average response rate of 12% per check-in.

National Roofing Contractors Association has a "Year 2" onboarding campaign designed to ask additional questions (1 per month) that were not included in the first year of the onboarding campaign. These questions deepen the engagement with members by highlighting other programs and resources the association has to offer. 

• Which TRAC program would benefit your company the most?

• What percent of roofing litigation involves scope of work or change order disputes?

• What are the most important options for your employees when choosing a health care program?

• How many NRCA staff do you think are working for you?

• Do you need help recruiting and retaining roofing workers?

This campaign is still actively running, with 129 members engaging so far (12%). 

Metal Treating Institute does a weekly check-in to their members to get to know what their members are experiencing and share it in aggregate across their membership base as a member benefit.

• When it comes to data acquisition, what method are you using? Is your current method reporting to a 10th of a degree per new 2750 standards?

• What is your employee turnover calculated as for the 1st quarter of 2023?

• Who is in charge of performing safety and risk assessments of your plant on a regular basis?

• What has been your experience with package/shipping/handling companies the last 6 months?

• What type of shop management system are you running in your plant?

• Do you offer internships for high school or college students? If you do offer internships, what has been your experience?

• Does your plant have one person who manages both the heat treating team and the maintenance team? If you do, how much do you pay in annual salary/wages for that combined position?

The average response rate in Q1 of 2023 for MTI's weekly check-ins was 23.5%, ranging between 12% and 33% depending on the complexity of the question.

The New York Chapter of American Colleges of Physicians sends a quiz question to their members once every two weeks. The percent of people that get it correct or incorrect is then shared in their weekly newsletter.

• Which of the following is the most appropriate additional therapy?

• Which of the following is the most appropriate diagnostic test to perform next?

• Which of the following is the most appropriate treatment?

• Which of the following is the most likely diagnosis?

• Which of the following is the most appropriate treatment?

The average response rate in Q1 of 2023 for NYCACP's check-ins was 11.6%.