CPA Society Member Acquisition Campaign Guide

A primary goal of a member acquisition campaign is, of course, to help your association acquire new members! But that's not all: it's also valuable for getting to know your entire prospect pool (including new CPAs), knowing who may be more interested in your programming (non-dues revenue opportunities) outside of membership, and who to remove from your future prospecting efforts.

CPA Societies have tended to segment two distinct prospect groups - brand new CPAs that have recently passed their CPA exam and became licensed in your state, and never-member CPAs and/or tax professionals. If you're looking to win-back lapsed or dormant members, view that campaign guide here.

Traditional member acquisition efforts often take one of two approaches: either associations send regular emails to non-members highlighting the benefits of membership, and/or they rely on resource-intensive tactics including phone calls and 1-on-1 emails. The first of these options does not provide you any insight as to what that person wants or needs; you could guess as to their interests based on click-throughs, but you don't know where they are in the decision process or why they've hesitated. The latter of the options isn't feasible or scalable, leading to process inefficiencies and blind cold outreach.

PropFuel campaigns provide an ideal top-of-funnel outreach effort so you can get to know your prospects and their needs, decide the right level of engagement for that individual (Should they become a member? Should you focus on non-dues revenue instead?), and use staff resources efficiently to close the deal with interested prospects. 

A few things PropFuel can do better than traditional email marketing include:

• Gathering more context around the prospect's interest, by simply asking them.

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

• Automating further actions based on responses, such as: alert the right person to follow-up with a phone call or email, auto-respond with an email, drive the prospect to join or find out why membership isn't a fit, tagging them for future follow-up, or writing prospect data back to your AMS and/or marketing system.

• Increasing staff efficiency by giving your team access to zero-party response data directly from the prospect as to their needs, interests, and likelihood to join.

• Supplementing the acquisition process with SMS messaging.

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

PropFuel is one tool in your tool belt when it comes to membership communications. You may still send marketing automation emails outside PropFuel. Similarly, you could mimic what PropFuel does, using other systems, but "frankensteining" systems together is time consuming and rarely yields the desired results - from both a user experience and data analytics perspective.  

Acquisition campaign efforts could either be automatically triggered in a drip campaign through a workflow action (such as creating a new user account on your website or attending an event as a non-member), or could be manually scheduled to regularly engage non-member contacts in your database. One benefit of a scheduled campaign is that you can build your engagement to avoid busy tax seasons when your prospective members may be less likely to respond. 

Throughout the campaign we want to get to know the prospect's needs and interests, and also ask them directly if they are interested in joining your association. We typically recommend 3-5 check-ins with 1-4 weeks between check-ins.

The first step is to ASK - CAPTURE - ACT on the prospect's unique needs and connect them with your value proposition. This is an ideal conversation starter so you can get to know them, and they can get to know your organization and benefits. 

The source of your leads matters, and will likely impact the approach of your first check-in. If they've participated in a CPE course or other educational offering, you may want to acknowledge what event they attended or how you got their email and ask them "What would you like to do next?" If, however, you've never engaged with these contact before, it'll be in your benefit to give a brief introduction to who you are (keep this to 1-3 sentences!) and then share your connection to them ahead of your question. 

You can initiate an acquisition campaign by asking:

• What's most important to you this year?

• What need is top of mind for you right now?

• What would you like to do next?

• How can we help you achieve your goals?

Alternatively, another common option for CPA societies is to kick off their acquisition process for newly licensed individuals by asking them if they would like a free trial membership. If you go this route, make sure to also have a campaign at the ready to get to know their unique interests and needs; you could put them into an abbreviated onboarding campaign for the duration of their trial, or you could ask them questions similar to those above to get to know them and their unique needs so you can work to retain them over the coming months!

From there, you can ask them directly if they have any interest in joining as a member. 

• Are you interested in joining _____ as a member?

• Do you plan to join?

• Would you be interested in learning more about membership?

• Would you consider joining?

Those who say "no" or "not sure" should be redirected to an additional question to be asked why not or why they are not interested. We suggest removing anyone who expressly is not interested in membership from the remainder of the campaign.

Now you can deepen the relationship and engagement by continuing to connect with their needs and interest:

• Which of the following is most important to you?

• On a scale of 1-5, how important is _____ to you?

• What industry issue keeps you up at night?

In addition to membership, you may also want to highlight one or two relevant non-dues revenue opportunities (other programs or resources) just in case membership isn't of interest!

Then ask about hesitations or barriers to joining. This will help you respond via automation or through 1-on-1 conversation for prospects who have been on the fence, and will help you further narrow down who is a viable prospect vs. those who aren’t a good fit. 

• Is there something holding you back from joining?

• Why have you hesitated to join?

• What else could we offer to encourage you to join our community?

• Is there anything we can do to help you join?

Remember: in many cases, these check-ins are going to individuals who are not familiar with your association's programs or resources. In your check-ins, try to spell out acronyms and avoid terms and phrases someone might not know until they are a part of your community. If you are reaching out to a group of dormant or lapsed members, see those campaign guides for more specific guidance on that target demographic. 

In real life, conversations happen between 2 people and not between one person and a group of people. Consider including a headshot and signature and have the check-in come from someone on your membership team. Using first-person language (I’m glad to hear it!) can also make a big difference from always using the organizational plural “we.” If, however, you prefer to have the campaign come from the entire membership team (or the association at large), make sure you are still being conversational with your wording and be clear who the prospect can contact with questions.

If you leverage a free trial for newly licensed members, make sure you take the appropriate steps to nurture those relationships during that trial with an onboarding or engagement campaign. Just telling them about your society isn't enough - you need to get to know their unique needs and show ROI for an investment in your membership so they'll be much more apt to renew when it's time to formally join and pay.

It may seem counter-intuitive to have a button that says "no" to joining your association on an email to a prospect. The "no" response is valuable for a few reasons:

1. It allows you to remove them from the campaign, as they will likely negatively skew the metrics for future engagement check-ins.

2. It lets you focus on the prospects who ARE actively interested, and continue conversations with those who don't quite know yet.

3. We want to mirror human conversation as much as possible. If they could think and communicate a "no" in real-life, we should offer that as a response option.

When possible, we recommend targeting your acquisition efforts to specific groups and making the content and conversation as relevant to their needs as possible. For example, if someone has recently attended an event of yours and you know they are a new CPA, having a campaign that specifically engages them in conversations with that context is ideal. In that case, measuring the count of new joins as a percentage of enrolled contacts (as well as response rate) would be valuable.

If however you are planning a wider acquisition effort that is more generic, we suggest you approach your campaign as a ROI of the time it took for you to build (or copy) the campaign. Having a couple dozen new joins or a single-digit response rate may not feel like a win, but if a campaign only took you an hour or two to build and it helped you learn more about hundreds of prospects, you've just made significant progress forward towards your association's goals - celebrate it!

MICPA reached out to just over 4,200 non-members to gauge their interest in joining the association.

• Are you interested in joining the MICPA?

• How would you describe where you are at in your career?

• What is holding you back from joining the MICPA?

Out of the 4,289 enrolled contacts, 225 (5%) engaged with the campaign.  

Within 30 days of the campaign's conclusion, 95 members joined, with an additional 19 individuals joining in the following months.

46 individuals expressed direct intent to join within the first check-in.

View the video below to learn more about MICPA's Fall Recruitment Campaign.

TXCPA launched a member acquisition campaign from August through November, 2022 consisting of five check-ins to gauge non-member's interest in joining and learning about their needs and goals.

• What's most important to you this year?

• Are you interested in becoming a member?

• What industry challenge keeps you up at night?

• Are you interested in joining TXCPA at the discounted rate?

• Is there something holding you back from joining TXCPA?

Of the 14,242 enrolled contacts, 626 (4.4%) engaged with the campaign, with 170 individuals expressing direct interest in joining. In total, 60 members joined during the campaign through 30 days following the campaign's conclusion, with an additional 59 joining since (up to 4 months later). 

The second check-in, which was the first direct ask of joining intent, had the highest response rate at 3%.

View the video below to learn more about TXCPA's Member Acquisition Campaign.

OSCPA has an ongoing drip campaign to contact new CPAs and those who have recently passed the exam to get to know their individual needs and see if they would be interested in joining as a member. If the individual expresses interested, they are automatically enrolled in a nurture campaign to continue the discussion for two additional months.

• What is most important to you as you manage your career this year?

• Are you interested in becoming an OSCPA member?

• What would encourage you to join your professional community?

• Are you still interested in joining OSCPA?

• How do you prefer to earn your CPE?

• Would you like us to email a free copy of the OSCPA magazine?

• What is keeping you from joining OSCPA?

Since the campaigns began six months ago (with new contacts being added regularly), 6 members have joined and 6 have expressed interest but have yet to join, which is 7% of the total enrolled contacts. 

The first check-in had the highest response rate at 8%.

View the video below to learn more about Oregon's automated prospect and nurture campaign.

ASCPA reached out with a single check-in to new CPAs in the state to ask if they'd be interested in a complimentary membership. This offer has gone out monthly from August 2022 through March 2023; those contacted through November were offered a free membership until April 30th, 2023, and those contacted December to March were offered a free membership until April 30th, 2024.

• Ready to join the ASCPA?

Of the 204 enrolled contacts, 44 (22%) responded, with 42 of them accepting the offer.

View the video below to learn more about ASCPA's Comp Membership Offer Check-In.

The Ohio Society of CPAs reached out to never members in October with a single check-in to ask if they would be interested in a complimentary 6 month membership.

• How does a complimentary 6-month OSCPA membership sound?

Of the 1,901 enrolled contacts, 55 (3%) engaged with the campaign, with 47 (85% of responses) expressing interest. Of those, 26 (55%) took the next step and used the promo code to join.

View the video below to learn more about OSCPA's recruitment check-in.