October 2025 Roundtable on New Member Acquisition
The presentation slides are available as an attachment at the end of this article.
Opening Campaign Successes The session began with participants sharing recent wins, highlighting strong performance across different campaign types. One attendee reported 72 conversions from a cold advocacy email sent to non-members, along with 71 conversions from a lapse member campaign that had only been running for about a week and a half. Another organization celebrated their renewal season launch, achieving 300 member renewals from their first October activation, which significantly outperformed the same period from the previous year.
Understanding Member Motivations A key discussion focused on the gap between what association staff believe motivates membership versus what members actually report. Participants engaged in an exercise writing down what they thought was the primary reason people join their organizations, then comparing it to member feedback. Common themes included education, professional training, community building, and networking opportunities. The conversation revealed that many organizations may be making marketing promises that don’t align with their actual delivery capabilities, emphasizing the importance of asking new members directly about their motivations during the onboarding process.
Website Engagement and Event-Driven Campaigns Two detailed campaign examples demonstrated effective prospect conversion strategies. The Emergency Nurses Association showcased their website engagement approach, running two iterations focused on workplace violence and disaster management toolkits. By targeting high-traffic periods like their annual conference and Emergency Nurses Week, they captured over 500 leads and achieved 40+ conversions while suppressing current members from the campaigns.
A separate example from a professional association revealed the power of themed messaging in event-driven acquisition. Their conference attendee upgrade campaign showed that holiday-themed subject lines and copy significantly outperformed generic messaging, with rejection rates dropping from 52% to 28%. They implemented a sophisticated tagging system that tracked changing member intent throughout the campaign, providing their sales team with clean, up-to-date prospect lists.
Student and Early Professional Strategies The athletic trainer association shared a remarkable success story, tripling their student membership from 380 to 1,030 by taking an innovative approach of targeting program administrators rather than students directly. They surveyed 260 program administrators about start dates and discount interest, achieving a 100% positive response rate and discovering previously unknown program schedules. This strategy also resulted in multiple schools opting to pay for student memberships directly.
Discussion around barriers for younger members revealed common challenges including cost perceptions from educators, lack of awareness about discounted options, and many professionals not discovering relevant organizations until they enter the workforce. Organizations shared various transition support programs, including 50% first-year discounts post-certification, extended student rates, and early career grants for research funding.
Creative Campaign Approaches and Platform Updates The session highlighted several creative campaign examples, including Halloween-themed limited-time offers with messaging like “vanishes at midnight” and a Taylor Swift album release tie-in for food science recruitment. These examples demonstrated how timely, themed content can significantly increase engagement and conversion rates.
The roundtable concluded with platform updates including new drag-and-drop functionality for survey options and enhanced blackout date settings, allowing organizations to better manage campaign timing around holidays and organizational conflicts at both account and campaign levels.