Losing members is a sign to reassess your membership program. Is your communication strategy lacking? Is your marketing strategy falling short? Or maybe members are joining other associations to get more value. If you suspect this is the case, it’s time to start brainstorming how to upgrade your program’s benefits and strategies to keep members engaged.

While you might start this process over worries about your association’s long-term success, embrace it as an opportunity to improve your offerings, boost membership engagement, and set your association up for future growth.

In this guide, we’ll explore a few top ways associations can make their membership programs more valuable to earn and retain members. 

Provide skill development opportunities.

Many members join professional associations to improve their skills and expand their knowledge. Your association should provide members with high-quality, relevant training opportunities to meet this expectation. 

To improve professional development programs, be sure to:

• Stay up to date with industry trends. Ensure your professional development content is relevant to ongoing industry practices. This may mean updating your courses on a regular basis as technology and strategies evolve. For example, you might add a module in a programming course about how AI can be used to generate or check code. 

• Work with industry professionals. Work with top professionals in your field to develop actionable and relevant professional training opportunities. Leverage your association’s network to connect with industry leaders and ask them to record lectures or presentations, attend podcasts, and speak at your association’s events. 

• Offer custom opportunities. Associations with large content libraries can provide members with personalized recommendations about which courses they should take. iMIS suggests investing in an engagement management system (EMS), which combines the functionality of an AMS, CRM, and CMS all on one platform. This means you can easily connect your membership data to your content hosting platform to identify trends in members’ professional interests.

With your EMS and knowledge of your field, your association can provide cutting-edge educational courses tailored to your members’ interests. If your association is lacking in the industry connections needed to develop exciting professional development opportunities, that might be a sign to grow your network. 

Grow your network.

An association’s membership base is one of its most valuable assets. Individuals looking to network will join associations with large and varied membership bases. Plus, industry professionals can lend your association additional credibility and even elevate your offerings. 

Your association can grow and retain its network by:

• Hosting and attending events. Networking is about meeting new people, and you can do just that by participating in industry events. Consider setting up a booth at local events or helping your members attend by paying their registration costs. Use these events to connect with industry professionals, boost membership recruitment, and help your members expand their own networks.

• Providing incentives. Once members have improved their skills and made professional connections, they may decide they’ve benefited all they can from your association and make their exit. Avoid this scenario by offering continued membership incentives, such as exclusive event invitations and content. 

• Arranging mentorships. Growing your network requires new members to stick with your association long enough to become valued industry professionals themselves. eCardWidget recommends welcoming new members by pairing them in mentorships with your senior members. This helps jumpstart new members’ networking and inspires your long-time members to continue engaging with your association.  

Ultimately, one of the most surefire ways to expand your network is to simply create a high-value membership program. Members will then do the work of promoting your association and setting up introductions on your behalf. 

Make your offerings accessible.

Your members are busy people, and if your opportunities aren’t immediately available to them, they may never see their value. To ensure you’re serving your entire membership community, improve the accessibility of your offerings by:

• Making in-person events accessible. Be accommodating of members with disabilities at all events. This includes ensuring event sites are wheelchair accessible and text and sign language interpreters are available for speeches. 

• Hosting online activities. Working professionals may not be able to drop everything and attend in-person events, but many of them can likely squeeze in online activities. Host virtual courses and events to connect with these busy members. 

• Maintaining a resource library. While limited availability events and activities may incite excitement, they can cause new members to feel like they already missed valuable content. Create an exclusive resource library of recorded presentations, articles, webinars, and other content that members can access at their own convenience. 

Outside of your programming, make sure engaging with your association in general is easy. For instance, in your membership letters, you might include direct links to your sign-up, renewal, or upgrade pages. 

Facilitate communication between members.

While your association may offer a wide range of programming, it can be challenging to maintain an exciting calendar of activities all year long. Fortunately, you can still provide a valuable membership experience during downtimes by encouraging members to connect with one another. 

Members join your association to make connections, so ensure they can communicate and plan their own activities with ease. A few ways to do this include:

• Membership profiles. Encourage all members to set up a profile when they join your association. This should contain relevant information about them and their professional experiences. For example, you might have entry fields for job positions, alma mater, certifications, and interests. Members can then search your directory to find and message individuals with shared goals and interests. 

• Forums, comments, and chats. Provide members with opportunities to casually message one another, such as through comments on content, forum posts, and virtual event chats. For some members, this may be a low-stress way to form new connections compared to direct messages. Plus, by encouraging conversations around your content, you can extend its value. 

• Events. In-person meet-ups are a prime opportunity to make new connections and catch up with old acquaintances. Plan a variety of events, including social opportunities like galas.

By facilitating communication, you’ll turn your association’s member base into a community, increasing the value of a membership. Plus, these members may even come together to create user-generated content through your website or mobile app, providing even more value for your community. 

Becoming a member of an association is an investment, and members will expect significant returns for their annual or monthly fees.

Ensure your association’s offerings are up to par by continually developing and refining your educational resources, expanding your network, and promoting a welcoming, community-friendly environment. Check in with members via regular surveys to collect their input, learn what kind of value they want to see from your program, and make strategic improvements over time.