Understanding Your Members

If you are interested in:

• Working with greater efficiently – smarter not harder!
• Increasing member satisfaction
• Better decision making and planning
• Increasing retention of first year members
• Saving money and resources
• Improving communications

… then this is what YTheyJoin will bring to your association.

YTheyJoin is the only member segmentation model that helps you better understand and respond to different member needs and motivations. It tells you how members want to interact with your association and the types of information they value. It is a unique tool that is specifically designed for membership associations that will help you improve your marketing and customer relationship management.

• Mailboxers™: These members primarily want involvement through mail, fax, or computer.
• Relevant Participants®: They attend relevant conventions and seminars.
• Shapers™: They are most active and want to shape association policy.
• CompShoppers®: They compare this association to other organizations
• Cognoscenti®: They want the association to add to their fund of knowledge.
• Boosters: They join to improve their professional image.

• Altruistics®: They share the values of the association.
• Doubters®: They tend to resist change and new initiatives.
• Non-Relevants®: Their status has changed and the association may no longer be relevant

You simply use the special YTheyJoin tagging form to survey members to find out which category they belong to. You then target your marketing, services and messages accordingly to suit that particular members needs. The concept is simple, yet sophisticated. It has helped many associations get closer to fulfilling the promise of one-to-one marketing.

It is equally important to have a segmentation strategy for existing members.

Let me explain. People and organisations join for different reasons and with different expectations. The decision to renew every year will depend on how well you have met those needs.

If you ask members when they join what it is they primarily want from you, and code your database accordingly, you can then target different types of members and offer them what they most want. This will increase member satisfaction, increase retention and save you money because you won’t be sending them information anymore that they are not really interested in receiving.

A membership segmentation model that has been developed specifically for associations is called Allegiance®. It is based on interviews with over 200,000 members and asked them why they stay loyal and pay their subscription every year. Nine different types of member categories were found to exist.

For example, one category of member is called ‘Relevant Participant®’. These members primarily join because they want to network and attend events. So when you are sending out reminder notices about a forthcoming seminar,

these are the members who would value the reminder. However it would be wasteful to send reminders to your ‘Mailbox^TM’ category of members. Mailboxers are on average 4-5 times less likely to attend because they do not have the time and are primarily interested in receiving information from you through the post or via email. They would see the reminder as a waste of money. These people however would welcome summaries of material that you have sent out in the past and what is coming out in the future.

Allegiance tells you what communications to send out and what involvement opportunities to offer each of the nine member categories. There is also a workbook that gives you templates of various letters to use for each category so that the focus of the message is more appealing.

Many organisations send out far too much information that is of little interest to the recipient. Using a segmentation strategy for recruitment and retention will focus your resources wisely and prevent this from happening. This is smart membership marketing.

 This article was published in Association Manager in December 2003

• Greater efficiency. YTheyJoin gives you a system that allows you to focus on who is most likely to respond to different types of activity. For example
• Target Shapers to serve on committees, develop chapters and help recruit new members
• Target Altruistics for letter writing campaigns
• Send repeated meeting announcements only to those who are Relevant Participants
• Send Mailboxers an annual index of your magazine articles or preview next year.

• Increased member satisfaction. Members perceive that what you send is timely and relevant to their needs. They appreciate the fact that you are asking them about their needs and what he or she expects from the association. Greater satisfaction leads to a more personalized service, longer relationships and improved retention rates. You often see forms returned where members write comments like ‘Thanks for asking’
• Better decision-making and planning. You receive a YTheyJoin Pie Chart for your organisation which shows you the dominant categories and a summary of the implications. You also receive a workbook explaining how to market to each of the categories with examples of different appeals. For example, different renewal letters with appropriate incentives for the nine member types.

• Increased retention of first-year members. This is one of the biggest challenges that an association faces because these are the members with the least ties and most likely to leave.  It is critical to use target marketing with this group and for this reason, there is a special ‘First-Year Program’. This gets new members coded as quickly as possible using a strategy which includes:
  • Welcome-aboard letters that emphasize their particular needs.  For example, a Relevant Participant® would receive a letter that highlights upcoming meetings and speakers
  • During the year they would receive information about services that meet their particular needs.  For example, a Shaper™ would be offered the chance to serve on a committee.  An Altruistic® would be offered the chance to participate in a community project.
  • Renewal letters would emphasize their particular needs and how you met them and will continue to meet them.  If they do not renew after the first letter, the second letter should include a targeted incentive.  This might be a coupon for a book or tape for Cognoscenti®.
• Save money and resources. YTheyJoin lets you target market and become more efficient. You will save by spending your marketing budget appropriately. For example, our research found that Relevant Participants and Shapers are the most likely to attend.  So you send one meeting announcement to everyone but send multiple mailings and expensive brochures just to these two groups.
• Improved communication. You will find your organisation adopts a new ‘marketing vocabulary’ which more accurately reflects members needs and leads to improved communication among staff, executives, Board and volunteers.

• How does it work? The process is very simple. Current members fill out a brief form that asks about their professional needs and expectations. Based on their answers, a three-digit marketing code is written at the top of each form.  Then the association enters this code into your membership database, much like entering a postcode code.  The form is customized for each association and uses a fixed-sum preference scale to measure both preference and intensity.
• How was the model developed? Over 200,000 association members were interviewed to understand their motivations and this research showed that there are nine types of association members. The model was developed in by Dale Paulson, Ph.D., and is now used by many associations.

For more information on YTheyJoin in the UK and Europe call Sue Froggatt on 0870 7476 9185

^TM Dale Paulson, Ph.D

• What does the association receive when it signs up for YTheyJoin? You receive a license to associations on a yearly basis and your subscription includes:
  • Use of the master YTheyJoin® form, which we customize for your organization.
  • We review the completed forms and assign a three-digit code on each in pencil.  This is the ‘marketing postcode’ for each member.  (It is possible to train your staff to do the coding.)
  • We provide a personalised pie chart showing the dominant categories in your organization and a one-page summary of implications.
  • A copy of the YTheyJoin Workbook. This includes marketing ideas for each category, sample letters, and a list of all the codes.
  • You will also receive a copy of the book on YTheyJoin.
  • Consulting time, either over the telephone or at your offices. (NB: Travel charges are not included.)