My friend David Gammel wrote the cover story in Associations Now in May, and he did an excellent job of taking the feel-good, high-level concept of membership “engagement” and bringing it right down to the operational level. It’s a truism in association management that engagement is a good thing: engagement drives retention, engagement drives growth…but how does that really work?
David presents an “engagement acceleration curve” that clarifies the different levels of engagement and, more importantly, demonstrates a progression from less engaged to more engaged. Often, particularly in small associations, I think we just look right to the end. Who can we get on the Board? Who can we get as a major sponsor? These are very high levels of engagement, which really require a progression through other levels. We might intuitively know this, but I think it helps to be more explicit about it, so we can effectively feed the funnel, so to speak.
I look at some of the associations that I manage and I realize that we are not offering enough effective engagement opportunities at the lower end of the scale. And when we do offer them, there isn’t a clear next step, other than to join or come to an event, which are bigger steps. I also find it interesting that in one case, coming to an event (we do them monthly) one would think would be an easier step than joining (which costs between eight and twenty times the registration fee of one event), yet nearly all of our attendees are members. Hmmm.
Thanks, David, for helping me to think more clearly about these issues in concrete ways!
June 9, 2010 at 10:17 am |
Thanks Jamie!
You’ve put your finger on one of the most valuable actions an association can take: to fill the gaps in their acceleration curve. It takes vastly less effort than building an entirely new curve yet can pay off continually all down the line.