There's no question that the only way to transact today is online and renewals should really be low-hanging fruit for most membership organisations. It should be easy for your staff to manage, take up almost no time, and of course should be efficient and engaging for your renewing members.

I will assume that your organisation has online renewals, but are they taking advantage of the opportunity you're presenting to your members?

• Are you offering payment options people want to use?
• Are you letting your members upgrade/downgrade or add on optional subscriptions?
• And most importantly, are you still asking your members to provide information you already have?

That last one is critical and a mistake I see over and over where the association treats a renewal like they're joining the organisation, forcing them to fill in a long and involved form providing the same information they did last year.

Are renewals still important?

Absolutely! Acquiring new members is still hard, and if your membership is discretionary, then in today's climate, it may be one of the first things to go if someone's looking to save a few dollars.

Our research would show that it's far more cost effective to maintain a current member than replacing them with a new member. And as long as you're providing true value to your members and really listening to what they're asking for then getting that renewal should be straightforward... but that's a whole other blog post.

How do you make it easy?

The secret to making renewals easy is personalisation.  Consider your current renewal process and ask these questions:

• Is there information you're asking for that you already know about your member?
• Is the offer you're presenting unique to that person?
• What hoops must the member jump through to get to the payment page?

Do you have that data already?

I see so many organisations take this opportunity annually to ask for updates to their member's contact details.  Why do that now? Firstly your organisation should play such a critical role in their professional life that members should be coming to you if they change their mobile number, just in case they miss out on something you need to tell them.

Rather than present the member with a form asking for their name, address, organisation, mobile, and email instead, show them the information you've got about them and let them change it if it's wrong. But let me be clear, don't read this as "Step 1 of the renewal process is a form with their details already populated" step 1 should be a presentation of your membership options and pricing, but somewhere on that page, secondary to this information is the ability to see and if necessary update contact details.

How personal is your membership offering?

If you're like most other associations, you're likely offering various membership levels, each with its own price point, and perhaps you have optional subscriptions you can add on.  This step is really easy... at a minimum offer your member what they've already got and make it easy to upgrade.

If you present every membership option to every renewing member, then doesn't it make sense that if you give them the option to choose the cheapest membership, they're going to choose it? Don't present the basic membership option if they're already at the platinum level (or whatever you call your premium membership).

Removing the hurdles

The final part of making things easy is getting the user to the right information as quickly as possible.  Are you, for example, forcing your member to go through a login process just to renew?  What if they've forgotten their password and you're now sending them an email that's ended up in their junk mail folder? 

Can you make this happen?

3 Degrees North have almost 70 years of combined experience in working with associations, membership organisations and fund-raisers and has specialised knowledge that we use to build world-class solutions for organisations like yours.

We've developed an optimised renewal process that covers everything from the email communications leading up to your renewal process to presenting the renewal process online and even down to the financial integration to your accounts.

Get in touch today to see how your renewal process can be Triple E ready.