How to Effectively Communicate with your Members

Why communication is important.

How you communicate with your members may seem like one of the most simple tasks when it comes to running an association, but there are a few dos and don’ts that you should bear in mind!

We promise we’re not trying to teach you how to suck eggs. Your membership is the heart of your association and learning how to communicate effectively is the key to your success. Follow our top tips and let us know how your strategy lines up with ours.

DO:

Stay in regular contact with your membership. Make sure that your members know that they have your support. A great way of doing this is with a newsletter – update your membership with industry news, announce any new opportunities that may have arisen and provide a personal update from your Board of your plans for the future.

Be personal. Offer your membership the opportunity for one-to-one contact. Depending on the size of your association this may not be viable for just one person to handle, although your members will find value in having access to your Board to help with important queries relating to your industry. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you offer mentorship, but there will be multiple times where your members will appreciate your help and advice.

Make use of social media. In today’s age, using social media is vital to the success of your association. The average person checks their phone 58 times a day, more than they check their emails, so it’s a no brainer to start posting if you haven’t already. Choosing the right platforms depends on your industry – it’s worth doing some research to find out which ones are best suited to you. Encourage your members to enable push-notifications on your accounts, this way they can be notified with any important news directly to their phones.

Offer member meetings. Annual General Meetings and Conferences are a given but having meetings with your members only once per year, despite how spectacular the event may be, isn’t enough. Smaller meetings and events should be offered throughout the year, you could split the meetings up by your association’s special interest groups or member’s location. One thing that we have learnt since the pandemic is that members have been yearning for networking opportunities since restrictions were lifted.

Don’t:

Bombard members with emails. Regular interaction is great but be careful not to annoy your members. I’m sure you have signed up to associations or newsletters in the past only to unsubscribe from them days later, as your inbox is already clogged. Although you may think that these regular emails are useful, it can be misconstrued as spam by your members. Plan ahead and use longer, more thought-out emails, where you can roll multiple messages into one. Think to yourself, “does this need to be sent out straight away, or can it wait?”.

Ignore your members. It may be the case that you receive a query from one of your members that you’re not quite sure how to answer and need to forward it on to somebody else. Make sure that you keep that person in the loop – respond to them to let them know that their query is being handled and give them a rough idea of when to expect a response.

Following this advice will help increase your member interaction, and in turn raise your member retention numbers. For more information on how to boost and calculate your association’s member retention see our blog HERE.