Dues Rate - Negative Impact on Renewal Rates for Individual Membership Associations? The 2012 Membership Benchmarking Report says "NO WAY."

In preparing the 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, we're looking at new ways to analyze the data and find new and important correllations.


I asked Jeff Tanguch, Research Manager here at MGI, to filter out the trade associations (N=146) from the overall response (N=684)and look at the relationship between Individual Membership Association renewals and annual dues. He found that 71% of membership associations whose dues are $200 or more also had a renewal rate of 80% or better. 


Therefore, this may indicate that dues level does not impact renewal rate. Then what is it?


Short answer: PERCEIVED VALUE. People will pay for what they believe is valuable. That is a personal decision - what is valuable to them. Not you...not me...THEM.


What do you think? Let us know your opinion. If you'd like a free copy of the 2012 Membership Benchmarking Report, please let me know. I'll send it to you as soon as we have it.


So, if the value is demonstrable, then dues is little consideration.

More results fromt the 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report

As we continue to prepare the 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, results from 691 assocations indicate that those with less than an 80% renewal rate appear to spend more on engaging and retaining members than associations with a renewal rate of 80%+.  This may indicate that associations achieve a renewal rate of 80%+ by applying greater resources in first identifying and educating potential members.  What do you think?

N=691                      LT 80%  %              80%+    %


Awareness            $46,975 19.4%        $42,058 23.2%
Recruitment           $89,398 37.0%        $77,213 42.6%
Engagement          $30,339 12.5%        $16,613 9.2%
Renewals               $58,167 24.0%        $32,305 17.8%
Reinstatements    $17,006 7.0%           $12,931 7.1%
Totals                    $241,885                $181,120

2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Results -- Reinstatements

As you know, we are feverishly working on the 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report. In my review of the data, I discovered that associations with renewal rates over 80% would rather increase their budgets in member recruitment and awareness while associations with renewal rates under 80% would increase their engagement and renewal budgets.

Not to be unexpected. However...what is telling here is that a 5.2% of the associations with a greater than 80% renewal rate would increase their reinstatement budgets while only 2.5% of those associations with a reported renewal rate of less than 80%.

In my thought, a small percentage of associations with an 80% renewal rate believe that this area may offer greater opportunity for ROI than recruitement, awareness, engagement or renewal. This is most interesting as I find many associations don't have a coordinated or strategic approach to their reinstatement program...this in the face of the data we have collected at MGI (working with hundreds of associations) indicating that reinstatement programs are LOW HANGING FRUIT!!

What have been your experiences with reinstatement programs? Let me know.

2012 Membership Benchmarking Report - Early Results Report!

We've started analyzing the results of the 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Survey. Of the over 680 associations that responded to the survey, 664 reported their renewal rates. Of this group, 62.5% of the associations reported having a renewal rate in excess of 80%!  This is telling as it is an increase over last year - an indication that associations continue to do better as the market gets better. This will be an exciting report and we look forward to getting the 2012 Membership Benchmarking Report to you in May!