06/03/2020

Membership Incentive Ideas During Times of Crisis

How COVID-19 has created the need for innovation

COVID-19 (coronavirus) has turned a lot of common association challenges into bigger ones that are particularly hard to address, like how to talk about membership incentives during a crisis that has caused significant economic hardship.

A recent thread on ASAE’s Collaborate (member login required) raised that question to see what others are doing now and what their plans are for the future. Chris Gloede, chief consultant at Ricochet Advisory Services, and John Ponzio, vice president of professional membership and engagement at the American Heart Association, provided some insights on the discussion. I followed up with them to get more details.

Low-cost Incentives
Incentives are challenging, according to Gloede, former chief marketing officer at the American Bar Association (ABA), because they are an expense that can quickly snowball and discounts run the risk of devaluing membership. Instead, ABA leveraged strategies commonly used by magazines to increase subscriptions: It offered free trial memberships that provided the option to cancel when those members received their dues invoice after the trial period ended.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.