Just back from the ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference where I attended the pre-event workshop on The Membership Economy led by Robbie
Kellman Baxter the author of one of my new favorite books (a must-read!) Let me sum up, using one of Robbie’s quotes, why I think we need to embrace some of her concepts in associations:
“Certain organizations are winning the hearts and voices of their customers, and building the kind of loyalty that traditionally was reserved for family, community, and church. The secret that these organizations know is that people are craving membership. Organizations that build their businesses around people’s need to belong, to be connected, and to be admired, organizations that are focused on relationships over products, are winning in today’s economy.”
Here’s the deal, we [associations] used to own membership – just we owned our respective profession or trade’s education and knowledge. But Netflix, SurveyMonkey, Crossfit, just to name a few are – like the internet and a bevy of education providers have already – showing us up. They are doing the membership game better than us. Time for us to learn from them.
My biggest take-aways were the power of on-boarding and the need to shift from customer service to customer success.
And that’s what gets me to Wild Apricot’s Membership Growth Online Summit. Robbie is the keynote speaker on Day 5: April 8th 3pm ET. She will be talking about building an effective membership model from the ground up. The summit runs 5 days during which you will explore a variety of concepts in membership through five one-hour webinars. The summit is free (I paid to hear Robbie #justsayin). Check it out here – Membership
Growth Online Summit. It starts April 4th.