February 26, 2019

5 Ideas to Rejuvenate your Membership Renewal Strategy

Looking for ideas and inspiration to breathe new life into your membership renewal strategy? You’re not alone!

Member retention is one of the most important priorities on the minds of membership managers, but it can be easy to get stuck in a rut and repeat the same old strategy year after year.

Inject your renewal strategy with a little bit of innovation this year by taking into consideration our 5 tips to boost your membership renewal strategy. In this article, we’ll give you a few ideas you can use to:

  • Drastically increase the time available for you or your team to spend on improving your renewal rate.
  • Segment and target important member groups to maximize the impact of your efforts to drive renewals.
  • Produce a measurable impact on your renewal rate by taking advantage of time before?and after a members renewal date.

1. Analyze Data for Important Renewal Insights

You don’t have to be a data scientist to be able to find valuable insight from member data.

Of course it helps if you are, but even a quick look at any data you have on hand can reveal patterns that you can incorporate into your renewal strategy to get more renewals this year.

Here’s an example:

Analyzing Last Year’s Renewals

Take a look at last years renewal data. Can you investigate to see who, last year, renewed early?

Early renewal is a strong indication that a member is enjoying their membership, and likely to renew again this year.

Your membership management software ought to make it easy to look for this kind of data. If it doesn’t, consider using indicators like email engagement (for your renewal reminders), or even open your books to analyze last year’s invoices, and assemble a list of members that renewed early.

Target this list with tailored messaging well before this years renewal date, and you can expect that a good portion of them will renew!

This has the immediate benefit of taking care of a fair number of renewals, but also the secondary benefit of sparing you time and energy later this year as you approach renewal season. With these squared away and taken care of, you’ll be able to better focus your time on the members who need more work!

2. Rethink Your Email Campaigns

When’s the last time you took a look at your renewal reminder emails? Do you even have any?

If not – this is a fantastic starting point to start building your renewal rate. Email campaigns for renewal reminders are a basic tool in a membership managers belt, proven to be seriously useful at producing renewals!

If you?do have automated email campaigns set up for renewals, it’s worth thinking about how long it’s been since they saw a serious update. There has been a lot of innovation in automated email technology over the past few years for membership managers, and incorporating those innovations can have a big impact on the impact of your email campaigns. Consider:

Boost Email Impact with No-Login Renewal Links

How many times does a member have to click from the moment they open a renewal reminder email, to the moment they finish their renewal?

The more there are – the less likely a member is to renew.

Like online shoppers abandon purchases when entering shipping or credit-card information, requiring members to complete long forms and click through multiple screens can have a?big impact on successful renewals. People get frustrated and continue to consider their decision to renew when facing complex renewal processes.

No-Login links provide membership managers a way to drastically cut down on the clicks, fields, screens, and buttons required for a member to renew – boosting your renewal rate by making the decision to renew easier for your members. Instead of being brought to your member portal or empty renewal forms, no-login links skip the login process altogether, and if forms are required, pre-fill as many fields as possible for renewing members.

3. Try Promotional Pricing

FOMO is a tried-and-tested technique for improving renewal rates. By offering limited-time discounts on early renewal, and spreading the message far and wide throughout your membership, you can take advantage of FOMO to drive your renewal rates.

Consider creating a membership renewal promotional code, and including it in your renewal emails. Everybody loves a discount, and having one so conveniently accessible in your renewal reminders can have the double benefit of impacting renewals?and?the driving email campaign click-throughs.

Late Renewal Promo Codes

When members forget to renew, it’s intuitive to expect an extra fee penalizing bad behavior.

But what if instead, you offered a discount?

Creating a promotion for late renewal, and privately offering it to members who have missed their renewal date, is a great way to delight and surprise members while capturing value from memberships that would otherwise lapse!

It’s important to emphasize that you keep this promotion?private.?If members come to expect preferential pricing for late renewal, this strategy can backfire and hurt your renewal rate!

4. Automate Renewal Processing

If you’re manually processing forms, payments, contact records, etc – you’re spending time?managing renewals that could be spent?improving?them.

Your membership management software ought to offer you all the tools you need to fully automate renewal processing. From the moment a they click ‘renew’ till successful payment, a member’s journey to successful renewal ought to be completely untouched by humans, except?if your organization requires members to subject to a manual approval process.

Automating renewal means that membership managers no longer have to invest time and energy in work that is performed faster and better by software. Members will find the process far more convenient, and managers will have far more time to focus their effort on the work that?can’t?be done by software,?managing relationships with your members!

5. Forget Renewal ‘Season’

For membership managers, it ought to?always be renewal season. After all, capturing member renewals is something you can do any time of year, before?and after a members officially required renewal date. Doing so is not only a surefire way to drive your renewal rate, but also has the important benefit of helping get more value from your time throughout the year.

Every renewal you capture before your organization’s or member’s renewal date is one you won’t have to worry about as renewal approaches. With less on your plate, you’re able to put more work into those members who might need it in order to renew!

Once a renewal date has been officially passed, it’s still very possible to squeeze more member renewals ought of those who have churned. Promotions like those detailed above, as well as strategic grace periods, are a great starting point.

You can even get value from churned members that don’t seem interested in renewal no matter what. Build a list, and consider getting in touch with them to pick their brains on why they aren’t renewing. Doing so might reveal an easy-to-address problem that will help you produce more renewals this year!

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