The Online Store – Use It and Reap the Benefits!

Membership organizations are always looking forward to expanding and growing their membership base while encouraging engagement to retain existing members.

But how do you stir membership engagement?

Events and activities have always been the forefront initiative to rally your members to involve themselves and become active participants. Learning courses, discussion groups, forums, and training are also effective ways to pump up the interest level of your members.

But have you considered using e-commerce to spark engagement and increase revenue?

Many organizations have branded merchandise, which is great, but how do you offer it to your members and nonmembers and encourage engagement. Easy you create an online store that allows members and nonmembers to purchase your branded merchandise. Then, to help grow your membership base, you can offer reduced pricing for members as a benefit for being a member and a regular price for nonmembers. Having the two pricing options can also engage membership conversion.

A significant benefit of having customized merchandise is increasing brand awareness and fostering pride within your membership that increases by just being part of the membership base. One strategy you can use to promote your online store and encourage membership engagement is to do giveaways. It is best to do this during onboarding members, as it is a challenge for all organizations to promote engagement once a member joins. So why not add a special touch by sending your new members an item from your online store for free to show them you care, promote the fact they can buy more merchandise, and make the member feels included, not forgotten. You can also use this strategy to celebrate membership anniversaries of five or more years, members’ birthdays, and refer a friend program.

When you members feel included, they are more likely to get more engaged with what is going on with the organization and promote the organization with pride with the merchandise you gave them. This can appear in many forms, such as telling their friends and family, posting on their social media, posting in your membership forms to say thank you, which can spark engagement and conversations with existing members.

In conclusion, you can grow your brand, grow your membership base, and encourage membership engagement by using your membership merchandise offered in your online store.