By Ryan Apodac, Operations Manager & Training Leader
Imagine. You’re in a board meeting with other executives trying to find a solution to your declining membership base. The email blasts to recruit new members has been lackluster at best. Marketing is pulling out all the stops. What could be missing here? Wouldn’t it be nice to save the day with a great recommendation? Well here it is; Association Membership Retention through Telemarketing. This unique telemarketing strategy can be a sure fire method to re-capturing your previous members. Let’s take a look at a Quality Contact Solutions Association Telemarketing Success Story working on behalf of a professional organization in the transportation industry.
Our client, referred to as ABC Membership moving forward, was seeing a decline in their membership base. As a political advocate for its members, ABC Membership needs the support and engagement of a strong membership base. With a strong focus of recruiting new members internally, this left a void in regards to efforts to reengage with lapsed members. ABC Membership partnered with QCS to conduct a membership renewal telemarketing campaign, and the success is evidenced by the numbers.
Phase 1 – Reinstating Members
Phase 1 of this project focused on reinstating members. The focus here was to reach out to previous members and offer to reinstate them at a significant savings of membership dues. In 2017, we reached a total of 2100 previous members, and re-instated members at a conversion of nearly 17%! The expertise of the management team and agents rang ever so true in the success of Phase 1. The conversion numbers were so great it was decided to offer the discounted reinstatement dues for a 2 year membership. This was a smart move, yielding 40% of members agreeing to renew for 2 years vs 1 year. With another win under the belt, the client was so pleased that they increased they’re budgeted telemarketing hours by 25%, in preparation for Phase 2.
Phase 2 – Recently Lapsed Members
Phase 2 focused on renewing recently lapsed members. With email blasts yielding dismal results, the client decided to give association membership retention through telemarketing a try here as well and was certainly glad they did. While this was a smaller campaign, client’s return on investment was significant and garnered nearly $5,000.00 in renewal membership dues, and ultimately made substantially more dollars than invested! Another huge win for the client!
At the end of the day the numbers don’t lie. While email and snail-mail marketing will always have a place in today’s business world, you simply can’t get the same results as having one on one conversations. Association Membership Retention through Telemarketing can ease the burden of any organization. Focus your internal team’s time on expert tasks and leave the renewals in the hands of our experts.
Outsourced telemarketing is constantly changing and adapting to meet the needs of organizations. If you’re looking to see what telemarketing can do to grow your organization, we would love to help. Give us a call at 1-866-963-2889 and press 1 for sales. Or email me at ryan.apodac@qualitycontactsolutions.com.
Ryan Apodac is an Operations Manager & Training Leader at Quality Contact Solutions, a leading B2B outsourced telemarketing organization. With a background of more than a decade in sales, Ryan is passionate about developing and delivering training that ultimately results in improved performance for client programs.
