Best Practices for Your Affinity Group

Our clients have provided some lustrous examples of what works best and Clean Lists wants to share these best practices in offering advice on the ways to increase attendance at events and create a loyal membership From our experience, the peskiest issues that plague every association are: Keeping up strong membership numbers, ie retention Increasing attendance at events, and Predicting how many people will show up for your speakers Reward members and guests for loyalty. Recognize those who frequently attend your programs. Give an occasional free event, or ask those who are often in attendance to bring a guest for free.  1. We offer some best practices, or at least very good practices, for membership retention: Engage the membership!  Offer them good programs, the kind that have historically attracted your constituency; Ask them what they think, of the programs, your membership benefits, etc. Invite them to participate in management meetings, Have your management members and board greet attendees at your events     We have found that it is programming that drives membership numbers.  Most of the time, you'll find that interesting topics will fill the chairs and encourage people to become (or stay) members of your group.   2. Some events underwhelm your expectations:  How to increase attendance? On occasion, your timing for an event is a little off, or the announcement hasn't stirred the excitement you had hoped for...  Post on special interest web sites, Let your LinkedIn or other social media pals know about the event, Offer member rates to like-minded organizations in exchange for their advertising your event,  Ask the speakers to alert their clients and followers about the event and offer them the member rate, as well, In the final hour, if you need to fill up an auditorium: Offer a bring your boss [for free] spot to those attending. Invite students to attend for free to fill those seats.  Don't forget to add guests of the speakers to your attendance list. Gauging the numbers to expect for an event 3. Knowing what to expect, or for the hosts of an event,  how many to expect is important. If you require that event attendees prepay to come, you can predict pretty accurately how many will be there. Always expect to lose 10% even of those who have prepaid, but you should have a good grasp on attendance just from the pre-registration list. If you take registration without prepayment, you are likely to find a larger number of those who said they would be there not show up. Suggestion: request a commitment-- prepayment shows good intentions.

	You should highlight the best practices of your organization: Post them to your website.