A trio of tips: Part 2 Promotion

1. To help you plan events
2. How tos for event promos
3. Day of checklists

Advertise your events on your website and in newsletters. Partner with other groups that will help you promote in exchange for discounts to attend for their members. Give "seats" at your meeting to get cross-promotion from other organizations with similar constituencies.

Make it possible for attendees to invite their friends and colleagues to join them with an easy email link in your announcements.

Connect your event to all the major social media platforms. 

Post it to your contacts on LNKD or G+ or FB yourself. Encourage all participants-- from speakers to committee members-- to do so as well.

Promote the event often. Don't be afraid of overkill. If you planned carefully, you left yourself at least 3 weeks to launch your event. For full-day or multi-day meetings, you do need more time-- and if you planned well for these, you left nearly 6 months to advertise the programming.

Use a save-the-date announcement in advance of posting your final program listing to build anticipation and allow prospective attendees to plan to be there. 

See tip 3 here.

Consider the MEMBERS ONLY event

Programs catering to your members ONLY are a boon for any club. Their benefit for your organization are two-fold:
1. It rewards the membership, 2. It attracts prospects to join.

Free? For a price? That's up to you, but we suggest you mix it up.

Unlike a free membership, a free event for your members (only) is a nice gift.

Sponsor for free events that are also restricted to your members so that they feel appreciated.

Then hold some to pay events that are also for members only. These events will also encourage some fence-sitters to sign up as members and pay for an event. Maybe you can give these new members a "com bo" price for membership and the program.

Just remember when making offers to new members not to alienate those who have been loyal to your club over the years. Watch out for those who join only to attend one members only event. They are unlikely to renew and their interest in the group is probably tangential or limited.

Membership in many of the clubs we've managed are event-driven. At least in part, folks join to take advantage of lower-priced member rates to attend events. The discounted cost for events often can pay for the full cost of membership for the frequent fliers who come often. Make everyone aware of any other benefits, besides discounts for programs, that they get by belonging, but give them the bottom-line on savings when they do attend your events.

People join organizations for a variety of reasons; what they get out of belonging may be sentimental, career-driven or any number of other personal advantages. Your group, undoubtedly, offers tangible benefits, like retail discounts or access to specialized information.  If your benefits are unique enough to your group, they will also convert prospects to membership.

Practicing for the best: some small rules for membership organizations

The most pressing issues for most associations revolve around member retention and "customer" loyalty.

At this Best Practices blog, we offer you some important TO DOs.

• What do you do to keep members happy and renewing? 
• How do you insure that they know when their membership has expired?
• What incentive to members have to come back?
• Is it benefits or programming that drive member retentions?
• What benefits do members appreciate? 
• What benefits are appropriate for your organization?
• How do you serve your "market," ie the members?
• Do you make your members feel like special "customers?"
• What keeps the connection between your group and its members?

Transparency and Your Group's Goals

Open up your management meetings to your constituency Board meetings are meant to take care of the business of running an organization. Even an organization that opens up its management meetings to its members will probably need to hold private closed-door directors meetings. At an open meeting, your board can establish immediate goals, discuss plans for upcoming events, look to volunteers to step-up with new ideas.  The long-range mission of an organization, plans for succession, review of by-laws, budgeting for the future, still need to discussed by your elected group of directors. Open meetings should have a short, fixed agenda. They can offer your members and volunteers information about the organization while eliciting from them ideas about how to make the organization better or keep the association relevant.  You are offering your members an opportunity to be heard. This will probably make them feel engaged and this is the  kind of organization to which people want to belong.

Open meetings provide transparency and honor your members and volunteers.

Your Mission

Your organization has a mission of service and purpose.  Like renewing your wedding vows, reaffirming your mission statement can give a boost to your relationship. Long-established associations may have mission statements established long ago. Reviewing and updating these can be an effective way to engage your membership.    Updating your mission statement also gives members an opportunity to more fully understand your organization. It's a way to help make them participate and make it theirs. Many members may not be aware of the goals and purposes of the association to which they belong.  Making them aware of the missions of your organization can further their connection to the association.  June is proxy season for a lot of groups and another opportunity to make your mission clear to your members and prospects. Use it to your best advantage. Don't forget to include your mission statement on your web site so members and prospective members can access it. By-Laws can get stale, too.   Just as you want your mission statement to reflect the current state of your group and its purposes and goals, so you want the by-laws to be up to date.  Your association's by-laws should be subjected to a periodic review by the board. Changes will generally require the approval of your membership. Asking for their vote on this issue is one more way of keeping your members actively involved.    Modifying the by-laws can also insure that your organization continues to serve its constituency as times change and the needs of your association and its members changes with them.  Don't forget to publish your by-laws on the About Us section of your web pages!

Blow Your Own Horn

When you do things right, you should blow your horn! For every aspect of association "life" there are innovations and standard practices that work best. They may be counter intuitive such as not releasing the venue except to registrants as some groups do to discourage walk-ins. They may just be consistent with your mission to serve your membership.   Whatever works best in the environment you have created for your group, are your personal best practices.  The way you plan meetings, drive membership, follow-up with prospects is all dictated by a code of practice. These are all part of the culture of your organization. Publicize what you and your volunteers and management do best by letting everyone know what you as an organization do best.  Pride in the way things are done at your organization will show throughout and will help in recruiting members, quality speakers, and attendees for your events. We want to share from some of the best practices we have seen from our clients: Teamwork:  One large committee has put on a series of events by delegating the running of each part of the series to a different committee member. In addition, they have assignments for disseminating marketing materials for each program and follow up surveys. They have kept up this enthusiasm over two years of program and are planning for a third series. Advertising: Sending frequent announcements to those who have participated in similar programs in the past is just good target marketing.   Event organizers have asked speakers and panelists to send event announcements to their network of contacts. Creating buzz is very web-centric these days, so using YouTube. LinkedIn or other tools to let people know what your organization is planning is excellent marketing for the event as well as the organization planning it.  Let everyone see the best practices you use in running your chapter: post them to the web site. Speaking of blowing your own horn, we'd like to blow our own: https://sites.google.com/site/cleanlistassociatesinc/ also at https://sites.google.com/site/wellserveyou/

Honoring Your Volunteers

Volunteer Organizations Need Lots of Helping Hands To Keep Them Going! The Board of Directors and Management Committees are already recognized as your club's leadership. The unsung heroes that keep your organization going are those who help out planning events, contacting speakers, advertising the events, but are not part of the top-tier Directors or Management. Everybody wants to know that they are appreciated for the contributions they've made.  One of our associations has decided to reward them not just with plaques and certificates of gratitude, but also with honorifics. These committee members will be called Event Chairs, or Communications Chairs, etc.  This is a brilliant idea.  Committee members are also rewarded by: Dinners  Opportunities to network with distinguished speakers Public recognition at events The above-mentioned certificates or plaques  Give your volunteers the recognition they deserve

Rewards and Incentives

Reward your members! Give incentives to prospective members so they will want to join!   Membership benefits in the form of discounts at retail establishments and free or discounted magazine subscriptions are certainly great ways to reward your membership for their loyalty. The best reward for your members, however, is the opportunity to attend events at "member prices." If it is less expensive to attend a meeting as a member, you are also giving non-members an incentive to pony up membership dues.  Help them see the benefit: Do the math for them. For instance, "If you attend at least 5 events as a member, the cost of your membership is covered by the savings in the program fees. Take a look: you save $15 for each event, so for 5 events you more than cover the membership dues of $75."     Another incentive you can offer to drive non-members into becoming members is to deduct the cost of the meeting they are attending from the cost of dues-- if the prospective member joins at the event! You are giving him/her a free event and getting a new member on the spot which is a very fair trade.       Reward your members for participating in the events you have with chances to win door prizes if you can get sponsors to make donations.  Members also like to feel that their membership gives them an edge, so plan  Members Only events Give them "plus ones": Let them bring a guest at the member rate to regular events Open up registration for an event to members before it is open to non-members  Honor your Members their contribution to the success of your organization

When Walk-ins Are a No-No

At the door registrants make it difficult for your volunteers, and some venues will not accept walk-ins to their facility In the cases where a venue is adamant about its security policies, you can assure that there will not be walk-ins by not publishing the venue on your invitations and announcements.  In such cases, it is also a good idea to close registration earlier, say a day ahead of the event because you will need to send an email to all the registrants telling them where to go the day before an event.  Why the day before? So your attendees can plan and know where they are going and so you can be comfortable that they got the venue information in time.   When building security issues do not allow you to accept at-the-door registrants, you have an excuse to control attendance.   Keeping in mind that in many cases at the door registration is difficult to manage, even when a venue allows for it, it is a good policy to discourage on-site walk-in traffic by either not publishing a venue or by charging a lot more for anyone showing up at the door. Security is not the only issue that makes walk-in registration tough. On site staff or volunteers also have to work harder keeping pace with at the door registrants.