Give New Members the Personal Touch during Chapter Onboarding

The first few months after they join your association, a new member is evaluating whether they made the right choice. This is a crucial time period for member retention. Has membership met their expectations? Are they seeing a return yet on their dues investment? Did their chapter onboarding experience help them understand how to get the most out of their membership?

Chances are new members are having wildly different onboarding experiences depending on the chapter they joined. But members can get some semblance of a consistent chapter onboarding experience if both National and chapters focus on their strengths. National can contribute expertise and resources, while chapters focus on the human touch.

New Member Onboarding: It’s Not Just Show & Tell

The first few months makes all the difference for a new member. My gym understands this membership principle. They give two months’ free membership to new members who attend a four-session training program—essentially a new member onboarding program. In these sessions, a trainer learns about the new member’s goals and interests, introduces them to different aspects of the gym, conducts a baseline fitness assessment, and suggests a two-month training program.

When a new member understands and becomes comfortable with what the gym has to offer, they’re more likely to develop a workout habit. They start to see results, become motivated to keep going, and are more likely to renew their membership.

The same principle applies to association and chapter membership. If you learn about a new member’s needs, introduce them to the chapter and association, and guide them onto the most relevant membership path, you will create a member for life.

Collaborate with Chapters on a New Member Onboarding Plan

Elements of a New Member Onboarding Plan

A new member onboarding program isn’t only about show-and-tell. It’s about listening too. To meet a new member’s expectations, you must learn enough about them so you can show them how to best navigate the chapter and association experience.

New member onboarding has traditionally been an information-sharing exercise because that’s something National can easily do at scale. Instead, provide the membership expertise and resources that chapters need to deliver a more effective onboarding experience. Our next post describes different methods for getting a new member involved in the association and chapter.

Elements of a Chapter New Member Onboarding Program

National’s welcome email campaign should take a slow and steady approach so new members don’t experience information overload. Little by little, introduce them to the association, but only to what’s relevant for them. Select the content based on what you’ve learned from their membership application and any chapter outreach.

For example, send new vendor members an email suggesting best practices for developing relationships with fellow members, or introducing them to a few marketing opportunities. Young professionals might want to hear about early-career educational events or microvolunteering opportunities. C-suite professionals would like information about exclusive roundtables with their peers. Emails sent to a professional specialty segment could tell them about an upcoming webinar or job-specific online discussion forum.

All new members would benefit from hearing how to pursue common goals, such as connecting with other members, keeping up on industry news, contributing expertise or time, helping out on a project, or learning a new skill.

Suggest Options for New Team Member Orientation

The danger with in-person orientation sessions is yawn-inducing information overload. Instead, try a more enjoyable story-telling approach. Because stories stick in our memory, new members will be more likely to act upon what they’ve learned. Making their first few months enjoyable is a great way to increase member engagement later down the road.

Volunteers could talk about how they got involved in the association/chapter and the different ways they’ve taken advantage of membership. Allow plenty of time for formal and informal Q&A, and follow up the next day with an email linking to relevant information.

Arrange a Welcome First Event

Remind your chapters how it feels to walk into a room where you don’t know a soul and everyone is chatting it up with friends. Encourage them to make a special effort to welcome new members at their first few events. Put something on their badge that identifies them as a new member. That alone should prompt existing members to greet them warmly, but you could also add a name badge icebreaker.

Let Member Customize Their Association Experience

Members are used to setting preferences with online services and brands. During onboarding, ask new members to update their member profile with interests and other data you can use to personalize their membership experience. For example, let them opt in to receiving information about specific types of micro-volunteering opportunities, or allow them set the frequency and types of communications they want to receive. This can be done easily with membership management software.

During the first year of membership, your association and chapters will share lots of information with new members—and they will end up forgetting much of it. But you have time to slowly learn about them and introduce them to different relevant benefits of membership. By leveraging National’s resources and the chapter’s human touch, you can meet and exceed a new member’s expectations.