Do you know who your “long-term” members are? By long-term, I mean any company or individual who has been a member of your association for more than seven years.
Can you easily pull a report of anyone who has been a member for more than seven years? And can you run a report of any “long-term” member whose membership is expired but still in the “membership grace period”?
Everyone knows that keeping a member is much, much cheaper than acquiring a new member. So keeping your long-term members is especially critical. You should be able to easily determine if any of your long-term members are in danger of dropping membership, and if they are, you should have a plan in place for high-touch personal contact (this is not the time for generic renewal emails) to determine what’s wrong and how the association can address the issue.
Great points! It’s so much more cost-effective (not to mention better for your brand) to retain members. I work for OptimalResume.com, and we produce career management software — resume/website builder, video resume, etc. Associations often use it as an added benefit of membership. We also included technology to help associations keep track of how long members have been there. The million dollar technology, though, is a system that predicts when members are thinking about dropping. That would be powerful.