Using Our Membership Marketing Campaign Template
This article was originally published by Mighty Citizen.
As an association, you’re primarily focused on one thing: membership.
Specifically, membership growth and retention. It’s the lifeblood of any membership organization, and it’s your job as an association marketer to keep your current members (and especially new members) engaged.
With recruiting and retaining members top of mind, you must have a solid membership marketing campaign strategy in place. This strategy is 100% focused on your members and should be used for limited-time marketing campaigns. Imagine how much more effectively you could communicate your new member acquisition offers, product launches, revamped member benefits, advocacy updates, and more with a comprehensive guide to lead the way!
Download Mighty Citizen’s Free Template
Mighty Citizen’s Membership Marketing Campaign Template will help you fully plan, execute, and evaluate your next membership marketing campaign. By the time you complete it, you’ll be able to:
- State the specific metrics and measurable goals of your campaign
- Define and describe the key elements of your campaign including audience, risks, opportunities, and channels
- Detail the logistics your campaign will require
- Build a calendar that contains key milestones
Planning Overview
The template has eight areas to consider in the initial planning overview section. Your project stakeholders should all have buy-in on this section because it sets the foundation for your campaign. In this section, you’ll outline:
Goal: Why are we doing this? There should be only one primary goal.
Audiences: Who are we trying to reach with this campaign?
Strategies: What will we do to reach the goal and audience?
Metrics: How will we know we have succeeded?
Risk: What risks are associated with our objectives, both internal and external?
Timeframe: How long is the campaign expected to last?
Opportunities: What new ideas haven’t been tried in the past?
As an example, your campaign planning overview may look something like this:
Goal: “We need to increase member retention by 5%.”
Audiences: New members. Tend to be 40-75. Primarily female. Care about our continuing education opportunities. They are primarily online via their phones.
Strategies: We will implement a Get to Know Us series for new members.
Metrics: The “Get to Know Us” series will have an average 40% open rate and a 25% click-through rate across the series.
Risk: We may see our unsubscribe rate increase if we email people more often.
Timeframe: The “Get to Know Us” series will run for one month on an automated schedule as new members sign up.
Opportunities: We have never tried using animated gifs in our emails.
Campaign Plan Logistics
In this section, you’ll better define your membership marketing strategy by outlining what content you’ll create and how much of it for each channel. You may have your own channels based on your marketing tactics and current marketing plan—we’ve included a few you may already have and space to add more.
How many pieces of direct mail or print media will you be sending to your new members? What will this new strategy require of your online marketing efforts? You may just be scratching the surface where a more robust plan is needed to develop elements like social media content, templates for your email marketing, or even major website updates.
Create a Schedule
The last step for charting your membership marketing campaign is to build a schedule. This is an internal document that provides all of your stakeholders with insight into what materials you’re producing, publishing, and distributing, and when. You can use the example in the template, or if you’re looking for something more robust to manage all of your content and campaigns, download our free editorial calendar.
Mighty Citizen Can Help
Need help crafting a winning membership marketing campaign? Our marketing services can transform your association, as we’ve done for Digital Analytics Association, the American Association of Veterinary State Boards, and the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners. Get in touch and let us know how we can help.
