With club membership dues year just around the corner, (deadline March 31st), it is time to ask your members to support your club with their membership dues for another six months. As you take a look at your renewal plan, here are four considerations you may find valuable:
• Consider using reason — Sending an email with a renewal statement is not always enough to prompt someone to find their checkbook, or pull out their credit card, or make a trip to the mailbox just to renew their club membership. Instead remind them of the benefits they received and/or could have taken advantage of in the last six months. Remind them of all Toastmasters has been able to accomplish especially within your club. Get them excited of what to expect in the next six months because of their support. Lastly, consider sending a personalize note from the VP of Membership or another club leader versus using a general form letter.
• Consider the timing — It is important to take into consideration when your renewal message will be hitting your members. Will it coincide with a major holiday? Are many of your members at colleges/universities and your renewal will hit during spring break? Try to time your message when you know your members will be receptive to it.
• Consider the format — Mail versus email. Both meet specific needs. Some members may prefer to be green and receive an email and pay with a credit card — receiving no paper statement at all. Other members may need a paper statement as an invoice in order for their employer to cut a check. To meet the needs of both, try sending an email message first to be followed by a paper statement at a later point in time. For those members who pay online using an email reminder, this saves the cost of a printed statement being sent, and it is more environmentally friendly. And for those members who want/need a paper statement, they can still expect one to be sent.
• Consider taking feedback — Sometimes members may have a question for the club, or an issue that needs to be resolved, and when they receive a renewal notice, they may hesitate to renew. For example, a member may not have received the Toastmaster magazine all year, and even though they did not reach out to you at an earlier point to try to resolve this issue, which negative experience can still give them pause about their renewal. Therefore, make it easy for them to find contact information— someone they can reach out to with a question or issue. Simply resolving an issue, which may be as simple as an address change, can be enough to motivate that member to renew.
Author: Michelle Hanchey, DTM