Silverbear Membership Blog

Engaging with your members is a vital part of managing a successful association. Communicating effectively with your members is not easy, it can be complicated, time consuming and prone to errors. As a membership organisation, whether you are a charity or other membership group requires membership managers to communicate constantly: To prospect members – promoting the association, highlighting offers & benefits, engaging with prospect members in general To current members  -  Showing the member value of their membership and ensuring they are aware of everything the association is doing and offering When holding events - Promoting events, selling sponsorship, providing the costs, timings, and location and agenda items. Answering member questions and directing them to the right places, promoting member engagement and interaction during the event. Then getting feedback from members and exhibitors, promoting the event to those who didn’t attend, thanking speakers and guests for their input etc....

With Microsoft’s launch of Dynamics CRM Online earlier this week, Silverbear have already made this available within Silverbear’s CRM and Membership Management software solutions. This reflects our alignment with Microsoft and the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft technologies.

Our leading edge customer experience management platform now includes:

- Increased visibility of data through new real time dashboarding and advanced visual reporting capabilities - Enhanced customisation to provide individual views tailored to specific roles or teams - Enhanced work flows to provide more control over business processes - Additional onscreen workflow through guided dialog sessions for key business processes

This enhanced Silverbear solution brings together effective CRM, membership and customer database management to efficiently run an organisation in a familiar, intelligent and connected environment.

The on-premises and partner-hosted versions of Microsoft Dynamics...

Are you a membership organisation? Then you understand that maintaining and growing your membership base as well as understanding your existing members is crucial. Why do members join and why do they leave? Trying to capture and then report on this information can be done by utilising a membership management software solution allowing you and your membership team to create and run sophisticated reports helping you to understand your members and strategise plans for future growth.

This blog post will out like how you can improve your membership reporting to identify trends and track KPIs.

If you are like most membership organisations then you probably manage your membership base through a series of spreadsheets and databases. Although this can do the job, it can be inefficient and makes it difficult to track key performance indicators (KPIs). Many membership managers complain of not being able to drill down into membership data – making it difficult to analyse trends and predict future subscription...

In the first part of the blog we covered Internal Communication Tools. The second part of this blog post is Membership Web Portal.

A membership management solution that offers you a fully web based portal will allow your members access to their personal information at any time and from any location. Allowing your members to easily log in using their own unique username and password and edit/amend/update their personal information.

Amendments that are made by the member will automatically feed through and update the internal membership system of the record of the member, ensuring the information you have on that member is always accurate. A membership portal which is offered by a membership solution provider will enable each member to access relevant tools and content for each member type, such as blogs/forums/wikis etc encouraging member-to-member interaction and cross interaction between different groups.

Selecting a comprehensive membership software solution will ensure relevant information...

Most membership organisation’s vision is to host and provide information which their members can easily and simply access, being able to provide a platform where membership organisations and members can share knowledge, information and network through the integration of their membership system with the membership database and their website. More and more organisations want to keep members informed and are starting to create specialist-interest online communities which offer services such as forums, blogs, wikis, expert content and file libraries.

The key to a successful online community is really dependent on your internal systems and how you can utilise them efficiently, through the implementation of an online membership management solution you can seamlessly integrate with your website and develop an online network model reflective of your requirements.

So what should your online community offer?

Fresh, dynamic, collaborative, creative and engaging content An intuitive and straight...

Implementing a membership CRM software into your organisation can help improve your operational efficiency through standardising and streamlining your business processes. Ensuring the software has an adaptive and flexible work flow engine which will enable a business to automate business processes in a user friendly way will ensure you attain, retain & maintain your membership base.

Through the automation of time consuming and repetitive tasks you are able to relieve your employees of the mundane but vital work that needs to be carried out on a daily basis, thereby increasing employee efficiency.

The right membership software can be customised to work the way your business works, ensuring you give the right information to the right members. In this market it has never been more important to ensure your members are always kept fully informed and updated on any new business services or upcoming special offers so make it even easier and automate the following marketing tasks:

Building member...

Membership organisations such as charities, societies, clubs, gyms, churches or associations regularly host events for their members. These events can range from a targeted meeting of 10 people to a large event targeting their entire membership base.

Organising events is a crucial component of membership management, it provides a first-rate platform for open communication between you and your member and for member to member and it is also an excellent way in which member organisations can increase their membership subscription and participation. Members must feel that they are getting some benefit from their membership and by hosting regular, relevant events this will ensure you add not only value to their subscription but will help promote member engagement.

However, organising and planning an event is not easy and can be exceptionally time consuming. Many aspects go into managing an event such as;

Event Planning Booking a venue/room Managing presenters Organising catering...

This might seem like a very strong statement to make, however if you are a membership organisation (society, association, not for profit, gym etc) then you will understand that managing your membership base is not easy.

Implementing a powerful membership management solution provides organisations with a highly flexible “core” membership management platform that can adapt, grow and scale alongside your business.

Online membership software engages and connects you with your members and by utilising the enhanced communication channel (such as; email marketing, web portal, social marketing sites etc) you will start to see an increase in communication between the organisation and the member as well as  increased interaction between member to member.

Implementation...

Do you know who your members are? Do you know what your members are looking for? Do you know why they are looking for it?

Managing your members efficiently and effectively will help you answer these questions, however, in these economic times members are demanding a clearer “Membership ROI” and asking their membership organisations to demonstrate this.

So the question that really needs to be answered is; “how much value does your organisation provide to your members?”.

This is not any easy question to answer but it is essential you do answer it, and answer it well. As a membership organisation you need to connect and stay connected with your members, however, defining what you should be offering to your members is easier said than done, below are a few areas we have highlighted;

Highly targeted communication channels via; email phone website social media

Ensuring the information you have on your member is accurate and up to date so targeted and...

Are you a membership club? Government agency? Charity? Association? Society? Trade Union? Or any organisation that has members? Then this blog post is relevant to you.

In this modern and transforming membership-led society, membership organisations need to adopt mechanisms to measure their members engagement requirements and address them efficiently and effectively. Implementing a membership solution will ensure you address the following key issues of membership management:

Keeping good clean and accurate data on your existing and prospective members Communicating effectively with your members Understanding your members concerns and requirements Managing and recording membership contact data and information Utilising membership data information efficiently and resourcefully Reporting and analysing membership data and turning this into useful information Segmenting membership demographics simply Keeping control and managing your members throughout the entire...

Although we are reported to be coming out of these troubled economic times it has never been more pertinent to put in place contingencies to ensure you are fully prepared for the next economic downturn.

Membership organisations, NOW is the time to implement strategies to increase your membership numbers and ensure continued renewals and increased subscriptions.

Exchanging of information is the currency of any successful membership organisation. But how do you go about growing/attaining new members?

To attract new members you need to fully understand what motivated your current members to firstly subscribe and then renew. Once you have this information you need to utilise it within your member outreach strategy. So how do you attain & utilise this information effectively? Implementing a membership software will help you recognise and address your membership management needs. The right membership software enables you to understand the fundamental determinants of your members experience and will...

As a membership organisation understanding your members expectations through what you currently offer is crucial. However being able to improve on the service you deliver will not only help you grow your membership base but retain it.

To do this you need to utilise the myriad of information you collect on your members effectively & efficiently. Defining a clear analysis path to identify current & future membership strategies will give you a clear visualisation of your membership base and allow you to utilise these results effectively.

Therefore choosing & implementing the right Membership Management Solution is vital.

The “right” membership solution will recognise and address your membership management needs by providing you with;

Good, clean & up to date information on existing members Good, clean & up to date information on prospective members Good, clean & up to date information on members activities & requirements A clear & distinct outline of a member’s...