Tips for Onboarding New Members
Your member website has served its purpose – the right people are finding you and your content is convincing them to become members of your association. Give yourself a pat on the back – that’s awesome. Now, the question becomes, what next? What can be done to make these new members feel at home and get them integrated into your community as smooth as possible?
There are many ways to accomplish this successfully. The key is to have a formal plan ready to go so when someone joins your association, you’re ready to welcome them with open arms. Below are a few of the actions that you may want to consider when onboarding new members.
- Fashion a Formal Welcome
- The very first thing a new member should receive is a welcome message (email) from an association administrator. Administrators are your boots on the ground and have the highest frequency of interactions with members. So, what better person to welcome new members than one of the people they will be communicating with most? The message should be a brief and friendly welcome to the association. If you’d like, you can even point the new member in the direction of some interesting features your association offers.
- Offer Immediate Value
- The welcome email should be followed up with something of value. This could be the provision of the latest white paper or info sheet, or you could provide them with an invitation to your upcoming association event. Providing something beneficial right out of the gate will give new members a great first impression.
- Interaction with Association Executives
- Another welcome that can have a positive impact is a brief message directly from one of your association’s higher-ups. The new member will get the sense that the growth of your association community is important at every level of the organization.
- Facilitate an Onboarding Webinar
- Draw on existing association members to host an onboarding webinar. This will allow new members to get caught up to speed on how the association works, will validate the worth of your association through the sharing of existing members’ positive experiences, and will immediately connect existing and new members so integration can occur in an expedited fashion.
- Make it Easy
- Registering to and navigating around your association and what it has to offer shouldn’t be rocket science. On the contrary, it should be as simple as it gets. The very best way to make things easy for administrators and members when onboarding new people is to implement a comprehensive association management system. An AMS empowers your professional administrators to connect with new (and existing) members quickly and easily, and members won’t be confused by a clunky interface when trying to access the value they are after. All of the above actions, that are important when onboarding someone to your association, are made more efficient and streamlined with an AMS. The system that you employ to maintain meaningful interaction with your membership is terribly important, as it will serve as the foundation of your online community. And, the health of your online community will determine the health of your association as a whole – as it is where the majority of association initiatives will take place. Sure, you will have association events from time to time throughout the year, but in between those face-to-face meetings, all other efforts will occur online. Make sure you have an AMS that offers the user-friendliness needed to make things simple. Guild is an AMS solution that provides that ease of use so administrators and members can interact freely. To speak with a Guild representative to learn more, or to schedule a live demo of the solution, click here.
Make sure you don’t leave new members in the dark once they’ve registered. Get them excited about their membership by interacting with them, showing them the return you can provide for their investment, integrating them with fellow members and colleagues, and supporting them with a solution they can understand. Don’t hesitate to show them how great you are and how much better off they will be by claiming membership to your association.
