You can think about and empathize with your members, but you don’t live their lives. Even if you have members telling you what to think, they don’t represent all members. They’re probably the loudest or most influential voices, but you need to hear the quiet ones, too.
Conduct a holistic member experience audit
Start by conducting a member experience and member data audit to get a full picture of how well you know your members and how efficient and user-focused your membership efforts are. Then, create a roadmap to get to know your members even better and create efficiencies for your membership team using tools like Agentforce and Data Cloud.
UX research used in member experience audits helps you determine how usable, useful, and user-centric your member experience really is for all members. This collaborative effort requires the involvement of your membership committee and other groups, including representatives of member segments with distinctive needs and goals, for example:
- Recent graduates
- Early-career professionals
- Mid-level professionals
- Specialty groups
- Aspiring C-suite
- C-suite
- Solo operators and/or small business owners
The insights and data you gather from UX research help you gain staff and/or leadership support for changes you want to make, such as investing in technology. This research also proves your proposals are soundly based on data, not assumptions.
Map the membership journey to uncover insights
With journey mapping, you (staff and members) find out what members feel during different phases of their membership journey. The exercise helps you understand how to anticipate their needs and eliminate possible pain points during the member experience.
In this exercise, you try to get inside a member’s head and see the entire membership experience from their perspective. You end up with a visual representation of a member segment’s journey from awareness of your association to joining, onboarding, getting involved, renewing, and beyond.
The resulting map isn’t so much the point as the process of putting yourself in the member’s shoes to better understand their needs, perceptions, and emotions—factors that contribute to or detract from their experience. This exercise prompts discussions and insights that reveal opportunities for improvement.
Gather member insights through interviews and surveys
By interviewing and surveying users (members), you can design solutions that keep their needs front and center. Their feedback helps you better understand their membership goals, topics of interest, work/business pain points, and interaction preferences.
By asking for feedback, you show members you care about their needs and are willing to invest the time in making them the focus of all you do. You can also demonstrate your organization’s understanding of both the forest and the trees by ensuring that questions are thoughtful and likely to lead to new insights. This effort can cement your organization’s position as a thought leader in the field.
Leverage behavioral data for a clearer member picture
Members often say one thing but do another. As the single source of truth, your AMS and integrated systems reveal much about your members since they collect and track behavioral data, such as email opens, page visits, purchases, registrations, and other signifiers of member interest. Drilling down into data about activity in different community groups or interactions with your organization’s communications can offer meaningful insight into member concerns and enhance your efforts to add value.
Design member-centered solutions that drive loyalty
By applying UX principles to the member experience, you give members the value they need and expect to advance their careers or grow their organizations. By focusing on their experience, you cultivate engaged and satisfied membership users who turn into loyal membership champions.
All of this is achievable on your own, but if you need some help, we’re happy to discuss how we conduct a member audit or implement tools like marketing automation, predictive analytics tools, and Agentforce.