Member Journey

• The general public
• Potential membership candidates
• Actual membership candidates
• The existing members

Targeted communication is often difficult to apply here, as there is relatively little control over whom you can address and where. Many of these initial points of contact with you and the association therefore have a very direct link to advertising measures or media presence, for example. The most important thing is to spark initial interest, making potential new members curious enough to engage with your association in more depth.

And that is exactly the point at which you create the touchpoints for the individual target groups in a very deliberate way. Each of these touchpoints should lead interested individuals one step closer to membership in your association. The touchpoints must therefore be systematically built upon one another, ensuring that the respective person remains in contact with the association and associates each of these points of contact with a positive experience.

To create effective touchpoints, you need “personas”. For this, you must imagine your target groups as vividly and clearly as if you knew them as well as an old acquaintance. You can create profile sheets to support this process. Assign your target group’s persona a representative image, a name, an age and an occupation. Consider their professional position, marital status, education and interests. Describe them in as much detail as possible until you truly feel you know this person. Often, you will actually have a very precise “prototype” from your own professional environment or even from your circle of friends and acquaintances in mind to guide you, which helps enormously.

By knowing the personas, including their values, views and experiences, you can assess them better and put yourself in their shoes. What does this person need? What are they interested in? Where do they gather their information, what media do they consume? And above all: where do they come into contact with your association and how will this first contact be positively associated for them? Make sure to create several personas. This “artificial member database” of different prototypes can be continuously expanded over the years with “new member types”. It is worthwhile being very detailed and thorough here, as each of these touchpoints is entirely individual to its prototype. The more precisely you work them out, the more successful you will be  and the more new members you can generate.

Just as you can create touchpoints in a positive sense, you will also encounter situations / touchpoints for each persona that they would perceive as negative. These so-called “pain points” are also very revealing and important for you and for the Member Journey you create, as these pain points must be “navigated around”.

These may be direct and personal points of contact between your association and an interested person. Such as an event where members and volunteers can approach interested individuals directly and offer personal insights into your association. Equally, digital touchpoints can be used, such as interaction with other users on social media or guest users in the interactive member portal.

You create what is known as a Journey Map, which maps out the entire Member Journey and its touchpoints. Illustrate the path your personas take from the first touchpoint, through the subsequent ones, to completed membership. The most important touchpoints – those from which you know many contacts were made and which had a high success rate – are highlighted in particular. It is worthwhile evaluating each touchpoint again and again over time and comparing it with real-world data. Your Journey Map should be continuously refined and optimised; above all, current, possibly even global, events such as those we experienced in 2020/2021 must be used to update or adapt the Journey Map based on new insights.

In principle, every association will benefit from having its own Member Journey. Through this in-depth analysis of association communication and all touchpoints, conceptualising a Member Journey is essentially also a strategy for reviewing and revising the organisation’s overall communications strategy with its members. After completing the process, your communication will definitely be clearer and more targeted.

Seize the opportunity offered here. It is a great deal of work, but it is worthwhile and will undoubtedly pay off!

At the same time, networking within your association is strengthened. Members who might otherwise have met and connected at an association event now meet online in a committee meeting and network in a joint working group.