As a former chamber of commerce Executive Director, I have fond memories of long afternoons chatting with volunteers while we stuffed renewal letters into envelopes by hand. However, if I had access to today’s technology, I would have been able to accomplish much more with both our volunteers’ time and my own.
The best membership software out there will help you automate your renewal process and allow you to take back those hours spent on manual efforts. Since some membership systems even offer free options for small organizations and affordable plans as you grow, the benefits of utilizing software for streamlining renewal greatly outweighs potential costs.
3 Benefits of Streamlining Renewals
- Save staff and volunteer time. Manually managing renewals takes a lot of effort in tracking, letting people know when they need to renew and chasing after people who forget to renew. When you have a membership software that automatically sends upcoming and past due renewal notices, and allows members to renew online, your staff saves time that they can put towards building new revenue streams. This allows for more time spent on recruiting new members and enhancing your current benefits.
- Keep your members informed. The right membership software will provide a way for members to be able to log in and see their past membership payments and when their next payment is due. And the best membership software should be user friendly enough that even your most high touch members are able to print a receipt or renew online easily.
- Make strategic decisions. Easily be able to see which membership efforts work. If you do a membership drive you can identify how many new members joined in the days, weeks or months after. See how many new members join after a big event or at different times of the year. This information can help you decide the best ways to grow your membership.
3 Features to Look for in Membership Software Renewals
- Flexible renewal notices. You should be able to decide how many upcoming and past due renewal notices your members get. Customizing the notices to remind members of the benefits they receive and including a link to where they can easily renew will help increase renewals. Having the ability to customize the renewal notices by membership level and payment method will ensure your members don’t get confused with payment instructions that don’t apply to them.
- Automatically manage past due members. To encourage members to renew, past due actions should turn off member benefits when members are past due. Having the ability to set a grace period for past due members to retain their benefits lets you set your memberships to run the way you want.
- Allow members to easily renew. The most important thing about managing renewals is making it easy for members to renew. Whether it be members selecting autorenewing options or being able to renew online at any time, the fewer barriers you have the more renewals you will get.
3 Tips for Configuring Your Renewals
- Make your renewal emails count. Many groups want to send a large number of upcoming and past due renewal notices once they are automated. The problem with this is that too many emails from you and the member will start to ignore them. A good idea is to send one before their renewal date and 2 after they go past due. If they still haven’t renewed by that point you may find it useful to give them a call and find out why. I often learned a lot of actionable information by calling members who hadn’t renewed. Learn how to formulate a renewal email including samples here.
- Ask for help. You know what you need and the software company knows their software. Sharing your needs with the software company and asking for advice on the best setup to meet them can save you many hours of frustration. Choosing a software company that provides free customer service and individual training will make it easier for you to get the help you need.
- Don’t offer too many choices. Having the ability to offer monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual billing doesn’t mean you should offer all of them. For each decision a potential member has to make you will get some checkout abandonment. It’s best to narrow down to 1 or 2 options your members would prefer so they can easily select and continue signing up.
MembershipWorks offers all of the above benefits and more. If you’re still in the research phase of your search you can see a comparison of available software here. If you’re not sure how to approach choosing a membership management software see our guide on how to pick software here.
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