The way your members are searching for information online is rapidly turning mobile. Remaining relevant, especially to younger members, is imperative to your organization and it’s clear that mobile is where they’re at.  

6 Steps to Creating an Association's Mobile Engagement Strategy

Step 1: Understand your members’ goals and pain points 

The first step in crafting a mobile engagement strategy is getting into your members’ heads. To persuade members to change their digital habits, you must understand why they go to their phones.  

• What problems are they trying to solve? 
• What activities would help them improve their job performance, advance in their career, or help their business? 
• What do they want to get out of association membership?  
• What resources are they looking for? 

To learn about their pain points and goals, look at behavioral data (page visits, email opens) and member research data (interviews, polls, surveys, interest inventories). The more you understand what drives their behavior, the better you can position your app to meet those needs and desires. 

Step 2: Come up with mobile engagement goals 

Once you understand your members’ career, business, and membership goals, you can tell them about app activities that will help them achieve those goals.  

 For example, take the top three reasons members often join associations:  

1.  Network with other industry professionals 
2. Acquire new skills and knowledge or earn credentials 
3. Learn best practices 

Here are mobile engagement goals that would help members achieve those membership goals while also addressing the main reasons they don’t renew: 

• Help members find and connect with each other 
• Guide members to education that helps them acquire the skills, knowledge, and credentials needed to advance their career or business 
• Share the latest news and best practices 
• Deliver resources to use on the job 
• Keep them connected to the association for future engagement 
• Remind them of association deadlines, like renewal  

Step 3: Refine goals and strategies by member segments  

 A member’s needs and desires depend on factors such as career stage, position, engagement history, size of business, and membership tenure. These factors make a difference in how they choose to engage with what you offer on the app. 

Map each member segment’s journey from joining and onboarding, news consumption and connecting, to registering and volunteering. Figure out how a mobile app can enhance their membership journey and help them on the job. 

Tailor app marketing campaigns to each segment so they see the app’s value for members like them. 

Step 4: Establish mobile engagement metrics  

Measure and assess progress towards your mobile engagement goals. What metrics will tell you whether the app is helping members connect, find the resources they need on the job, or help them advance their career or business?  

What metrics will tell you whether you’re achieving your goals for the app, like improving renewal rates, increasing registrations, or making members aware of association resources? 

Look at member-to-member messaging, community participation, registrations, email opens, and page views. Where did the app make a difference? 

Review metrics quarterly to evaluate the effectiveness of different tactics and make adjustments. 

Step 5: Develop and implement a membership app marketing plan  

Imagine sending one email blast and everyone immediately starts using the new app. A nice thought, but association life doesn’t work that way. You’re asking members to put aside whatever they’re doing, add another app to their phone, move it to the home screen, and automatically pull it up whenever they have a question, need, or desire. That’s a lot to ask!  

Instead, you must persuade them to take action and change their behavior. This calls for ongoing marketing campaigns tailored to member segments who: 

• Don’t know about the app because they haven’t read any emails about it 
• Haven’t downloaded the app  
• Downloaded the app but haven’t used it much  

Each of these segments needs different messaging—and that messaging also must be relevant for the member’s career stage, position, engagement history, size of business, membership tenure, or any other factor that causes them to behave differently than other members.  

Step 6: Agree upon staffing responsibilities  

Your mobile engagement strategy must spell out staff responsibilities so one person or team isn’t flying solo. Member engagement is a cross-departmental effort, no matter which team “owns” the mobile app. 

Implementation time is a rare opportunity to evaluate how well staff currently support member engagement activities that your association might take for granted, like connections and community. Are staff assigned to support those membership goals or does everyone assume members will figure it out on their own? 

Whoever is responsible for member engagement activities must also be responsible for the corresponding mobile engagement strategies. Give them the training and permissions to access the app’s back-end functionality.  

A mobile engagement strategy helps your association become indispensable to members. Your app is the association in their pocket delivering the resources, information, and connections they need to do their job, advance in their career, and grow their business. 

To get new ideas for increasing member engagement and retention, download our Ultimate Guide to Mobile Engagement today—and stay tuned for our next post on mobile engagement tactics.