01
Your board sees
the difference
Retention is no longer the crisis conversation. The numbers are moving toward your goal.
For association leaders who've tried everything to improve retention
and don't know what to do next.
You've reworked onboarding, pushed for more engagement, and added more benefits. Your team is working hard, chasing down renewals one member at a time. But retention isn't where you need it to be.
After all that effort, retention is still flat or dropping. And now you have to explain why.
You find yourself holding your breath every time the retention numbers come up. It's exhausting. And before long, the board asks the question you knew was coming:
“What’s your plan to improve retention?”
The one thing you can’t say is, “I don’t know.” So you start looking at another pilot project, another campaign, another webinar series. But in the back of your mind, you’re thinking:
“We just did this. What’s supposed to be different this time?”
You’re tired of putting new names on the same old ideas and hoping this will be the one that finally moves retention. There has to be a better way.
Picture sitting down at the boardroom table next year with complete, quiet confidence. You aren't bracing yourself for hard questions or pitching another pilot project just to show you're doing something. Instead, you're presenting retention numbers you feel good about:
Retention is no longer the crisis conversation. The numbers are moving toward your goal.
No more high-stress search parties tracking down members one by one.
You got the retention number moving and gave the board the results it had been waiting to see.
Your member benefits were designed to do important things. Just not retention.
Courses, resources, reports, webinars, and guidance are built to teach and inform.
Conferences, communities, and networking opportunities are built to connect people.
New programs and offerings are often built to move the association’s priorities forward.
In other words, they were designed to do everything except retain members. Retention doesn’t just happen. It must be designed.
The Retention by Design™ System moves through three connected phases.
Choose the problem your membership is built to help solve.
Define what members need to accomplish, then map the path that helps them get there.
Assess the benefits on the path and decide what belongs, what needs work, and what is missing.
Your Blueprint brings the work together so leadership can see what membership is designed to accomplish, how members move toward that result, and how your benefits support the path.
Defines the core problem membership is built to help solve and the result members should be able to expect from belonging.
Shows what needs to be considered for each member group when designing the path and the benefits they will use.
Maps the points members need to move through to reach the result membership is designed to help them achieve.
Shows where your current benefits fit on the member path and where something may be missing.
Identifies which benefits belong on the path, which need to be improved, and what needs to change.
Uses the Retention by Design™ standards to strengthen the benefits members will use.
Retention by Design™ is designed for association leadership teams responsible for membership strategy, retention, programs, and member benefits.
The system moves through three phases. How long it takes depends on how quickly your leadership team can work through the decisions and complete the work.
Because retention is measured at renewal, the timing depends on when your redesigned benefits reach members and when those members come up for renewal. Associations with different renewal cycles will see the impact on different timelines.
Pricing is based on your annual renewable dues revenue and your membership structure.
I need your leadership decisions, current benefits, renewal data, and available benefit-use data. You’ll work through the leadership decisions inside the Retention by Design™ digital workspace. When we review your current benefits, MemberMap360™ uses your renewal and available benefit-use data to help identify which benefits show a connection to renewal.
A quick self-guided audit to find where a benefit may be hard to understand or use.