Membership News

Membership Learning Lab at IBS: Creating Value, Communicating Value
Thursday, Jan. 12, 8-10 a.m.
Orange County Convention Center West 330 E-F, Level III

Executive Officers, membership staff, and membership committee members alike are encouraged to attend this one-of-a-kind membership development session at IBS. Join with your peers from across the nation to swap ideas and learn from the pros how to shape the membership opportunity offered by your HBA into one that grows and evolves with your members—and how to communicate that value to your current and prospective members.

Facilitators: Joseph Burak and Christopher Williams from NAHB’s Affiliate Services department, our federation’s full-service consulting arm.

In this lab you will learn:

• How to assess what members actually know about their membership
• How to determine where to concentrate your communication efforts
• Practical ideas for customizing your membership offerings
• Words and communication vehicles that will put a buzz in your marketing…and more!

REGISTRATION: Only one seat is available per HBA. Reserve yours by emailing membership@nahb.com with your contact details. Put “I’m there!” in the subject line. Pre-registration is required. 100 seats only. Questions?  Call 800-368-5242 x8351.

Lessons in Loyalty from “The Membership Minute”
The most powerful marketing tool any of us can hope to leverage is word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth begins with loyalty. This Minute provides 5 strategies you can use to build it.
To subscribe to The Membership Minute, email membership@nahb.com with "sign me up!" in the subject line. To view back issues of the Membership Minute, click here.

1. Know your members' definition of value.
   The password to loyalty is value. Knowing how your members experience value and then delivering on those terms is critical to building loyalty. But knowing your members' true definition of value is not easy because it is constantly changing and can mean different things to different members. Your job is to learn, though the eyes of your members, what brings value.
   
   
2. Aggressively seek out member complaints.
   For most companies only 10% of complaints get articulated by customers. The other 90% go unarticulated and manifest in many negative ways: unpaid invoices, negative attitudes, and most crippling, negative word of mouth. Head off bad relations before they happen by making it easy and satisfying for members to complain and treat their complaints seriously. Internally, that means establishing firm guidelines regarding member response time and other procedures.
   
   
3. Get and stay responsive.
   Research shows that responsiveness is closely tied to a customer's perception of good service. Double that for member service. Members arrive at your doorstep time-starved and eager to locate answers, value, and service. Figure out how best you can anticipate the needs of your members, and respond accordingly.
   
   
4. Know your loyalty "stages" and make sure your members are moving through them.
   Members become loyal one step at a time. By understanding the member's current placement on the loyalty measuring stick, you can better determine what's needed to move that member to the next level of loyalty. One example of how you might consider it is this: prospect, first-year member, renewing member, believer, and then advocate. If your programs aren't naturally moving members forward, rethink them.
   
   
5. Win back lost members.
   Research shows that a business is twice as likely to successfully sell to a lost customer as to a brand new prospect. Yet, in many cases, winning back lost members is frequently the most overlooked source of growth. With the average HBA losing 15% to 30% of its members every year, it's imperative to create hard-working strategies not only for acquisition and retention, but also for win-back. Since no retention program is 100% foolproof, it follows that every HBA needs a process for recapturing those high-value members who depart. Think of it as loyalty insurance.