association comments-o-matic

Of course the Mad Max reference made you laugh. Think anyone under 35 knows what it’s talking about?

- Scott Briscoe

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Or how about the idea of asking members to write one page summaries of the key learnings from the books they put on the recommended list and sharing those with the community that is too busy to read the original?

- Mark J. Golden, CAE

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Ok Maddie, I see you’re unimpressed… you’ve been here a couple days now, will you share an idea or two that could be great?

- Scott Briscoe

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I will be more than a little depressed if this is all we can come up with as “great ideas”. Just sayin’…

- Maddie Grant

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Scott – Thanks for the comments. I do not know the specifics of the ASOA situation other than what was shared in the Membership Developments newsletter. But let’s take a look at a possible scenario related to this organization. I see from the ASOA web site that membership dues are $275. Let’s say the free trial lasts for 3 months and the incremental servicing costs are 20% of total dues (($275 x .20) /4 = $13.75), so the cost to service is $13.75 per trial member served (700 x $13.75 + $9,625). I use incremental servicing costs since the periodical would be published whether or not there were free trial members. Clearly there also would be staff time and other costs associated in providing the trial.

Now if 11% of the 700 members joined as reported, then the program is producing a first year income stream of $21,175. If this association maintains a typical renewal rate of 80%, then the life time dues value of these members is $105,875. I would expect that over their lifetime these members would also have non-dues purchases that would contribute to this revenue stream, but I do not have any data on what those might be in this situation.

Based on this scenario, I think you can make a case for the free trial approach with this organization. However, as you point out, if the servicing cost is higher, the conversion rate lower, the dues amount is lower, or the renewal rate is lower then these economics can fall apart pretty quickly. Tony
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This reminds of a great takeaway from UnTech: “Fail, but fail faster so you can move onto something that works better.” Not everything has to be perfect right away, all the time. Associations shouldn’t be afraid of trial and error — and especially the “error” part.

- Shannon Otto

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Hey Tony,

I truly think it is great that Karen's association is willing to be creative and take some risk while trying to grow their membership. The response rates concern me some. I worry that they are spending more money to recruit and provide benefits to the trial members than they are getting back when only 11% of the trial members are converting to full membership. An 11% response rate means that they are absorbing the cost of serving 9 out of 10 people who they will potentially never get another dollar from. To me that is a scary proposition.

Scott
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Scott, it’s great to read such a thought provoking recap in near real time. I’m not at the conference this year, so thank you!

Your main points make a ton of sense. Adding to the stop doing list is sometimes harder than attempting new things. As a general rule, if a product or service is trending down an association needs to ask hard questions about the sustainability of that revenue source 12 – 36 months down the road. Pulling the plug too late or not jumping to the next curve can be real costly in this time of rapid change.

I love this quote from Rupert Murdoch – “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”

Enjoy the rest of the conference!

- Dave Lutz

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