Aptify

If a member is willing to let you automatically renew them by charging a credit card or deducting dues from their bank account – why not do that? As long as you have proper security measures around sensitive data and ensure that you notify the member that they may opt-out before you automatically charge them, this is a great customer service. This improves member satisfaction by reducing the work the member has to do to stay a member. Additionally, those members that auto-renew will not require expensive renewal notices and will pay on time automatically, improving cash flow.

Check out our recorded webinar on membership renewal here.

A few thoughts on how to implement auto-renewals for individual member organizations (and for subscriptions):

• Offer this service to all new and existing members and consider selling it one of these ways:
  • Convenience – the member doesn’t have to take any action to stay a member and they are charged exactly on the renewal date
  • Reduced Costs to Association – This is a selling point because the saved funds can be used to do more to deliver member value through programs, content, research, advocacy, and more…
  • Green – sending out thousands of renewal notices each year, in many case 3 or 4 times before stopping is incredibly wasteful and uses up a tremendous amount of paper, ink, and energy.
• Ensure the member is comfortable
  • Make sure your organization is PA-DSS/PCI compliant – this is something your software has to ensure but you have to implement policies internally to ensure appropriate security and controls are in place to achieve compliance. One quick note about this – make sure that any employee that handles credit card or bank data has an extra level of scrutiny applied to their hiring and continued employment – running a recurring background check including a credit report is not unreasonable for these roles.
  • Communicate to the membership that the auto-renewal data is stored securely and in compliance with PCI, etc.
  • Let the member know that each renewal period, they will receive a notice in advance of the actual renewal giving them an option to opt-out of renewal. This is critical – people want control – even if they have every intention of renewing for a long time now, things could change and this is an extra customer service value that also adds a level of comfort.
• Implement Advanced Notification
  • Implement an automated email message that goes to the member 30 days in advance of the renewal to indicate they are about to be automatically renewed. Given them an easy way to opt-out without jumping through hoops! But, ensure that you include a highly personalized report in the email that showcases all of the benefits they have taken advantage of – not generic member benefits, but those things the member actually did – in the past year, but also since they joined. For example, showcase their event attendance, committee involvement, publications purchased, etc. Make sure the report also showcases savings they have benefited from compared to non-member prices, if such a concept is relevant to your business model.
  • Notify members well in advance of a credit card expiring – if a credit card is going to expire in September 2010 and a membership is due to renew in December, don’t wait until December to figure this out. Implement automatic notification to the member telling them their payment method for auto renewal is no longer up to date and give them a secure web link that allows them to update this. Given them a friendly reminder notice automatically every 30 days or so.
  • If someone has auto-renewal turned on but has an invalid payment method and hasn’t responded to multiple emails, queue them up for a live call from a customer service rep to request their payment method details. Make sure that the outbound call is setup so that your customer service rep authenticates their identify to the member. These days, if someone you don’t know calls up asking for a credit card # it is suspicious. So, provide the member a few details that are not sensitive but provides them a sense of confidence that the person calling is valid.
• Other
  • When a member is automatically renewed, make sure you send them a thank you note via their preferred communication method. This is something you can easily automate these days.
  • Up-Sell and Cross-Sell BUT ask permission – many groups want to offer members new things upon renewal. Some are recurring requests such as PAC or Foundation contributions. In other cases, however, the renewal maybe a great time to offer a deal on pre-paying for an upcoming event, publication or other item that has relevance. Use the advanced notification to get the member to OPT-IN for those extra items. Do not ever automatically add new items to their renewal without their approval. In the early notification of auto-renewal show them what you have in mind as suggestions and indicate that they will have to click “Accept” to have these added to their renewal. Otherwise, the default would be to not charge for such items.

Full disclosure: Aptify provides a membership software solution. While our product has great functionality for handing all of these concepts there are many ways of implementing the ideas and achieving the business goals described here.