Gauging member engagement can help you improve interactions with your members.
Here’s what your organization needs to know about member engagement scoring.
Scoring member engagement is critical to any association, union, or other membership-based organization. It helps you to understand which members are engaged and which aren’t so you can put that data to work.
Let’s take a look at what member engagement scoring is, what it takes to get started with measuring member engagement, and how you can use it to improve interactions with your members.
What is member engagement scoring?
What is member engagement scoring?Simply put, member engagement scoring is about measuring your members’ engagement level with your organization. It involves establishing metrics around member behaviors that represent low and high engagement with your organization. Then, you can apply scores to each member, giving you an idea of which members are least engaged, which are most engaged, and which are in between. You can then use the information to increase member engagement and interact with members in different ways based on their level of engagement.
How can your organization get started with member engagement scoring?
For-profit retailers have been scoring customer engagement for decades to give benefits to frequent shoppers and consumers. But membership-based organizations have different priorities than big corporations. You must look at other factors besides how much a member spends to measure engagement.
A simple way to get started with measuring member engagement is to define what member behaviors indicate high levels of engagement. These are known as key performance indicators, or KPIs. KPIs should be closely aligned with your organization’s strategic goals and vision. For example, KPIs might be:
- Length of membership
- Number of committees served on
- Number of events attended
- Number of education credits earned
Define three to five KPIs. Narrowing these down can often be the most difficult piece of the project, but it’s helpful to stay with only three to five to start, as large numbers of KPIs can make tracking more difficult.
Next, assign weight to each one based their relative importance to your organization. Usually, a scale of one to 100 is helpful. So, for example, you have a total of 100 possible points to award a given member, with 0 being no engagement and 100 being fully engaged. Given that, you can take your total of 100 points and divide them amongst your KPIs based on their importance.
For example, you might assign a possible total of 15 of the 100 points to “the length of membership” KPI. Then, you might decide that 0-3 years receives 5 points, 4-5 years receives 10 points, and 6+ years receives 15 points.
Once you’ve assigned points to your KPIs, you can come up with a sum, or “score” for each member.
TIP: Aptify membership management software by Community Brands allows you to automatically score members based on KPIs and then schedule automations and actions based on the scores. The functionality is flexible, allowing you to set up any number of automated actions based on criteria you determine.
How to put member engagement scoring data to work
With your scoring system in place, you can better understand trends with your member engagement and start putting these insights to use. For example:
- Which members have low engagement scores? Say you find that young members seem to be less engaged. Reach out to them to find out how you can drive more member value with this group.
- Which members have high engagement scores of 90+? You might call or email to thank them for their high level of participation, and ask if they’re willing to become “champions” for your organization by helping to inform you brand messaging, assisting with member recruitment, or serving as a “buddy” to new members during the member onboarding process.
You might find that trends change over time as challenges and preferences of your various member groups change. Having member engagement scoring data at your fingertips can help your organization continuously improve interactions with members by identifying and responding to their evolving needs.
Learn more
Learn more about member engagement scoring: Read the paper, How to Use Member Engagement Scoring to Move Your Organization Forward.
