Concerned about membership retention? Here’s how to create an effective renewal process. Also: Gauge your social media performance with a new benchmarking study.

Membership-based organizations take a tremendous amount of time to come up with strategies for gaining new members. Devising ways to keep those members requires just as much thought.

If you’re looking to increase your membership retention rates, check out this post from VP Associations, which shares tips for creating a membership renewal series.

Start with making sure your timing is right for sending renewal notices—they should be sent well before the membership expires. “If your association provides critical benefits, don’t wait to renew a member right at their expiration and risk their losing access to those benefits,” writes publications director Jake Smith. “While losing those benefits might *make someone *’miss you’ enough to renew, the thought of losing them should be enough.”

If your organization is sending renewal notices only via email, you’re making a mistake. It’s true that email is inexpensive, but it’s also easy for members to overlook. “A multichannel approach—snail mail, email, perhaps a phone call provided it’s from someone in the home office and an ‘authority‘* on the association*—will be sure to reach your members.”

VP Associations also makes recommendations for personalized copy, response methods, surveys, tracking, and more.

If your social following is smaller than those of your competitors, you may feel like you’ve done something wrong. But that’s not necessarily the case.

A new M+R Benchmarks study says every organization needs to set realistic expectations for social performance, and you can start by examining your email list. According to the study, for every 1,000 email subscribers nonprofits have, the average group has 428 Facebook fans, 141 Twitter followers, and a measly 39 Instagram followers.

The report also provides benchmarks for earned reach, posting frequency, and engagement rates.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now. 

SHAPE America is testing a new way to recruit and win back members: letting them decide how much to pay in dues.

How to hack it? This year, SHAPE America, the largest U.S. association of health and physical education professionals, tested a bold membership offer: SHAPE allowed prospects to pay what they can in dues. “It’s a pretty revolutionary idea,” says Senior Membership Manager Matt Rankin, CAE. Members could opt in to a free digital-only, open-access membership, or they could name their price.

Why does it work? The pay-what-you-can pilot has quickly added to SHAPE’s membership ranks. Rankin’s team tested pay-what-you-can in limited ways, offering the option to state-affiliate members, renewing members, and long-lapsed members of four years or more. “These were people who were already prospects,” Rankin says. “While we were completely underwhelmed by the amount of dues it generated, we think there’s tons of long-term value. We’ll know in six to eight months if they bought a book, went to an event, or participated in an advocacy effort.”

What’s the bonus? Surprisingly, the results were favorable even for current, dues-paying members. Rankin tested pay-what-you-can with a few renewals, and many members maintained the dues they were paying previously. “It wasn’t a race to the bottom,” he says.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now. 

The Dental Hygienists Association of Australia recently announced the appointment of Dr Melanie Hayes as the new chief executive officer of the association.

The appointment of a CEO was determined to be a strategic priority of the DHAA at its Leadership Day and subsequent board meeting held in May this year—one that would signal their commitment to ensure greater outcomes and accountability to DHAA members, the community, industry partners and government.

Dr Hayes is a dental hygienist who has worked in both general and periodontal practices. For the past eight years, she has worked in academia, most recently as a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne. She completed her PhD in 2013, focusing on the musculoskeletal health of dental hygienists.

Dr Hayes has also been a director and president of the DHAA Board for the past three years.

“I am passionate about dental hygiene and what the future has to offer the profession,” Dr Hayes said. “I am looking forward to implementing the DHAA strategic plan during this exciting period of development for the association.”

This article was originally sourced from Bite Magazine.

Venue Management Association {Asia and Pacific} Limited (VMA) President, Steve Harper CFE, has today announced that VMA Chief Executive Steve Romer has tendered his resignation from the organisation after three and a half years in the position. Harper says that while it is disappointing to lose Romer, the VMA Board wishes him well in his new endeavours.

Harper stated, “Steve leaves on a high, with the VMA now elevated to a new level of professionalism, along with the delivery of significant membership growth, increased membership benefits, the further development of professional and educational programs and a strong financial position to enable the organisation to return even greater benefits to its members.”

“The VMA has benefitted from Steve’s venue management experience not only as Chief Executive but also his passion and commitment to the VMA over many years including nine years as a member of the Board and three years as Chairman of the Association.”

Romer says it has been an absolute privilege to lead the VMA as CEO, adding "it’s been rewarding and satisfying to build a new team, and to work closely with a very passionate Board. I look forward to seeing the Association continue to grow and flourish in the future, albeit as a proud Member ”

The VMA Board will immediately commence the search for a new Chief Executive to take the helm and guide the VMA into the future supported by the extraordinary talent and professionalism of the team based at the VMA headquarters on the Gold Coast.

Romer will remain as Chief Executive until late October.

For more information, please contact the VMA President, Steve Harper on 03 9286 1727.

All employers, not just franchisors, face significant new responsibility, a more robust watchdog and stiff new penalties after the Parliament voted to pass the long anticipated Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill 2017.

The new legislation follows a commitment by both sides of politics to do more to protect vulnerable workers, and comes in the wake of revelations of systematic exploitation and wage fraud involving some of Australia’s biggest businesses.

While high-profile cases such as 7-Eleven are credited with bringing about the changes, it is worth noting that the new laws are not solely restricted to the franchise sector. Any employer who is found to have committed “serious contraventions” of payment-related workplace laws now faces much harsher penalties with the Fair work Ombudsman also being granted sweeping new investigative powers.

What the Protecting Vulnerable Workers Bill means for you:

The legislation aims to protect vulnerable workers by:

• introducing a new higher scale of penalties for “serious contraventions” of the Fair Work Act with a tenfold increase in the maximum penalty, up to $630,000 for a corporation and $126,000 for an individual;
• trebling the maximum penalties for contraventions relating to employee records and payslips;
• giving the Fair Work Ombudsman substantially greater investigation and enforcement powers, including the power to seek a FWO Notice requiring a person to give information, produce documents or to attend before the Fair Work Ombudsman and answer questions;
• introducing new penalties for providing Fair Work inspectors with false or misleading information or records and new prohibitions for hindering or obstructing the Fair Work Ombudsman or an inspector in the performance of their functions;
• making franchisors and holding companies responsible for underpayments by their franchisees or subsidiaries where they knew or ought to have reasonably known of the contraventions and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent them;
• making officers of a franchisor or holding company potentially liable as an accessory to a contravention of the new provisions by a franchisor or a holding company;
• expressly prohibiting employers from unreasonably requiring their employees to make payments back to the business (e.g. demanding a proportion of their wages be paid back in cash); and
• imposing the burden on the employer to disprove an allegation made by an employee in relation to contraventions of certain civil remedy provisions where the employer was required to make and keep a record, make a record available for inspection or give a payslip but fails to do so.

The legislation is now awaiting to receive royal assent, with the majority of the provisions set to commence soon after.

How you can protect your business:

These new laws represent a dramatic shift in the operational framework of workplace relations in Australia.

The Fair Work Act already contains strong accessorial liability provisions which enables the Fair Work Ombudsman to prosecute anyone who it believes is involved in a contravention. To date, these accessorial liability provisions have been used to catch HR advisers, managers, accountants and CFO’s who have been involved in workplace contraventions.

The new laws are designed to complement these existing accessorial liability provisions and come after the Fair Work Ombudsman was granted a substantial increase in funding to help put more inspectors on the road.

Turning a blind eye to workplace non-compliance is no longer a viable option. There is a clear expectation that all employers take reasonable steps to identify and eliminate workplace non-compliance. Those that choose not to act do so as their own peril.

For more information, contact FCB Group. 

Your members are inundated with email every day. When you know and cater to their habits and preferences, you make it far more likely that your next email will be received, opened, and read. Here are the important takeaways from two new reports on the email marketing landscape.

Do you suffer from email fatigue? According to a new survey, nearly three-quarters of us admit to feeling overwhelmed by the number and frequency of messages in our inbox.

Count me in—especially as I stare blankly into the abyss of my inbox after a holiday weekend. Email fatigue is an all too common problem, and chances are your members are experiencing inbox overload too.

Two surveys, released earlier this summer by Adobe (last week) and Informz (in June), detail a plethora of useful data points related to email habits that should influence every association marketer’s thinking about email.

The Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report from Informz is required reading for membership teams considering how to tweak their next email campaign based on their members’ behaviors. Here are a few of the top-level findings:

Email volume is rising. Associations sent 12.3 percent more email messages last year than they sent in 2015. And nearly 90 percent of associations say they’re concerned about sending too many mass emails.

Open and click rates are dropping. While certainly not cause for alarm, email open rates declined slightly, from 36 percent in 2015 to 35.6 percent in 2016. And click rates dropped from 16.1 percent to 15.6 percent.

Marketing automation is growing—significantly. Associations are getting savvier about how they interact with members and other audiences via email. In 2016, associations sent 70 percent more emails through marketing automation campaigns than in 2015, which means they are delivering more customized experiences to individual members based on how and why they interact with the association’s communications.

Less may be more. Associations sent a large majority of subscribers (86.6 percent) 10 or fewer emails per month, and associations that sent 1 million emails or fewer per year achieved the highest average open rates overall.

Fridays are better than you think. Many association marketers subscribe to conventional wisdom about email, such as the “rule” that you should email members only in the middle of the week, avoiding the beginning- or end-of-work-week rush. While most emails (64 percent) were delivered on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, it turns out that Friday afternoon might be the best time to hit “send.” Email open rates (36.7 percent) and click rates (16.2 percent) were highest on Fridays, and messages sent late in the afternoon had the highest open rate overall (36.5 percent).

The Adobe report, a survey of white-collar workers, may not speak directly to how members are feeling right now, but it does reflect how organizations and businesses alike can engage with audiences via email. A few key findings:

Email frustration is a real problem. Twenty percent of respondents said they were frustrated by having to wait for images to render and load in an email, 19 percent were upset when they had to scroll too far down the page to find important information, and 40 percent said they wanted emails that are less promotional and more informative.

Timing is everything. As a broad trend, many people wake up in the morning and immediately go to their inbox. In the Adobe survey, 26 percent reported checking email while still in bed, and 37 percent do so while getting ready or eating breakfast in the morning. But that doesn’t mean consumers are constantly consulting their inbox. One in five respondents said they never check work email outside of work hours.

“Five-minute member” opportunities abound. Email doesn’t require a lot of time to get a message across, especially when five-minute members are accessing their inboxes as they stand in line for coffee or wait in the lobby for the next elevator. For example, according to the Adobe survey, 28 percent of consumers ages 18 to 24 read email while working out.

Finally, while it’s not backed by survey data, there are some quick and easy ways to improve your next email campaign. Start by using a headline analyzer tool, like the ones offered for free by ShareThrough or CoSchedule. Something as simple as a subject line or message headline can increase the odds of a member engaging with an email. It also helps to know the various writing styles (the expository, narrative, descriptive, and persuasive email) as well as the ideal length and tone for receiving a reply message.

This article was sourced from Associations Now. 

Beacon Foundation's MyRoad eMentoring Program has officially launched for 2017/18, following a successful pilot in 2016. We need 200 industry mentors to help deliver the program to 2,000 young Australian women in their senior years of high school. This is your opportunity to share your own career story and broaden students' understanding of different industries, pathways and jobs, without leaving your desk! 

MyRoad is an online mentoring program that supports secondary school students to develop essential work skills such as communication, resilience, team work and networking by connecting them to working professionals who utilise these skills on a daily basis. The program will run for 2 hours  via zoom – video conferencing platform and mentors are trained and guided through the whole process. 

For more information on MyRoad, www.beaconfoundation.com.au.

Our talent has been very active this year with many candidates on the look-out for something new and different. The Association space has been an attractive alternative for a range of professionals looking to add value and explore an environment perhaps not previously considered. As a result we’ve been inundated with work in your area and have attractive rates and excellent candidates who would love to add value to organisations like yours.

One of the interesting and distinctive trends we’ve seen happening this year has given opportunity for specialists to refine their trade and step up to the next level. For example, the demand for Instructional Designers has come about from a demand for new and fresh ways to approach Learning & Development and to appeal to the learner, Health & Safety has transitioned into behavioural and cultural science and Procurement has matured into a refined contractual refinement phase. Communications experts are now more integrated than ever with every part of the organisation, as positioning the business internally and externally, and providing expertise in communicating a more customer centric approach to business is critical.

This dynamic market is great for the job market and many excellent candidates for these types of roles are around as people are welcoming these new opportunities and challenges.

Our expertise in these areas has meant we have an amazing hot list of talent, many of whom work exclusively with people&co. and who are looking for flexible or permanent working arrangements.

If you are a candidate in these areas looking for a new challenge, or a business looking for new talent then please contact us to discuss further.

Kathy Clarke 04 496 9266 or Vicki Steele on 04 931 9466.

Fish & Game has appointed Martin Taylor to take over as Chief Executive from the organisation’s long serving head, Bryce Johnson.

Martin Taylor has wide experience in the corporate sector, including as Chief Executive of the Aged Care Association. He has also been chair of the Wellington Fish & Game council and is presently working for the Capital Coast DHB as a project manager.

The chair of Fish & Game’s New Zealand Council, Lindsay Lyons, is delighted with Mr Taylor’s appointment.

“Martin’s the right person for this demanding role. He’s highly qualified, an experienced leader" Mr Lyons says.

“He’s also a mad keen angler and loves the outdoors and New Zealand’s wild places, so from our point of view, this is a perfect combination. We are delighted to have him on board.”

Lindsay Lyons says there was huge interest in the role.

“We were humbled by the large number of high quality applicants who wanted to continue the fabulous work Bryce Johnson has done protecting our environment and water quality.

“That fight for the environment isn’t over and there are huge challenges ahead, but with Martin’s appointment, Fish & Game is well placed to meet them.”

Martin Taylor says he is delighted with his new role.

“I am honoured to have been appointed to such an important and high profile position. I am determined to make sure New Zealand’s rivers, lakes and streams are swimmable, fishable and safe to gather food from,” Mr Taylor says.

“I am also committed to ensuring that kiwi families retain their access to the outdoors so our children can grow up enjoying our unique mountains, bush and waterways.”

Martin Taylor will be taking up his new role in early November.

Bryce Johnson is retiring in October after 37 years leading Fish & Game and its predecessor, the Acclimatisation Societies’ national body.

This article was originally sourced from Scoop NZ.

The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) applauds moves by the Wellington City Council today to launch a voluntary Rental Warrant of Fitness for minimum housing standards in Wellington.

The Council has partnered with the University of Otago to launch an app that will allow tenants and landlords to check properties against minimum health standards designed by experts, and allow landlords to request a full inspection by a professional to be certified as meeting the standard.

Bindi Norwell, Chief Executive at REINZ says: “This is a great step in the right direction towards providing Kiwis with warmer dryer homes and we applaud Wellington City Council for making such a bold move. We strongly believe that Kiwis deserve a warm dry home to live in and it’s an issue REINZ is extremely passionate about.

“This initiative is not about turning homes into luxury properties, it’s about ensuring that minimum housing standards are met – and who would want to take their property to the market it if doesn’t even meet basic standards? That’s not an attractive proposition for potential renters, nor does it look after the health of their tenants,” points out Norwell.

“The Rental Warrant of Fitness will provide landlords and property managers who have properties that meet the criteria with an opportunity to market these homes as being top notch. For those with properties that don’t meet the criteria, it provides a real incentive to work as hard as they can to meet the criteria in order to provide a warm dry home,” she continues.

“However, it’s important that any standards introduced do have an element of being cost effective and practical for landlords or else there is a danger of reducing the rental stock available in an already tight market,” she concludes.

This article was sourced from Scoop Politics.