You probably know how important metrics are to a membership organization. But do you know the most important membership metrics you should constantly track? Here are four crucial membership metrics you need to know for 2022.
Why You Should Constantly Track Membership Metrics
At a glance, membership metrics can give you a quick assessment of the health of your membership organization. They can flag areas of improvement and also show you success areas to celebrate.
Key membership metrics also equip you with valuable data insights to make strategic decisions and plan for long-term growth. You may be familiar with the phrase “Numbers Don’t Lie” which was also the title for Vaclav Smil’s bestselling book on the same subject.
If, for some reason, you are not regularly tracking your numbers, now is the time to begin. And if you have been tracking your metrics it’s time to up your game.
Here are four of the most important membership metrics you need to know for 2022:
1. Churn Rate
This is one of the most important membership metrics and one that you should track regularly. It lets you know the rate at which you are currently losing members on say, a monthly basis.
While losing members is inevitable within membership organizations, you should always strive to keep this number as low as possible. A churn rate of 10% or less is great, but aim for a churn rate of less than 5%.
2. Growth Rate
Growth rate, on the other hand, shows how much your association or membership is growing. It’s a crucial metric when you want to set up your organization for the future. With this metric, you can easily predict important aspects of the organization such as run rate, future membership size, and others. However, if the churn rate is higher than your growth rate, you may need to re-strategize.
3. Member Engagement
For continued growth and success, an association or membership organization must be able to attract new members. Many association managers tend to focus on this aspect, forgetting that it costs several times more to acquire a new member than it does to retain an existing member.
But how do you retain existing members? It all comes down to engagement. The most active, satisfied, and engaged members are far more likely to retain their membership. Some of the key engagement metrics include, among others:
- Retention: this includes aspects such as length of membership
- Sign-up rates
- Ratings on materials or items (where there’s an option to leave a rating)
- Log-in rates
- Organizational activity (meeting attendance, committee sittings, etc)
4. Monthly Recurring Revenue
Memberships dues trends are key numbers for any association organization. They determine the annual and monthly run rate, or essentially how much money you are collecting from your members.
Keep an eye on how it changes each month, including the trends, so you can more accurately project revenues and plan accordingly. You’ll also want to monitor the lifetime value of a member, i.e., the average dollar amount per member over their entire membership period.
We get it. This sounds like a ton of work. That’s why we developed eAMS, a tool specifically designed to provide a full deck of tools for association organizations. Some of the features include:
- Managing members, events, reporting
- Membership database and directory
- Online membership sign-ups
- Whip up membership applications
- Automate member renewals
- Process payments
- Send member communications
- Access client data anywhere
- Affordable and easy-to-use member management CRM
eAMS is one of the best association management software on the market. But don’t take our word for it. Get a free, no-commitment demo or consultation today and get a glimpse of the kind of transformation you can expect at your association.