Effective New Member Onboarding Tactics For Your Organization
First impressions are everything, and creating a lasting onboarding process for your new members can have more benefits than you think. Giving your members the star treatment when they get involved with your nonprofit organization generates a lasting effect. If you’ve noticed your retention rates declining, it might be time to overhaul your onboarding process. We’re going to explain how a good onboarding process benefits your organization and give you some excellent tips on creating a powerful onboarding process.
What is New Member Onboarding For a Nonprofit Organization
Onboarding is what you do after a new member joins your organization to welcome them, usually with information. This is also how you establish a connection between your new member and your community. The onboarding process can look different for each organization, but the basic principles are the same.
Why is a Good Member Onboarding Process Important?
As we mentioned previously, first impressions are everything. Creating an effective onboarding process not only leads to better retention rates, but you’re also asserting your appreciation for your new members. They’ll confidently be able to see why they made a good choice in becoming a member and take mental note of the value of continuing to be a member. It’s a simple, one-time process that makes all the difference.
Nonprofit or Public Organization Member Onboarding Tips
Immediately after someone decides to become a member, your onboarding begins! There’s a window of time to establish your onboarding. As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to keep things simple and don’t draw them out. You want the process to be somewhat fun after all. Here are some tips for things you can include in your onboarding process.
- New member welcome emails.
A welcome email is a must and should happen directly after a purchase is completed. Along with a payment confirmation, you’ll let them know their membership is active, the duration of their membership, and other important information regarding their time with you. You’ll establish what to expect from any future emails you send as well, giving people the option to opt in or out of specific emails. Since this is a lot of information to take on, it’s a good idea to split up all of this into a few different emails spread out over time. A good rule of thumb is around a week, but it’s completely dependent on what works best for you.
- Onboarding explanation materials.
This is usually done via email, but you can give members the option to send off welcome packages with physical literature and information. These explanation materials should provide educational resources to learn more about your organization. You can link to videos with seminars, reference any well-known people or businesses you’ve collaborated with, or anything else you feel adds to the positive impact your organization has. Although many people will skim this at first, it’s good to include it anyway as something to reference back to. People will recognize specific things they like and come back to them later when it’s time to renew.
- New member onboarding gifts.
It’s rare to find people who don’t enjoy gifts. Offering your new members a cool hat, a water bottle, and any swag associated with your organization is a fun way to engage your members. You can offer relevant gifts too, like free entry to your museum or discount booklets.
- Bring newly onboarded members into the community.
Highlighting new members puts them in the spotlight and brings them into your community officially. Be sure to tell your new members about any events your organization holds. This could be volunteer events, fundraisers, special holiday events, and anything else. The best way to maintain the retention of your members is by helping them get more involved with your nonprofit and including them in all the things you’ve got going on. It’s not for everyone, but having some hands-on activities really drives it home that your members help your organization thrive, and that message is important to them.
- Track the onboarding process for new members.
Being able to see how your members navigate your onboarding process can determine how long different parts of it takes to complete. This can also help you identify where people stop engaging in the onboarding process. It’s important to know your pain areas in the process so you can adjust your approach accordingly. Maybe you’re overwhelming people with emails or your event information is slipping through the cracks for some reason. Whatever it is, you’ll be able to start assessing the problem before it’s too late.
- Request feedback when complete or if they abandoned the process.
Feedback is incredibly important when learning more about your onboarding process. You can encourage members to identify things they enjoyed and disliked about the process. Things like accessibility issues, frustrating navigation, or other things are important to take into consideration. You can also see when people have a love/hate relationship with something you’re doing and come up with a middle ground to please a wider audience. This information can help you make necessary improvements to your onboarding process to craft a pleasant and enjoyable experience for everyone. Just the act of listening to your members is a great way to enforce your rapport and help your members continue to return to you.
How Acme Can Help With New Member Onboarding
Acme Ticketing specializes in helping nonprofits organize their membership services and ticketing needs. Through CRM tool integration, open APIs, and our POS system, you can sync up your membership data with ease instead of balancing multiple applications. You can give a new member free entry to your museums, zoos, and any of your other locations without having to worry about playing a game of data telephone. If you’re interested in seeing how Acme Ticketing can help with your membership management, see everything we have to offer by requesting a personalized demo today.