How To Effectively Welcome New Members To Your Organization

Welcoming New Members to Your Organization: A Simple Guide

Whether you’re a nonprofit, museum, or other cultural institution, a warm membership welcome will go a long way in growing and maintaining your membership base. 

According to Zippia, organizations with a strong onboarding process increase new-hire retention by 82 percent. Although you’ll be onboarding new members and not employees, the same rules apply: how members are introduced to your organization can determine engaged they are and for how long you can retain them.

Below we’ll cover every you need to know about how to warmly welcome new members and grow your membership base. 

Great methods for welcoming new members

Depending on what kind of organization you’re running, you could create unique, creative strategies that cater to your specific field. For example, you may invite high-tier members to get a behind-the-scenes look at animals in a zoo or through the archives of your museum. 

Regardless of your field and capacity, however, there are a few best practices that pretty much any organization can integrate into their membership welcome program. Here are a few great methods for welcoming new members. 

Sending new members personalized welcome emails

It’s important to welcome new members with warm, personalized, and engaging emails. But how do you put together an effective email, and how can you send personalized emails in mass? 

• Write a clear and welcoming subject.
• It’s okay to use exclamation marks–although most of the workforce in 2022 dreads whether to use an exclamation mark in a work email, we recommended using them to show your enthusiasm and excitement at joining a new member to your organizational family. 
• Make sure your email gets to new members soon after they’ve signed up.
• Personalize and automate emails with an advanced solution. 
• Utilize smart codes to email blast and keep your messages personal. 

 

Emails are the first line of communication to confirm that a membership was approved, and they’re the first line of communication that members will see from you at all. Practically speaking, these emails need to confirm the member’s user name and other relevant information for members to get integrated into your community. But the message should also be warm, genial, and welcoming. 

Virtual tour of the website and your organization

Virtual tours are great ways to get members excited about your organization. You can send these as videos and present them in two categories: virtual and physical tours. Your virtual tour can help new members navigate your website, including how to sign in, where to find new events, where access to members-only content, and other relevant pages on your website. 

The video of your physical tour should include your facility (zoo, aquarium, charity events, etc.), introduce valued team members and volunteers, and highlight your main attractions (animals, artifacts, historical texts, art, etc.). 

If you’re a nonprofit organization, your video can highlight the places and people that your charity efforts most affect. Schools, homelessness, and environmental efforts are all great things to include to galvanize support and member engagement. 

Welcome packet for new members

You can underscore your gratitude to new members by providing them with new-member packets. These can be digital, physical, or a combination of the two. 

New member packets can include:

• Membership card (or instructions for how to digitally store membership cards on members’ phones).
• Organization merchandise. Hats, bracelets, bumper stickers, coasters–give your members the good and let them showcase your organization to the world. 
• Shoutout in your weekly member newsletter, on social media, and on your website. Have a place on the newsletter to highlight new members to the rest of your member community. 
• A schedule of all upcoming members-exclusive events. 

Ticketed welcome event/exclusive event access for members

You can ensure every member has a warm welcome by hosting monthly, seasonal, or perennial members-only ticketed events. At some point in the event, you can introduce new members to the rest of your community. You can host music events, art events, date nights, and other events for your members.  

If you’re thinking of hosting a virtual event, check out ACME’s guide on putting together a virtual event checklist.

Current member ideas for welcoming new members

Want to know what potential members might want to see in their onboarding/new-welcome process? Ask your existing members. After all, they were new members at some point in their membership journey and are a credible source to survey and learn what kind of things members actually value. 

You can offer surveys, preference polls, and questionnaires to find out what current members would like to see in the future and what would have made their member-welcome stage a better experience. 

How ACME Ticketing can help onboard new members and bring them into your organization 

An essential new-member management tool is advanced ticketing, donor, and membership software, like ACME Ticketing. 

ACME leverages the backend power of Raiser’s Edge and Salesforce, providing you with everything you need to seamlessly sync members through the best-in-breed CRM and ATS platforms. Connect with members, facilitate ticketing, promote events, and ensure your members are up to date with everything your organization is doing. 

Click here to learn more about how to welcome new members and manage your memberships like never before.