Membership renewals are a constant every year. Most of the time when there is a lapse in membership renewal it’s not deliberate, and it comes down to factors like a change in contact details or simply forgetting to pay for the renewal. This is where renewal campaigns come in.

The Swimming Pool and Spa Association of Australia (SPASA) is an association for members of the pool, spa and outdoor living industries. SPASA is dedicated to educating, promoting and advocating for improvement in these industries for their members and the community.

When SPASA discovered that their current membership renewal process was no longer being efficient, they brought in Optimum Contact to implement an updated renewal campaign.

“We brought in Colin because he’s been a supporter of associations for a long time, and he’s proven that Optimum Contact is an organisation that cares about associations. And that’s key for most associations, bringing that level of trust” – Lindsay McGrath, CEO of SPASA.

The Challenge

Since COVID, there has been a decrease in consumer confidence for many industries, and this affects business confidence so there are lots of members that are worried and want to protect their cash flow.

There is a shift happening at the moment, from changing what we are doing to changing how we communicate what we are doing. The key is to properly communicate with your members, so that they understand what you’re doing, often on their behalf, and the value of their membership with your association.

If a member is no longer seeing value or not immediately paying for renewal, the association is probably not doing enough for engagement and might be in need of an engagement or renewal campaign to freshen things up. The challenge for associations is to bridge this gap and create more perceived value for their members.

For SPASA and many other associations, they don’t have the time or resources to run a renewal campaign and make all these individual calls out to current and lapsed members by themselves. Optimum Contact is an organisation who can be brought in to make these hundreds of calls for associations in a short period of time, and take the strain off the in-house team.

The Solution

Optimum Contact was brought in by SPASA to add a human element to the association’s existing business processes and implement a membership renewal campaign. We were able to help with the heavy lifting and contact around 700 members within a really short period of time.

An outbound call campaign can be very effective if it is done just after memberships have lapsed. We’ve seen that one of the main reasons people don’t renew their membership is because they didn’t get the renewal notice, or it was forgotten and there has been nothing to prompt them to get back on it.

Our goal was connecting with their members and having a conversation with them, even if it was just to say keep doing what you’re doing. From these conversations, we were able to communicate the value that members get from their membership. We were also able to draw additional contact details so that SPASA didn’t lose their connection with that person if they moved around or changed businesses. This makes a huge difference to member retention.

We spent a lot of time preparing before we made the calls, and through these conversations we were able to meet SPASA’s goals. On top of this, there’s a lot of reporting and communication involved with the association to make sure that all of the gold that came out of the conversations is fed back to SPASA to help with their future development.

The Outcome

We received some glowing feedback from SPASA, and the renewal campaign was a huge success.

“Working with Optimum Contact for SPASA Australia’s January 2021 Membership Renewal Campaign was an incredible investment for our association. The campaign with Optimum Contact helped to bring in renewals and paid membership fees, but also engaged our members to clean up their contact and business details at the same time.

The beauty of bringing Optimum Contact in for these conversations is that we deal with a lot of different associations, we’ve seen a lot of ideas, and a lot of different strategies that could be applied to a campaign that you’re running. This gives us an opportunity to really get a feel for an organisation and its members, and to adjust our communication styles and emulate your voice.

Contact Us

If you are an association needing help with your membership renewals, give one of our friendly team members a call on 1300 017 293 today!

If you are looking for some ways to help foster engagement and connection within your association, you might be interested in reading our blog article on 3 Ways Optimum Contact Can Help You Foster a Sense of Community Within Your Association.