5 must haves for your membership portal - Membership Marketing 101

Hi everyone and welcome to The GRM Membership Marketing series! 

Curious to see what three different departments have to say about membership portal must-haves?  Watch our video!

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Membership Marketing 101 Episodes

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Nej: Hello, and welcome everybody to our latest instalment of The Digital Drop podcast. We decided to get together today to talk about what we consider to be the top five must-haves of any membership portal. I'm joined by Ida and Rob, and we've had a bit of a brainstorm internally to decide on what our top five features that all membership portals should have been. Ida, do you want to kick us off? What's the top point that we've decided upon?

Ida: Well, for me probably is membership management. So, if you think about your membership department and back in the days when people would make a lot of bookings through the membership department on the phone or maybe via emails- it was all very manual and all was very slow- well it was a very slow process. With the latest member zones that we've been looking at and what we've been doing with a lot of our clients are really virtualising this whole membership department. So, it's literally where you, as a member, can log in and have all the details about yourself, what your interests are, what tier of membership you've got at the moment and all sorts of elements in terms of what you're trying to achieve through the member zone. Basically, the idea behind membership management functionality that I'm looking at is for members to be able to manage themselves virtually without the assistance of the organisation, so to say, or respective people within the membership department.

Nej: Okay. So, if we were to liken it to anything, your profile management- that you would have a collaborative platform.

Ida: Exactly, interest. So, if I'm into A, B and C, so I'd like my member zone to have some sort of knowledge about me so that all the elements that are popping up on my profile are really of my interest. Therefore, I will be proactively coming to this portal to see everything that I'm interested in and ignore things that really are not of my interest.

Nej: Yeah, and I think the degree to which this is feasible is going to vary from organisation to organisation, depending on their digital maturity. But in a more extreme case, you'd be able to manage your payment details, look at your invoicing, change your card details, etc. On a lesser example, it would be a case of managing your basic contact details and preferences wherever possible.

Ida: Exactly. To add on that, what else is very useful is- in organisations where you've got different levels of membership, for you to be able to upgrade or downgrade your level, most of the time in the past, it used to be like you had to make a call or just send an email for them to change this but it automatically changes. So, if you go for an upgrade, it takes the next level, it automatically flags that you've got to pay a higher invoice or bill for the next year and so on. It's more or less full end-to-end management of your own membership but online without really having to pick up the phone and speak to the organisation. For me, that's probably one non-negotiable that I'd say for any member zone nowadays.

Rob: Yeah, I'd agree with that. I would say that's becoming the expectation, isn't it? If you sign up for anything, not even just a membership website, like an e-commerce website or something. You want to be able to go and edit your payment details easily and all that sort of stuff. I think it was backed up by MemberWise, who had like 87% of members they surveyed said they expected a high level of self-service from a member zone so I think that's got to be the number one. But like you say, it all depends on digital maturities, like what access to data they've got available that they can pull into a member zone as well so it's a bigger task than-

Nej: Yeah. One of my personal favourite things in an ideal scenario is selecting preferences and your interests through categorisation, ideally, taxonomy-driven categorisation and that's going to touch on one of our other points where we talk about the categorisation of various content that's available to members. Because I think that if you can integrate some sort of a taxonomical categorisation feature for members to select their interests, that then enables a lot of other capabilities for you to achieve a lot of other beneficial features later through the user journey within the portal. But again, not everybody's in the same place so what we recommend is the best endeavour approach here. Do what you can if you haven't got full taxonomical categorisation, then try to focus through tagging of some sort but allow members to tell you what's of interest to them in particular so that you can later streamline their experience through your digital interface in a more targeted way.

Rob: I think that leads us to the next point. My next must-have would have been some sort of personalisation or- the portal being able to understand exactly what you as a member are interested in. So, whether that's you've looked at certain pieces of content and then the next time you go on, being able to show you similar pieces of content that might be relevant to you. I think that's a must-have for me in the next-

Ida: I'd say probably for personalisation from my perspective, another benefit is- let's say if I'm doing some courses. A lot of times member zones are, in some shape or form, related or integrated with an LMS. So, for me, when I log into the portal to be able to see if there's a progress bar or something, it doesn't matter. But basically, an indication of where I am within the whole curriculum, and how far I am within a particular course. Basically, just gives me a little bit more insight into all the activities that I'm doing at the moment as part of my membership. I'd say probably that that's another one that for me, is-

Nej: Okay, so we've touched on two next points here. So, we're already- Ida's diving into the third one before we've thrashed the second one.

Rob: The transition.

Nej: But yeah, progress bars. Whether it's training that you're doing or whether it's different account levels that you're progressing through, wherever possible visual illustrations and progress bars to guide the member through the next part of their journey- not the digital journey, but their journey with your organisation and their journey as a member or a student in some cases. But yeah, to touch on the point that you raised, Rob, absolutely. It's a no-brainer. It's shocking how many organisations don't provide an appropriate level of personalisation.

Rob: But we come across a lot that just doesn't even have the name in there.

Nej: Yeah, and that's not even real personalisation. That's just like a little bit of coding that takes in a username and embeds it into a welcome screen. Being a member of an organisation is like being a member of a club. I think wherever you can use analogies to liken a virtual or digital experience to a real-life scenario, you'll usually come out with the right answers. So, if I go into a club, whether that's by a local gym or any club that I'm a member of- if they say hello to me and they recognise me or they know particularly, even little things like if they know what I usually order after a training session or something like this, this absolutely makes me feel like a valued and recognised member. I think the same approach needs to happen in all membership organisations. It's courtesy, it's recognition, it's appreciation and it is what all users and humans expect in any sort of an ongoing relationship between a member and an organisation.

Rob: It adds value in a way, doesn't it? It makes you feel like- like you say, like you're part of something. This is important because especially if you're paying a decent amount per month to be part of something you want, you want to make it feel like they know you, they understand what you're paying for and what you want from the service they're providing.

Nej: I'd agree even further on that one. I'd say, rather than just adding value from a baseline, I'd say ignorance as to who your member is and the lack of recognition actually damages the user experience. It makes them feel like just a number. It makes them feel like just a transaction and actually takes away from the experience and hurts their experience and journey with your organisation rather than just adding value.

Rob: I feel like you've had some bad membership experiences.

Nej: I can tell you, I've seen some bad membership journeys, certainly, through all these years of working a membership organisation. But I think, like with the majority of things, common sense- what appears to be common sense, unfortunately, isn't as common as it should be. There's no excuse. To all membership organisations, listen. There's no excuse for not giving your members the basic recognition of knowing who they are and what they want to see and trying to tailor their journey through what can sometimes be very intimidating digital interfaces to non-technical users, to not customising them to the likes of that particular individual.

Ida: Yeah, and what we saw on that personalisation point- for me, what's important is for the organisation to recognise my journey and I'll give an example of it. So, there are a number of organisations out there that give students free membership but then, once they finish uni they have to start paying. A lot of drop-offs happen at that point when they finish uni and this is where personalisation needs to kick in, and also that first point that we raised, understanding who I am and knowing a lot more about me so that that transition doesn't just- well, there's a smooth transition from organisation knowing when I'm done with studies and slowly getting into the paid membership stage rather than just not knowing where the user is, communication just stops. They never come, they never proactively come to you and pay for the membership. You just lose them most of the time at that point.

Tab: That could be something as simple as an automated email that goes out to them to say like, "Well done on finishing your studies. You might want to look at this next level of membership now that you're a really qualified person within that area."

Ida: Prompting you to update your data from time to time, when these exams finish these are like simple things but they really mean a lot in the bigger picture so you don't lose any of your members along the way.

Nej: A lot of these benefits, they benefit other benefits and enable the benefits. A lot of organisations struggle with data silos and the lack of insight into who their members are, and what their particular interests are. So, by making a good interface and making it easy for your members to tell you about their own interests, it also provides an opportunity for you to learn and based on what you're learning, you're encouraging these members and users to actually tell you about themselves by rewarding them through a more beneficial and seamless user journey because they've taken the time to tell you a little bit about themselves, which becomes invaluable business intelligence.

Ida: Exactly. To that point, just to add- I think Facebook and LinkedIn have done a brilliant job there. From time to time, they'll just prompt you with things like, "Do you want to update this?" And like, "I don't know your place, where you live at the moment." Just very simple things, but doesn't look like a lengthy form you've got to sit down and fill in. It's randomly popping up and trying to engage with you to get more details of you and I think, really, that database at the end of the day of you having the right information about your members will only bring you- well, more information for you to create the right strategy for them.

Rob: It all starts with the data because there is no doubt there are people within membership organisations who want to do and achieve what we're saying here. Things like email, a particular time and stuff like that but they just don't have the data point or the systems to be able to go "Right, this is how I access it. These are all the people that are relevant for that message that we're trying to get out." They just don't have it available, do they?

Nej: What's the most common phrase we hear when organisations come to us for help, trying to overcome a certain challenge? It's membership engagement and how do you engage with members? One of the challenges that we always try to overcome is actually, how do we measure membership engagement? Now, digital interactions are where you log every opportunity where a user has interacted with your organisation through a digital footprint whether that's telling you about them, whether that's reading an article, whether that's subscribing something, going to an event, or whatever. By enabling all of these features through your membership organisation, you straight away, as a by-product, get a set of very measurable KPIs that you can then focus on to further drive member engagement. So, to go back to the point of progress bars, that's just effectively the same point but taking it to the next level where you are visualising and providing an illustration for a user to understand where they are and where they can go within- not just a digital journey but with an actual real-life journey through progression or training or progression of membership levels and so on. What we've noticed is that that's been for organisations that generate revenue through providing qualifications and training courses, that's been a great feature to further drive revenue and to provide prompts for the members at key times to actually encourage them to go and sign up to the next level and giving them recognition for that so that they feel proud to have that on their profile.

Ida: Yeah, and it- go on.

Rob: I think even just getting people to use the member zone. So, like showing people badges and stuff like that or some sort of small award within the member zone if they do their first post or if they download the first document or attend their first course that's hosted within there. Something like that makes people understand that that's what's achievable in the member zone. It makes them want to continue.

Ida: Are you talking about gamification here?

Rob: Yeah. It's sort of interlinked, isn't it? I think putting that within a member zone is definitely helpful as well when it comes to getting engagement.

Ida: Exactly.

Nej: Is that one of our points or did we just-

Rob: No, I just snuck that one in because-

Nej: We were debating when we were coming up with the list of which ones to have and gamification was one of the-

Rob: I wasn't gonna let that one go.

Nej: Rob really wanted in the top five but as-

Ida: Geek inside.

Nej: We said it's six at best. But yeah, no. That's all again reinforcing the points that were made.

Ida: Yeah, and to come back to these visual representations- it's just simple graphs that usually do the job. You don't have to think about, "Oh, we got to provide these complex designs. We need extra resources." It could be as simple as what- I think it's PureGym on their app. They've got every single time when you go to the gym, they tell you all the days you visited the gym and how long.

Rob: Average time.

Ida: Yeah, and those are like-

Nej: Sends you on a guilt trip for going off and-

Ida: But pretty much-

Rob: I deleted their app.

Ida: Pretty much, these are like very simple ones but very insightful. When you realise, "Oh, I'm spending a lot of time on this member zone." It's good sometimes to have it in front of you, so you kind of value it a little bit more as well.

Nej: Okay, so what's our fourth point that we've noted down in that list that we-

Ida: It's search.

Nej: Search. Right, okay. Yes, search. So, the reason why we wanted to add search as one of the most important features-  look - In most membership organisations, one of the key values that they provide is access to information. Whether that's various publications, white papers, or knowledge- they usually have a vast amount of content that's incredibly useful to their members. But due to the vast amount of content, it's very hard to connect the members with what they actually need and what's going to entice them on what's going to provide that value to them. So, one of the -  again, biggest challenges for various reasons that we come across is the searchability of content and the ability of members to find what they are looking for and for that to be relevant to them in a very efficient way where they won't get frustrated with trying to dig for some content, but will actually very quickly be taken to the content of relevance and content that adds value to them. This connects to the previous point I made where I'm a big fan of taxonomical categorisations and filters whereby- because this provides benefits for the users that are adding and managing content within the organisation as well as the users that are accessing this content from the front end. It allows you to effectively filter your searches through one or multiple categories, combine that with keywords but also on a content management perspective by adding any asset or any piece of content and making sure that it's associated with at least one category, but ideally, more categories. It automatically plugs it into all the various navigational aspects of all of your websites and apps, whatever might be accessing that content. Search is, personally, I think probably the most critical one.

Ida: Yeah, I'd say non-negotiable in terms of any website where you have either a lot of content items in terms of a lot of content itself but also for- if you've got like, an e-commerce shop which is specific for members in that case as well. It just helps with user journey because you can't expect people to be able to find things as you have more and more content. It becomes just harder and harder to navigate sometimes.

Rob: I think it's something we're preaching a lot now, isn't it? Not just with the member portals and stuff but overall like good quality search. Because how often do you go on a site and you just search and you just get given a page with like pagination at the bottom and you're going through like 10, 20 pages just to find what you need? It's annoying. It's actually not faster than-

Nej: Oh, it's more frustrating. The rule of thumb, we always say, is you should be able to find what you're looking for with no more than three clicks. That's not an easy thing to achieve but it's absolutely feasible. I think rather than- you mentioned that it's a must-have, but what I'd like to enunciate here is that there are different degrees to which you can implement search. So, just having it does not meet the requirement. Having it in a way that's user-friendly, that's usable and actually works with minimal effort from the user is what we are recommending. We're not recommending having a search for the sake of having a search. If you're going to do it, do it right. But make sure that you do it.

Ida: Yeah. One example was with one of our clients in their member zone, they've got a lot of documents but also a lot of regular news and articles related to them for the members, really. The search functionality, the way we thought would work the best is to have an ability for users to filter through the search, so when you go to search for certain things when you get the initial search results- you could also say, "Oh, I want to search this particular phrase within documents only." Literally, the search would go through all the PDFs. Or you could say, maybe exclude the library or something. That way, they get to particular results faster and they already know pretty much what they're looking for. I find that really useful.

Rob: I think as well, search is a massive thing for your membership organisation, looking at real-time search would be a good one where you don't actually have to search and then reload the page to actually show you the results. Basically, something which when you start typing any particular word, you get the drop-down with all the most relevant queries already.

Nej: So, what's a really positive, quite recent development that we've implemented on a number of cases is search tools that are independent of the technology that you are actually using. Traditionally, a limitation to good search has been- excuse me. Poor implementation of content management or distributed sources of content, lack of organisation and coherent content structures within the organisation. But now, we've got technologies that you can find various different sources that are going to create independent indexes of all of that content that we can then apply to the user journey so we can create a good search using the right tools, regardless of what your technological background looks like. I'd say that's one of the more significant technological developments we've seen recently that's made a massive improvement. It allows you to ultimately bypass that technological debt and still, provide not compromise, the user journey simply because you're waiting to get the other things in order. I think we're all in absolute agreement on search, right?

Ida: Yeah.

Nej: We really like search. So, on that note-

Ida: The last one.

Nej: You'll find what the fifth point is.

Ida: Well, it's probably my favourite one. Collaboration between members.

Nej: Tricky one.

Ida: No, but it's so good because it's a bit of like, Facebook and LinkedIn activities coming on the member zones. Member zones are becoming a bit more of a hub where you're able to do everything, and in the past, you would be able only to maybe fill a contact form to get back to the membership organisation and there was no one-on-one collaboration between members. But lately, there's this trend of digital communities which usually are part of member zones where you literally have all bells and whistles, as most social networks do. Where this is particularly useful in organisations where members need to collaborate on a particular task. So, let's say, prosecutors would be working on a particular case but in one country but then, would need an advice from another country maybe because the case is related to different countries. So, rather than googling and trying to find prosecutors online, what you do is just go on member zone and you're able to find a member of that particular organisation who's a prosecutor and specialist in those cases, where you can just have, literally, one-on-one chats messaging. You can also drop them an email and just have an open chat.

Nej: So, connecting members, enabling collaboration amongst members directly and ultimately, building a community because a membership organisation really should aim to be a community. Their members are a community by having events run by certain organisations. You are inviting your community, and what we've learned over the years is that if people feel like they're a member of a community rather than just a subscriber to a membership organisation, that has a massively positive impact on member retention. If you cease to be a member, you're giving up your access to this great community of your peers that understand the work that you do and your interests better than anybody probably does in your personal life, rather than just saving on a subscription and a membership fee-

Ida: Yeah, it's about the value and recognition, as you said.

Rob: I think it's like digitising. Digitising, in many ways, what they've already had. A lot of membership organisations like- especially pre-COVID, we're doing a lot of networking events and all that sort of stuff where that is the value that they provide to their members, being able to connect them with everyone else in the sector where they can get advice, help and that sort of stuff and things that they're working on. But it's taking that to the next level, isn't it? Allowing them to do that anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

Nej: Yeah. One interesting way- I said this is a bit of a tricky one, is- let's just be very frank with it. A lot of organisations we've come across- some organisations we've come across, I don't want to overstate the problem. They are quite fearful about allowing their members to voice their opinions, feelings, and experiences and make that visible to other members. We do see this reasonably frequently, and I think organisations might be anxious about dissatisfaction amongst their members and then feel that if certain members voice their dissatisfaction through forums and various collaborative tools that they might put in place, that that's then gonna bring out or encourage other members to voice their dissatisfaction. I think that this is a fear that actually- rather than fearing this, this is something that should be embraced and-

Rob: Yeah, it's an opportunity to improve. Isn't it?

Nej: Yeah, and a lot of the time, I think the fear comes from the people within the organisation not wanting certain things to be highlighted for political reasons within the organisation, rather than really thinking about the true value that their organisation is providing to their members. So, if you're in an organisation where there is a fear of allowing your members to speak their opinions and to communicate with each other, then you've probably got some sort of a cultural problem within your organisation that needs to be addressed before you can truly start adding the best value that you can to your members. Would that be a fair thing to say?

Ida: Yeah.

Rob: I think so.

Nej: Okay, so let's summarise. We've touched on five points. The top five must-haves for any membership portal are number one, profile/account management, the ability to set your own preferences and control your own details.

Ida: Self-servicing.

Nej: Self-servicing. There's a variety of buzzwords we could use for each one of these. So, number one, self-servicing. Which then, number two leads to personalisation. Personalise the journey, recognise who your users are, give them the customer service that they deserve and the recognition that they expect. The third one-

Ida: Progress bars and visuals.

Nej: Okay, so yeah. Visuals and progress bars through whatever aspect of progression you're offering where the main two ones are membership levels and various qualifications and steps in fulfilling courses and so on. The fourth one-

Ida: Search.

Nej: It's search. Make everything searchable. Again, fundamental to the user experience, add value to your users. The fifth and final one-

Ida: Collaboration.

Rob: I'm glad you can remember.

Nej: Collaboration and building of community. Enablement of that community. On that last point, I think it's also valuable to point out that ever since- Web 2.0 just came out and social media became a prominent thing, it's been widely recognised that user-generated content on any website or platform is always considered to be more valuable than content generated by that organisation. So, you can't understand the value that enables your users to voice their own opinion, share their own knowledge, make their own statements is actually going to add to the entire knowledge base that your membership portal should be.

Ida: I think that's a great summary.

Nej: Okay. Right, well. I hope that's been useful to anybody out there that's listening. We'd love to talk about this, we'd love to hear anybody's feedback. Feel free to argue with us if you think that there's anything more critical that hasn't made it into our top five and we'll happily respond.