When membership organizations make bad decisions, we can learn a lot from their mistakes. Here is a tongue-in-cheek look at ten easy ways to smother member loyalty and engagement.  About a 7 minute read.

My role as a marketing consultant has allowed me to work with all types and sizes of membership organizations. From large organizations with a million or so members, to small non-profit and trade groups with just a few thousand members. Most organizations seem to get it. They’ve figured out how to adapt to meet the unique needs of their members, and they can seamlessly integrate our discount platform into their existing suite of member benefits and privileges.

A few others -- dare I say -- are unprepared for success.

They have so many fundamental problems with how they run their organization that adding a powerful engagement tool like ours will actually make matters worse.

After more than a decade in working with various groups, I’ve noticed some important patterns among the few groups that struggle the most. The ones that have a knack for suffocating member engagement.

I think there’s great value in learning from the mistakes of others, so here’s my list of the ten easiest ways an organization can smother their member loyalty and engagement: 

I joined a professional association once. Over the course of several years and thousands of dollars, this is what I had received for joining: a useful PowerPoint on writing press releases.

That’s all. Obviously, that relationship didn’t last too long. The press releases I’ve constructed since are better, I suppose. Worth my investment into the organization? Eh, nope.

Ask someone why they join a professional association and they’ll offer up networking, educational opportunities, certifications, or representation. All important and vital functions of any association.

Then, ask someone why they won’t renew a membership, or why they’re not interested in joining at all, and they’ll tell you it’s because they didn’t see the personal value in it. There’s just not enough in it for them to justify the expenditure.

I have a confession to make.

I’m 31 years old (almost 32 actually) and I LOVE Disney more now than I did as a kid.

In fact, here’s a little list of all my Disney favorites:

Favorite Disney Character - Snow White

Favorite Disney Movie - The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills version)

Favorite Disney Channel Show – Lizzie McGuire

Favorite Disney Ride - Space Mountain (with Splash Mountain as a close 2^nd)

Favorite Disney Park Food - Chocolate-covered Mickey Mouse ice cream bar

Favorite Disney Memory - On a family trip to Disney World, we did a character breakfast and my little brother had to be taken out of the room because he was terrified of Jafar.

Favorite Disney Apparel - An oversized Mickey sweatshirt I’ve had since elementary school that is still my favorite thing to wear to bed.

I’m sure there are a lot of Disney fanatics out there who can relate and have lists of their own Disney obsessions.

Well, for all you Disney lovers out there, we at Access have some BIG news around upcoming summer attractions and exclusive magical savings to the happiest place on earth.

You’ve probably heard it called customer success – after all, that’s what it’s known by in most of the business world.

Here at Access, we call it client success and we have an entire department dedicated to it.

Or you could call it member success. While not a buzz word, this would be just as relevant a term.

What am I talking about?

All these describe the idea that companies should strategize their business plan with the end user in mind. And little by little, it has taken over the business world mindset and become the preferred way to gain an audience’s loyalty – and all the benefits that come with it.

When it comes to running a member benefits or loyalty program, your mama had it all figured out.

In honor of mothers everywhere (including mine who's been a mom for 71 of her 90 years), I’d like to share some life lessons learned from the mother hen herself – and how they can be used as best practices in running a successful membership discount club or loyalty program. 

The term “generation” refers to a group of people born around the same time that share similar experiences and other commonalities.

Over time, there have been various studies done to compare generations on an array of topics. And we are about to add a little comparison of our own to that list.

Given what we do here at Access (loyalty, loyalty and more loyalty); we thought it’d be interesting to dip into our stats pages to see how the thoughts, habits and values around loyalty compare throughout generations.

Before diving in, let’s start with a brief profile on each of the generations we’ll be comparing.