Membee’s Automations Deliver Results in Membership Renewal
Time is your organization's most valuable asset. Want to stop spending valuable staff time and resources managing a multitude of administrative tasks? With the power of Automations, Membee’s users are able to shift the focus on expanding their organizations, without neglecting their membership and event management duties. Since Automations have been a part of Membee …
Since Automations have been a part of Membee for a while now, we thought we would see how a Membee user is actually using Automations. We sat down with Nicole Gibson (See About Nicole below) from the Ajax-Pickering Board of Trade to gather her thoughts on what membership renewal related Automations mean to her and her organization.
She summed it up by saying, "Membee's Automations have brought tangible benefits to our organization in the form of:
- positive feedback
- getting paid earlier – 40% of December’s billing paid before it was due – the most ever
- less errors and workload for staff because the majority of renewals now happen online
- a new anniversary membership option was introduced for new members, which had been previously avoided due to staff workload
- a new monthly membership option rather than annual billing has helped to entice new members"
There are many different tasks you can completely automate – you are in control, but Membee will complete the work for you! With automations you can automate the complete Membership Life Cycle, meaning you can automate:
- new member sign up
- renewals invoicing
- invoice reminders (membership, events, etc.)
- cancelling / suspending memberships
In this blog post, we wanted to focus on automating Membership Renewal and how doing so can be hugely beneficial to your organization. We will discuss how it will save immense amounts of time while creating a better renewal experience for your members.
Automating Membership Renewal
When members are approaching their renewal date, you can set up Membee to fully automate the entire membership renewal process. You can send all invoices via email – members have instant access to view and pay their invoice on your existing website through a link contained in this email.
Are your members not overly “tech-savvy”, or have a paper based system? No worries! A PDF of their invoice will always be attached to their renewal emails. This way Membee helps you stay flexible for all varying needs of your members!
Always Pre Bill Members for Renewal
The following automations assist with membership renewal billing:
- Pre Renewal Email
- Renewal Billing
The Pre Renewal Email is sent in advance of the actual membership renewal invoice. This simple email is used to alert members of their pending renewal and to promote important member benefits that they may have forgotten about or not be aware of. Think of this as “greasing the wheel” as this automation gets members thinking about their renewal before they receive their invoice.
The Renewal Billing automation posts the membership renewal invoices and sends an email to the member.
They will be able to renew their membership directly through this email using a link, no login required! And remember, any email Membee sends is generated from a template, so you control 100% of messages sent to members.
As Nicole had previously noted, this feature has helped increased their early bird renewal by 40%.The faster members renew their memberships, the faster you get paid!
A Friendly Reminder Yields Results
If members don’t take advantage of the pre renewal automation you can set up another automation to send reminders. This single automation yields powerful results:
- reduces the age of membership receivables
- increases your member retention rate
- Increases renewal revenues
Membee will only send a reminder email based on the age of an overdue invoice, and of course, it won’t send a reminder to members who have paid. As always you're in complete control over the message!
Another big advantage to setting up reminder automations is how much valuable staff time you are freeing up. Staff no longer have to manually:
- sort through invoices
- determine the age of the invoices
- set up the appropriate reminder emails
- send the communication
- repeat the entire process a few weeks later
When chatting with Nicole about the Invoice Reminder automation, she added, "Our policy is to call every member who has not renewed prior to cancellation. Since the Reminders automation is methodically reminding overdue members, there are simply fewer members to call because more have already paid."
Email templates are already provided for each automation, but it is recommended that you take the time to specialize each automation to your organization. These templates include;
- text as to what the email is regarding
- PDF attachments (Invoices, etc.)
- an encrypted link to access their renewal invoice (no login required)
- room for customization – never miss an opportunity to promote your organization!
As with every automation, a designated Membee user or users will be sent an email 24hrs before the automation executes, and another once it has been sent. You can also customize which different staff members you want to receive these notification emails.
These notifications from Membee to you provide peace of mind in knowing exactly what your members are receiving!
Capturing the Stragglers With the Cancellations Automation
Let Membee’s Cancellations automation manage your cancellations for you, including writing off invoices and sending an email to inform the member of their cancellation or suspension. After setting this up you won’t have to touch the records at all!
We’ve all had those certain members who won’t pay their outstanding invoice(s) until they are finally cancelled. The advantage with using Membee is that you no longer need to worry about these members. Membee will automatically cancel them along with sending the necessary cancellation email, links, invoices, etc..
Membee also stores all of the cancelled members data so if they eventually do decide to renew it is easy to switch them from “non-member” back to “member” status and accept their payment.
No manual cleanup is ever required when a member does not renew. With Membee, your member directory will be automatically refreshed and directory listings for cancelled members are automatically deactivated.
Afraid Something Will Go Wrong? Don’t Quite Trust It?
We get that. These are powerful features but they also represent positive but significant changes in how your organization operates.
We asked Nicole how her organization looked at these features and decided to take the leap. Nicole shared, “When we were discussing the Automations feature internally, there was some trepidation around letting Membee do all the work for us. We asked Membee a couple of questions and it became clear that Membee keeps you completely informed in advance, so we would know exactly what is going on. You can't set up an automation without specifying which staff member Membee should inform before it does anything. Membee will always give that appropriate staff person ample opportunity to review when and what invoices will be sent out before the automation occurs. Membee will also flag any invoices that will not be sent and provides information as to why (no main contact, no email address, etc.). Having experienced this all first hand, I don't know why you wouldn't try this"
Advance Notifications Keep You in the Loop
Even though Membee is doing all the work, you are setting it up exactly how you want it.
You have complete control of the settings for EACH automation, you can change or adjust everything to fit your organization's needs as you please.
You will ALWAYS:
- be notified via email before an Automation is run, and after it runs
- know exactly what will be sent out and how it looks with plenty of time to make an adjustments
- be sent notification emails (That include PDFs, who will be receiving the automation, etc.)
Here is example of the notification Membee provides to you in advance of the automation actually doing the work. In this, the notification pertains to the Renewal Invoicing automation:
Membee Records All Communication to Members
Membee keeps track of all the changes/ communication to any automation. This is so you can file it and be able see everything that has been done to a member’s record and ALL the communication with that member.
Everytime Membee communicates with a member, it immediately writes a detailed “note-to-file” on the member record. All of these notes are visible in Notes & To Dos found on the Activities tab of the member’s record.
Here’s an example of a note-to-file written when an invoice reminder is sent to the member:
Membee lays out all of your automations on a calendar so it is easy to see at glance which automations are scheduled to run this week, this month, or at any point in the future.
It’s a No-Brainer!
These automations help to free up hours of admin time that used to be spent;
- posting invoices
- delivering invoices
- sorting through invoices to see who has paid
- sorting through invoices to see who has not paid
- sending renewal reminder emails
- remembering to send reminder communication, again
- cancelling non-renewals
- removing cancelled members from directory
- removing cancelled members from committees
- deactivating logins for cancelled members
- communicating cancellation
Membee is designed to help you save time. Take advantage of all that your Membee subscription offers, and let Membee be the MVP of your team!
Here is everything you need to get started is right here in this Help From the Hive article (have your Membee username and password handy when you click the link):
Save time by letting Membee Automate your Membership Life Cycle
About Nicole
Their website – http://apboardoftrade.com/
Their Facebook page – (https://www.facebook.com/APBOT/events)
Their Twitter feed - (https://twitter.com/apboardoftrade)