Managing the membership renewal process

Introduction

Managing the membership list during the renewal process can be challenging as the process is inevitably drawn out as members get around to the task. But ManageMyMatch provides some tools to make this easier.

Of course, if the club does not have a fixed renewal date but has instead a rolling membership model (i.e. members buy a membership any time they like and it lasts for one year) then this annual process does not apply.

The first thing to point out is that, of course, members renew themselves. The membership secretary is there to support and monitor the process. Members renew by selecting the My subscriptions page. There they are presented with choices as per the membership products set up by the membership secretary in Manage Clubs (Products tab). You will want to make sure that the categories are correctly set up and priced and that they have been made available for purchase.

As members renew, you'll be able to monitor progress using the first 3 tabs in Manage members - Members, Subscriptions and Changes

Members tab

This lists all users who have linked to the club. This may well include many more people than there are members. You have a combination of 3 filtering choices, the first one being by product. It's called "product" because a membership category is only one kind of product. This drop down gives you the ability to see only those people who own a particular product or membership. But there are other more general choices and these are explained in more detail as follows:

• No current membership subscription - shows everyone who is linked with the club but does not hold a current membership subscription (according to ManageMyMatch records).
• Any current membership subscription - the opposite of the above
• Membership expires within 2 months - useful when you want to know who has not renewed their subscription yet. Once renew, the membership will have extended by, typically, a year.
• Membership renewed or effective 2 months hence - the opposite of the above
• Membership not renewed - memberships that either lapsed more than 2 months ago or that have lapsed more recently and you, as membership secretary, have marked them off as not renewing. You can do this for any non-renewed member in the details screen.
• Legacy membership assumed - people who have not got a membership registered (yet) with MMM because you are transitioning from a legacy system but instead have been assigned a default one to tide things over until the next membership cycle starts.

Very similar filtering capabilities are available in MailChimp so that you can mail out to relevant people; for example to send reminders to those who have not yet renewed. See this article for more details.

You will find there are other useful filters that you can use to analyse the list. On your desk top you can hover over the headings in the listing to see what they mean.

Subscriptions tab

This provides a summary report on how many members have what kind of membership on a monthly basis. This is useful for reporting and reviewing on overall numbers. This screen covers 3 years centred around the current year. This allows you to see when members will be dropping off in the future and how many have renewed comparing this with the trend of membership over the recent past.

Changes tab

This screen shows you a history of leavers and joiners so far as membership is concerned. This is useful for tracking who has joined and left and as a reminder or check to do any on-boarding or other tasks you might have. There is a check box next to each membership change so you can mark them off as "processed" or not.

Any memberships that users have bought (or been assigned) that start in the future are listed at the top of the list in blue. The bulk of the report is then made up of a historic, chronological list of past membership changes.  This does not mean that it shows renewals because a renewal to the same membership is not classified as a change. Changes mean (+, in green) new members or members who have changed their subscription category from one type to another; And (-, in red) members whose subscriptions have expired. The key point being that this screen only shows changes in membership, not continuations of the same membership.