Addressing the challenges facing the membership sector

The membership and not-for-profit sector is at a key junction, with a number of challenges highlighted in the recent MemberWise Digital Excellence Report. If you’re attending the Membership Excellence conference next week, why not pre-book a 5-minute slot with TSG?

It’s no surprise to see that member engagement is at the top of the agenda and it’s likely that this trend will continue in the coming years, particularly with the increasing number of touchpoints afforded by technology.

Online engagement strategies in particular can help you to retain and grow your membership, as well as communicate more effectively and improve your services by making feedback quick and easy.

What’s really interesting is how membership organisations are dealing with their technology challenges. Respondents cited managing multiple databases that aren’t integrated well as one of their key challenges. A lack of integration with ERP and website CMS systems makes managing these databases and systems difficult and time-consuming, largely due to the need to rekey data across multiple systems.

Another reported issue was the fact that many Membership Relationship Management (MRM) solutions weren’t suited to the organisation needs, despite the bespoke nature of the systems.

How can you solve all of these issues and ensure your Membership Management Solution works for you?

Enter Tribe 365

Built upon Dynamics 365, Tribe 365 breaks down the silos between the many systems used by membership organisations and allows you to focus on your key issues like membership engagement.

Tribe 365 not only links up with your ERP system, with the ability to export to Sage 50 and Sage 200, but also connects to your website and allows your members to self-service; a key demand in the digital world we now live in. Plus, with an inbuilt Sales Ledger module out-of-the-box, there is no need to duplicate effort when it comes to creating financial transactions.

Budgets and resources are often really tight, meaning you might not be able to stretch to a bespoke system – and even if you could, it’s clear that many membership organisations still aren’t happy with theirs. That is why Tribe 365 is out-of-the-box, coming with all of the features you would expect like membership renewals, events, donations/gift aid and more. It’s easy to upgrade and gets the job done – but can be customised if necessary.

A key feature of Tribe 365 is complex attributes – or more commonly known as one question, many answers. This allows you to better profile your users; for example, if your users have interests you can send targeted communications about an annual golf day which has Premier League guest players to those members who are interested in golf and football.

You can also allow your users to self-service thanks to Tribe 365’s third-party integration with Intergage’s Content Management System (CMS) via the Tribe Web Portal. You can select specific fields that your users can update themselves on the web, as well as pay their subscriptions and book onto events. In the digital-first world, self-service is essential to delivering excellent customer service.

We’ll be showcasing all of this functionality and more at the MemberWise Conference 2018: Membership Excellence. You can come and talk to our experts on stand 13 on the day – you can even pre-book a slot with us on our event page.