Membership is about a sense of belonging

I had a interesting chat about membership, developing membership packages, increasing revenue for the organisation, and delivering benefits for the members.

For me, the key takeaway was that the aim of a membership programme should be about creating a sense of belonging for the members. If a membership programme offers benefits that the members purchase and don’t have any emotional connection to, don’t feel any sense of belonging to, then they are just buying a service. They aren’t members, they are customers.

The other important concept that sets membership aside from just purchasing a service is that it creates a virtuous circle of people becoming members because they have that emotional connection with an organisation that delivers that a sense of belonging and benefits that reinforces that emotional connection, or encourages them to help other people establish their emotional connection.