Angry New Members
What happens to a new member who fails to engage with a member organization? Do they quietly ignore this fact? Do they blissfully turn their attention elsewhere? Do they happily ride off into the sunset thinking, “It didn’t work this time, but no worries.”
Um, nope, nah, and no.
New members who fail to engage usually become angry. (I’ve got data from 477 member interviews to back this up.)
Sometimes they will even say, “It’s my fault, I didn’t engage. I should have spent more time learning about the organization or what was available to me as a member.” But don’t be fooled by their polite taking responsibility - they are still angry.
Maybe not angry, like Fried Green Tomatoes in a parking lot —angry, but still angry. Furious, like “I made a bad decision, but that’s because I was tricked!”
What do angry people do?
They tell other people all about it. Here’s the thing: word of mouth is super compelling. There are all kinds of stats about this, like:
88% of people trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other type of promotion. (Research from Nielsen)
Word of mouth drives 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. (Research from McKinsey)
Usually, when we talk about word of mouth, we’re referring to the positive kind (like those statistics above). Like when an engaged member says, “You’ve got to check out this organization, it’s helped me sooooo much in my career.”
There’s bad word of mouth, too. The kind of word of mouth that goes a little like this: “Nah, it’s not worth it.” Or, “I didn’t learn anything at their meetings.” Or, “It’s a pretty cliquey organization.” Any little off-hand comment can prevent others from engaging.
Negative word of mouth is one more reason to get your new member onboarding plan up and running as soon as possible. Or if you have one, make sure to schedule a time to review it and keep it up to date. What else can you do to ensure new members are engaged?
