If you haven’t already, hop on over to Tony Rossell’s blog and follow the link to take the 2010 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Survey. Today and tomorrow are your last chance to participate. Last year’s survey produced an interesting snapshot of how association execs view their membership marketing effectiveness, including some interesting findings about which marketing channels are working the best for recruiting and renewing members. There are a few questions related to social media use. Last year’s findings were a bit bearish on using social media for membership marketing, for example…

“Of the respondents who reported using social media to recruit new members, 26.8% of those who used it reported a decline in new member acquisition compared to just 21% reporting a decline from all respondents. These groups also reported a higher likelihood to have renewal rates under 80%.

Why might some of the more passive channels be reported as less effective? Membership is what marketers call a “push†product. A push product must be proactively sold. So it is not surprising that highly targetable, proactive, and direct to customer methods are rated as the best channels for recruiting new members from this research.” – 2009 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Survey Report

I’m curious to see if the 2010 results will show any improvement in the way association execs view their efforts in that area. Any ideas why folks using social media to recruit members would see a decline? Does this suppose they stopped using other channels? I’d also wonder if they’re experimenting with social media because other channels are already declining…hmmm.

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