Member Retention

   Consider this familiar story, the local corps of lodge officers observes a steep falloff of member interest or attendance within a specific lodge. In contrast, other lodges are doing surprisingly well. The successful lodges not only attract new members, but also have more frequent attendance. Unfortunately, it may not be clear what has caused this situation because of not properly analysing the situation in each grouping of lodges, thereby, leaving the lodge officers without the information needed to repeat successes or avoid the pitfalls. Where do you start to understand the situation or differences in the lodges? There are mountains of data that the lodge officers could collect in order to show reasons for the differences and the way to correct any situation. However, many officers either don't want to make positive changes or don't understand how to do them or if information is collected, it may not be reviewed quickly enough and be out of date when finally reviewed.
   Doing research, collecting data, and then analysing that information can be exasperating but it's necessary to improve our lodges and create a more professional corps of officers. We need to understand all the variables that impact lodge member retention, even though the combinations may seem infinite.
   Member retention and, ultimately, member lifetime value are part of the end goals of our lodges. How do you evaluate which member retention and up sell efforts work best with your members? How did member satisfaction scores, member growth history, and engagement frequency correlate to the increase of member behaviour-attendance, participation in and development of activities, understanding of Masonic Principles? What Masonic marketing, membership campaigns, and programmes were most effective, and to which member segments? Moreover, across the holistic member journey, what activities supported loyalty or led to a downturn in the lodge?

Real-Time Insights Into Member Behaviours
   When it comes to understanding metrics regarding lodge measurement of successes/failures, we normally focus on the top line data. We can track member satisfaction scores, but they don't necessarily reveal much about a member's or a potential member's interests or member retention over time. We identify lodge revenue per member, but without analysing campaign effectiveness, by member segments, to identify the most active members. What's needed are metrics or understanding member delivering actionable insight into the actual levers driving member retention. Only by understanding member behaviours at a deeper level can we develop effective, new strategies and the ability to target campaigns and personalize offers to drive that all important member lifetime value.
   Fortunately, the rapidly emerging world of digital analytics enables lodge officers to gain insight into member behaviours in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Digital analytics which is the ability to collect, analyse, and visualise information from big data in real time is the key that unlocks an extraordinary amount of information about lodge members, mainly, how, when, and why they join a specific lodge; what causes dissatisfaction, downturns in attendance; and the best ways to retain members.
   There are two transformational principles in the world of marketing and analytics:

   1) Multichannel Marketing & Communications: With the explosion in social and digital media, lodge members or potential members engage with specific lodges and Masonry through an increasing number of channels. This make the member journey more complex every year. We live in an era of multichannel marketing and communications, with the mix now including an array of traditional and online channels, combined with the world of social and mobile apps.
   2) Earned Interrelationships: These marketing channels and their performance are tightly interrelated. It is only by analysing correlations between competing factors that we understand individual lodge campaigns and channel performance trends over time. This is essential to producing a longer-term picture of factors contributing to member retention. 

Complexity and Surprises

   Lodges/lodge officers are able to measure or identify member dissatisfaction or lack of attendance, but may not recognise the factors leading up to it. Analysis makes it possible to correlate key demographic, behavioural, social, personal, activity, and financial factors to decipher obscure relationships and dispel misconceptions.
   The analytics process produces surprises. With proper and constant analysis, lodge officers are able to observe unexpected correlations and can take corrective measures where none where originally projected. Now they have the actionable data they need to increase the likelihood of certain behaviours that reduce any form of member dissatisfaction.
   Viewed holistically, we see many lodges benefiting. Officers can assess lodge viability correlated with their marketing, programmes, communications efforts, and developing lodge loyalty programming. Furthermore, lodge officers learn how their lodge campaigns and communications stack up in terms of dissatisfaction and loyalty, as well as membership growth. Finally, the possible financial benefits from analysis relating to member loyalty, lodge growth, and up to date fees and dues. 

Member Retention Is The New Science

   All this tells us that the intelligence needed to drive member loyalty must both accurately describe a lodge's current state and create a foundation for forecasting future behaviour. Calculating member lifetime value is an exercise in predictive, multichannel analysis. To achieve this, lodge officer's analytics capabilities need to connect the dots among many data sources, provide real-time analysis, and predict relationships and trends that ultimately enable everyone to discover new truths.
   The good news is that all of this is possible today. We should think of this as the new science of retaining members, drawing on fresh or creative methodologies and a new generation of technologies in multichannel digital analytics.

Fraternally,

John Loayza

Assistant Grand Chancellor

GL Leadership Committee

Grand Lodge of Illinois, A.F. & A.M.

Achieving Control Of Lodge Experiences

   The governance of a lodge rests heavily on the shoulders of all the officers, especially the WM and the Wardens, who are responsible leaders implementing the image of Masonry and their lodge in particular. Unfortunately, there are some local lodge officers who have not studied or stressed the importance of their overall image.  
   Lodge image, its success or failure, is influenced by member experience and can impact any lodge faster now than at any time in history. Lodge experience, whether good or bad, can spread all over the world in no time, thanks to social media. Every interaction with a member is critical, because we never know which experience could suddenly affect potential candidates, as well as current members or a lodge within any community.
   Many lodge officers have already learned that favourable contacts and modern methods of good business practices improve member experiences that can be beneficial. Improving the member experience during any interactions with lodge officers or the lodge itself is an ongoing and hands on endeavour.
   All impacts on member experiences are equally significant. The critical first impression and continued emphasis on member experiences requires coaching and acceptance of many new or improved lodge governance methods, the ability to relate with 21st Century Masons, providing good programming, and the use of modern technology.
   Local lodge coaching may sound strange, but in principle it's not much different from coaching any team. We should constantly measure and coach our lodge officers and lodges; collect a lot of performance data to analyse it, using all data to identify areas of improvement; and implementing a process to make sure those improvements are implemented by our lodge officers. Unfortunately, many dais officers take a very narrow approach to collecting the data they need to properly understand member experiences and keeping their lodges both growing and progressive. This makes it hard to identify opportunities to improve, and even harder to predict the results any given improvement might achieve. Collecting the right local lodge data to set goals and do proper analysis contributes to making more informed lodge officer decisions that will more effectively optimize the lodge system, as well as assuring better lodge results.
   First, we need to properly measure and understand member experiences in order to know where we stand and whether our future lodge improvements are effective. Second, it's essential to broaden our perspectives and develop a rating or system that measures member intent, interaction, and perception. Some examples are as follows:

 

Intent: A potential member or even a current member's reasons for belonging to a specific lodge and the activities offered.

Intent can be measured by simple surveys. Unfortunately, many lodge officers don't conduct surveys or consider it as a waste of time.

Interaction: The specific steps or actions taken by lodge officers in an effort to complete goals. Interaction is measured and

evaluated using system-performance reports, actionable summaries, best practices, and is just an analysis of what is happening or what actually happened.

Perception: The emotional value a member places on the ease and efficiency with which lodge goals were accomplished.

Perception is evaluated using surveys which lodges seldom utilize for their own benefit..

 

Surveys Alone Are Not the Answer

   Many lodges could use surveys to measure member satisfaction. These are an essential component of any member experience measurement, but some surveys focus only on the member's perception of the lodge interactions. In order to improve perceptions, it's necessary to understand in great detail the reality underlying them. However, surveys must be combined with lots of performance data. This is where effective analytics can extract the necessary information to measure intent and interaction to get a true picture of the member experience.
   So what do we measure? Although it may seem overwhelming, we need to capture much more data to truly manage and improve lodge member experience ratings. This can come from standardised reports, such as goal/task completion details, event development, ritual competency, etc. The information provides even more insight into the journey of our members and lodge officer development. In order to find out how a lodge or lodge officers are performing from a member's perspective, we must combine all of this data and ask the right types of questions as we analyse it.
   For example, to analyse a member's reason for joining a specific lodge, we might consider using goal/task-specific reports, exit point reports why members may not be regularly attending lodge. Evaluate this data against survey data and member interaction behavior to get a much clearer picture of the overall member experience. It's important to understand member behaviour, and lodge patterns which drive lasting improvements.
   By asking the right types of questions of our local lodge system and members, then capturing and analyzing operational data, we will not only get a truer picture of the experience, but additionally, the analytical information will provide the visibility needed to track down and fix issues that impact local lodge experiences and image in a specific lodge and surrounding lodges.
   When we are able to measure the right data, analyze it, and improve the problem areas we uncover in a systematic and predictable way, and we will have arrived. Moreover, we will get a firm understanding of managing member experiences in any lodge and can enjoy the benefits of providing a great member experience both for the image of Masonry and any lodge in particular. However, this process rests on the progressive attitudes of the local dais and other lodge officers.

Fraternally,

R.:W.: Bro. John Loayza

Assistant Grand Chancellor

GL Leadership Committee

Grand Lodge of Illinois, A.F. & A.M.