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changes or don't understand how to do them or if information is collected, it may not be reviewed quickly enough and be out of date when finally reviewed.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.