How to Save Time & Money With Membership Management Software

As you probably already know, running a club is an extremely fun and rewarding experience; you get to bring together a bunch of people with shared interests and goals to share in your passion. Behind the scenes of almost every club, there are a bunch of selfless volunteers putting in a lot of time and effort to keep the wheels turning and everything running smoothly. They often rely on time-consuming, expensive, outdated processes to run the club. We are talking about this today because there is a better way to run your club that can save you time, money and effort and will let you get back to enjoying your club quicker. The better way is membership management software. 

Membership management software is designed to make running your club and managing your members easier than ever before. We at Member Jungle are a membership management software provider, and we have been helping clubs run better and more efficiently for years. However, this isn’t going to be about us. This will be purely about how you can save time and money with membership management software in general. Everything we talk about today will apply to pretty much any membership management software you are considering, whether it’s ours or one of our competitors’. 

So, let’s talk about what typical problems clubs have, what membership management software can do to solve them and how this can save you time and money. 

Typical Problems Clubs Have

Even the best clubs can have problems, especially when it comes to the running of day-to-day activities. So, let’s talk about some of the most common problems facing clubs. 

• Manual Membership Renewals 
• Taking Online Payments
• Communicating With Members
• Running Events

Manually Managing Your Club’s Membership Renewals

Running a club can be a full-time job; there are always a dozen things demanding your attention at once. Managing membership renewals is one of the most time-consuming parts of running a club. This is especially true if you are still using manual methods: Keeping Excel spreadsheets of members' details and expiration dates, printing and posting physical renewal reminder letters and processing cash payments. All this can make membership renewals one of the most time-consuming and effortful parts of running a club. 

To help illustrate this point, below is a table of the costs involved with manually renewing memberships in a club with 3,500 members. 

 

 

The average cost of posting renewal memberships, including envelopes, printing, paper, ink and postage, is around $1.20 per renewal notice. Each renewal notice will take about five minutes total to print and post. So, if you multiply $1.20 by the number of members you have, you will have your total cost. If you time five minutes by the number of members you have, you will have your total time spent. 

Remember that this is only the total time and cost of sending the initial membership renewal letters. Each subsequent step involves more money and more of your precious time. This quickly adds up to a lot of time and money for even the smallest clubs. 

Overall, this can be an extremely time-consuming and expensive process. Smaller clubs may be able to get away with manual membership renewals without it becoming a massive time sink. Still, once clubs start reaching over 100 - 200 members, manual renewals are likely to become unmanageable.

So now that we have talked about how expensive and time-consuming manually managing your membership renewals is, let’s have a look at how you can save time and money when it comes to renewals. 

Automating Your Club’s Membership Renewals

By using membership management software, you can completely automate your club’s membership renewal process. The vast majority of membership management software, including Member Jungle, automates the membership renewal process in the following way. 

First, you, as the club administrator, will schedule membership renewal reminder emails to go out a certain number of days before or after renewals are due. These emails can be fully customised and have optional “dynamic fields” to make sure you keep that personal touch. 

These emails will automatically be sent to members when their membership is due to expire and prompt them to go and renew their membership. They will be able to renew their membership entirely online and from the comfort of their own homes. They will be able to renew their membership on either the website or the integrated mobile app. 

Once they have renewed their membership, both you and them will receive a receipt of payment and renewal. The system will automatically log that their membership is renewed and will reset their membership expiry date. 

That’s pretty much the long and the short of it. An automated renewal system can save you a huge amount of time and money and make your renewals easier than ever before. Membership management software also makes it a lot easier to offer multiple membership levels and discounts for returning members. These extra little incentives can help encourage more of your members to renew their memberships. 

Is Your Club Struggling to Take Online Payments?

When your club first started and only had a few dozen members, it likely wasn’t an issue that you had to take all your payments manually. Selling tickets to events at the event or selling merch during meet-ups isn’t really a problem if you only have 30 members, but as your club grows, doing things manually becomes less practical. 

As your club grows, being unable to accept payments online can mean a lot of extra work for you and your administration team. Taking all payments manually can slow down your effort to your membership renewals, merchandise and ticket sales. Being able to accept all those payments quickly and easily online is essential for sustaining your club's growth.  

How Can Your Club Take Payments Online?

Pretty much every membership management system on the market will allow your club to take all payments online. In seconds, you can accept payments for membership renewals, event tickets, merchandise purchases, and more online. This will not only save you time and effort, but it will also make your club a better experience for your members as they will be able to pay from their phones in seconds. 

Using online payment methods lets you steer clear of the hassles and risks associated with cash transactions, such as queuing up at banks and possibly losing physical money. By embracing this digital payment mechanism, you can conveniently and securely make transactions without handling cash.

Does Your Club Struggle To Communicate With Its Members?

Poor or ineffective communication between a club and its members can be a massive time sink and a source of annoyance for members and admins alike. To help your club thrive, keeping everyone in the loop is crucial. Ensure your members are up-to-date on events, meetings, and important details so they can take advantage of all opportunities. By communicating well, your members will better understand what your club offers, leading to a more satisfying membership experience.

Effective communication is a two-way street. It involves not only talking to your members but also actively listening to their feedback. This will help you understand their preferences, plan engaging events and activities, and benefit your club. It will also cut down on emails back and forth with members as you struggle to work out what each other means. It will also greatly reduce your chance of someone being on the receiving end of the dreaded “per my last email” message. 

 

How Membership Management Software Can Help You Communicate Better With Your Members  

Member Jungle and the vast majority of membership management software have a lot of different ways they can help you communicate more effectively with the members of your club. These include: 

• Renewal reminder emails
• Emails to members
• Email marketing campaigns
• Newsletters
• Polls and voting
• SMS marketing
• News and Blog modules
• Push notifications to members' phones 
• Member Chat rooms

By taking advantage of all the valuable communication tools that membership management software offers, you can communicate with your members better than ever before. This can add value to your club and keep your members happy and engaged. Even if you decide that you are not interested in joining Member Jungle or any other membership management system, I'd recommend finding a way to implement as many of these features as possible. It will really help your club in the long run. 

Is Your Club Having Trouble Running Events?

Events are one of the most important aspects of any club. They are essential for building a strong community and providing a whole range of benefits for your members. Chances are, events are one of the biggest reasons, if not the biggest reason, for people joining your club in the first place. 

However, organising club events can be challenging for a lot of clubs. There are logistics, member participation, safety management, and legal requirements all to account for. Suppose you cannot offer online payment options. In that case, you will be forced to sell tickets in person, possibly on the day of the event, making it challenging to predict attendance numbers accurately.

Overcoming these challenges is essential to ensure successful events, increase member engagement, and create unforgettable experiences. You can’t really have a club without events, and you can’t have events without members turning up. Therefore, ensuring your events are as good as possible is essential to your club’s success. 

How Membership Management Software Can Help Your Club Run Events Better

Pretty much every membership management system, including Member Jungle, offers an event management module. This will enable you to run your club events easier, more efficiently and less effectively than ever before. 

They usually come with various features, including online ticket sales, the ability to set location and time details, easy viewing of attendance lists, member engagement monitoring, online payment acceptance, and communication via push notifications and emails. This can help your events run smoothly from start to finish. 

This is only a brief overview of how membership management software can help with your club’s events; for a more detailed breakdown of how you can use this software to help your club’s events, read How To Run An Event With Member Jungle.

How Else Can Membership Management Software Help Your Club Save Time And Money?

Membership management software can help your club in more ways than just the ones we’ve covered today. To learn more about membership management software and how it can help your club, read either of the following articles. 

For more information on membership management systems in general, read What Is Membership Management Software For Nonprofits? - All Your Questions Answered. 

If you are wondering how much all this costs, try reading How To Plan Your Membership Management Software Budget