Essential Membership Management App Features

We originally shared this post in 2019, but we’ve made some additions and updates to this 2021 edition. Enjoy! 

For association and nonprofit organizations with membership programs in place, membership management apps are critical for streamlining member-related objectives and staying on top of constituent data.

If you’re unsure how a membership app works, think of it as a one-stop place for managing all aspects of the membership experience. Membership management apps contain an assortment of important tools, but some standout features are essential for managing members and maximizing engagement. 

The truth is that there isn’t a shortage of membership management apps out there. Do a quick Google search. It might yield a good amount of results, but what’s important when choosing the best membership management app is knowing whether they have the features that will help you streamline your online membership community.

For this article, we’ll take a look at some must-have features in a membership management app, and hopefully, by the end of this article, you’ll be able to figure out which membership management app you should choose.

Comprehensive Member Profiles

The main feature for any membership management application should be to provide any organization with the necessary tools to organize and track membership information. 

By this, we mean having a dedicated feature for member profiles.

How does your application do that? Mainly by setting the user up with in-depth member profiles. 

When all of the member's data is visible in a single place, users will easily be capable of referencing any information they require at any given moment. Depending on your applications capabilities and the data currently available, users may keep any of the following information on file: 

1. Biographical data
2. Contact information
3. Preferred communications methods
4. Relationships and households
5. Professional affiliations
6. Participation history
7. Dues payments and donation records

With a well-built app, you should also include custom fields, tasks, and notes to keep staff members on track and organized with every action they perform.

Without this function to compile and manage member information, it would be challenging to reach and engage with any members effectively.

When there’s a transparent picture of who the members are, you’ll be better positioned to plan and manage engagement that will appeal to them. Member profiles allow you to access vital information about your members, from the most basic data to specific details, such as event attendance records, giving affinity, and engagement interests. 

Consider the following: If you don’t know who your members are, how can you develop a membership program that meets their needs and expectations?

Integrations

Integrations are probably one of the most critical features for any membership management app. 

Every day, you’re probably using a variety of different apps to accomplish your tasks. You might be using Mailchimp for your emails, Google Analytics to track your marketing KPIs, and Stripe for billing your customers. Since these processes are essential to your business, you would want to make sure these services work with your membership management solution.

Many companies might choose to do their own in-house integration development for specific apps, but why reinvent the wheel? Save time by using a membership management app that already has the integrations built-in.

Community-Based Constituent Portal

It may seem like membership management apps only focused on making the membership experience even more manageable for the organization. In reality, the real important piece of the membership program would have to be its members. 

Your membership management application should allow you to access an easy-to-use member login portal on your website, where members will be able to access exclusive content and stay connected to the organization. 

Not only should the member portal allow members to self-manage many membership tasks, such as updating their profile, signing up for volunteer opportunities, or registering for events, but it should also serve as a gateway for online community-building within the organization. For instance, consider placing the member directory or hosting discussions in an exclusive forum. A forum can also provide organizational updates, education content, and essential news articles so that members are always up-to-date with what’s going on in the community. 

Members are the pillars that hold up your membership program, so they should be at the forefront of any membership management application. 

When you’ve successfully built in a user-friendly member portal, you’ll be capable of connecting with members from the organization and one another. Furthermore, you’ll be able to more conveniently give them access to all sorts of benefits of your membership program, including an extensive supporter network with exclusive content. 

Payments

Whether you are a non-profit or a for-profit business, receiving membership payments from your members is quite important. 

When you’re searching for a membership management app, make sure they have a payment processor integration built-in that does the following:

• Track payments
• Payment notifications
• New orders/sign ups
• Renewal notifications
• Multiple Admin Access
• Member email notifications
• Automated emails
• The ability to update their credit card information

The more features the app has for payments, the better. 

Custom Membership Forms

The first interaction any member will have with a membership program is, for the most part, completing a membership application. And with this being a digital era, there’s a likely chance that your membership application with be available online, on the organization’s website. 

To develop a membership application form, consider taking advantage of the membership management application form-building ability. 

Use the fields on your application to generate any other form you might need, such as renewal forms, volunteer sign-ups, and event registration. Additionally, you can also customize them by including unlimited fields and branding the documents to match your organization. 

While it’s possible to find an alternative option for creating custom web forms, there are vast amounts of benefits to working with membership apps that contain form-building capabilities. 

The benefit of using an application form is that all the information you gather will flow directly into your member database. You won’t have to worry about manually entering any data or ensuring the correct information ends up in the right member profile. 

Suppose the membership program offers an abundance of engagement opportunities outside of initial subscription and renewal. In that case, you’ll most likely rely on online forms quite a bit to gather information from members. Letting data slip away is something an organization cannot allow. 

Flexible Membership Fee Management

The distinguishing factor of membership programs is that they need recurring income, such as donations, membership fees, or other dues. A membership management app makes tracking this income much more manageable. 

While the features we’ve touched upon previously mostly make managing membership simpler, processing and managing dues payment is a feature that makes any membership program possible. All membership applications will usually have built-in payment processing and fee management features. Your app can enable you to process online transactions, manually enter offline payments, and track members’ payment statuses to ensure they’ve fully paid. 

Due to membership fees being the pillar behind membership programs, you can’t expect to effectively manage your membership program without some way to process and track these payments. Nonetheless, the best membership management platforms will also empower its users to customize membership fees’ experience. 

Here are some examples of what your management app should be capable of:

• Create different fees per membership type.
• Offer discounts and complimentary memberships.
• Accept additional donations or merchandise payments.
• Set up an auto-renew option to process dues regularly.

Your membership program must mirror the organization and your members at every level. Hence, you should be able to adjust your fees accordingly to your needs. 

With plenty of fee management options, your membership app should make it simpler to customize dues as you see fit. By being flexible, you’ll make it much easier for members to remain involved for as long as they wish to. 

Communication Automation

The best way to remain engaged and retain any members long-term, you’ll need to stay in communication with them. 

Although, if your program encompasses a large number of members or includes a fundraising or volunteer component, it can be challenging to stay on top of all your communication efforts. 

This is where your membership management application comes in. The application should come implemented with various marketing and communication tools that allow you to launch mass email campaigns, target specific subsets of members, and perhaps most important, set up automated and triggered email content. 

The application should allow you to schedule any of your member communication to send automatically. Keeping up with your communication will be much easier and more straightforward, thanks to the app. 

Think about it for a moment. If you had to individually send out every single thank you message, renewal reminder, event invitations, and every other type of email communication, your staff would be up to their ears in correspondence. 

Without a proper application that can manage these tasks for you, it would be impossible to remain on top of all the messages your membership program needs to send out. When the membership app manages these messages, you’re not only able to alleviate tons of manual labor, but you’re also able to better track your communication and engagement efforts further down the line. 

Your communication history should be easily visible within the member database, making it easy to keep an eye on how your members engage with the content sent their way. You’ll even be able to monitor critical KPIs like email open rates and click-through rates, renewal status, and social media engagement through the application. 

Communication is a vital aspect of member engagement. Without using a proper app that can help you automate your communication-related task and track member responsiveness, you won’t be capable of effectively managing these efforts in a sustainable manner.  

Conclusion

Hopefully, we made your search process for a membership management app easier. Of course, every organization will have different requirements, but these are a good starting point! 

If you’re looking for an all-in-one membership management app that has all the listed features mentioned in this article, then sign up for our free trial over at Join It today!