Membership management software allows you to automate club registration and other time consuming administrative tasks. You can save your club up to 24 hours per week with membership management software, just by streamlining club administration.
However, there are numerous membership management software options on the market and they aren’t all built equally.
In this blog we’ll cover:
- Accepting payments online and automated payment reminders
- Improving club communications with targeted email tools
- Secure membership management software
- Getting membership management software benefits on your mobile device
- Generating club financial reports and membership articles
We’ve created a list of features and tasks that your membership management solution should provide for your club. If you still have questions when you’re done reading this article, schedule a call with us. We’d be happy to help.
1) Accept payments online and automate payment reminders
You’ve worked hard to build your club. You’ve hired the right coaches, invested in the right equipment and created an atmosphere that’s welcoming to your members. Now, you need to make sure your club generates revenue. Good membership management software should make it extremely easy for your club to accept payments.
Accepting Various Payment Methods:
When you’re operating on your own, it’s difficult to accept a variety of payment methods. Some clubs encourage cash registrations and avoid online payments altogether. This can be a deterring factor for prospective members.
The last thing a club owner or administrator wants to see is prospective customers getting turned away because their club doesn’t accept the customer’s preferred method of payment. So, make sure the membership management software you choose allows your club to accept a wide-range of payment methods.
Good membership management software should allow your club to accept cash, cheques, etransfers, Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Visa debit and Interac online.
Payment Installments:
Monthly payment installments provide prospective club members with financial flexibility because not everyone can easily afford to pay a lump-sum fee. By offering monthly payment installments your club will appeal to a wider variety of prospective members.
Good membership management software should allow your club to accept automated monthly payment installments from your members.
Remember, the key word here is automated. If your membership management software doesn’t automatically transact installment payments for you, then your administrative team will have to manually process payments each month. Not only is that task unnecessary and time consuming, it may also require that your club securely stores customer credit card details. If you choose not to securely store credit card details, your club will need members to visit your office to complete manual transactions once per month. Ultimately, neither option is easy to manage.
Automated overdue payment reminders:
Your club software should automate important payment tasks so you can streamline your administrative work. And one of the most important administrative tasks is following up on overdue payments.
Good membership management software sends automated payment reminders for you. This saves you time and money.
Customizable online registration forms:
Bringing your registration online and reaping the benefits of a mobile-friendly registration can help your club retain and attract members. Like most other aspects of your membership management software, customization is important. You’ll want to make sure you can customize your online registration form so that your club can collect the member data that’s most important to your operations.
Good membership management software allows you to customize your online registration forms.
2) Improve club communications with targeted email tools
Targeted email communications:
Imagine you are a figure skating coach. It’s Saturday morning and your first class starts in an hour. You walk into the arena and glance at the ice. Immediately you can tell that something is wrong. The ice is covered in puddles of water and it looks slushy. There was a power outage overnight and now the ice needs repair. All your morning classes need to be canceled or moved to a new location. Can you quickly contact each affected member?
Good membership management software needs to be equipped with an email communication tool that allows you to target specific groups and classes so you can quickly send updates in case of emergency cancellations or class adjustments.
Parent and athlete profiles:
It’s common for people to change phone numbers, switch email addresses and move homes. You don’t want your administrative staff to spend time chasing parents to verify contact information for each athlete’s family. Instead, you want your members and their parents to be able to easily update their contact details on their own.
Good membership management software has a centralized contact database that allows club members to update their own details. This saves time for your administrative staff, and empowers parents.
3) Trust secure membership management
No shared multi-tenant databases:
Securing your club member data is one of your club’s responsibilities. For this reason, it’s important to carefully consider membership management software security. There are quite a few membership management software providers that use shared databases. This means multiple clubs and associations have their data stored within the same database. Using shared data bases may be a cost savings opportunity for software providers, but it’s not best practice for your data security.
Good membership management software will store your data in its own dedicated cloud database because it increases your member data security.
Also, be sure to check that your membership management software provider is compliant with the following data protection and privacy laws: PCI, GDPR, CASL, PIPEDA.
4) Membership management software benefits on your mobile device
Mobile-friendly website builder:
As of 2018 Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing. This means that your mobile site determines where your club shows up in Google’s search results. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re going to have a difficult time showing up when someone searches for your business services on Google. That’s why your club needs a mobile-friendly site.
Good membership management software comes with a website builder that allows your club to build a mobile-friendly website.
Mobile-friendly registration:
Today, over 40% of online transactions are completed on a mobile device. So, if your club doesn’t have a mobile-friendly registration process, you could be creating a barrier that prevents new members from registering for you club.
Good membership management software gives your club an automated registration process that is mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendly club registration makes your club more attractive to those customers that prefer using mobile devices to make purchases. It also provides your current members with more registration options which they will surely appreciate.
Mobile-friendly evaluation features:
Often, when clubs are shopping for membership management software they only focus on automating their registration. Automating club registration provides a huge benefit to clubs because it simplifies complex processes and frees up valuable administration time. But membership software should also improve on-the-ground tasks like athlete evaluations.
Good membership management software provides coaches with the tools to evaluate athletes and members directly from mobile phones and tablets. It also empowers parents and athletes by allowing them to check digital report cards from their own mobile devices.
5) Generate club financial reports and membership analytics
Customizable financial reports:
It’s very helpful to automate your club registration but it’s vital to be able to create accurate club revenue reports. Make sure your club knows what types of reports are available from the membership management software that you’re considering. Also be sure to ask if the membership software you’re considering allows your club to customize your reporting to gain deeper insights.
At Uplifter we’ve had large associations tell us just how important our reporting can be. After trying two other membership management software solutions, Gymnastics Ontario turned to Uplifter and found a solution that they could count on.
Using Uplifter’s association software, they can now customize their reports to meet their exact needs instead of limiting their insights with limited software. Read more about how our financial and member reporting helped their association.
Good membership management software has the ability to generate customized reports. Better yet, if you can find a software solution that allows you to cross-reference your numbers with two separate reports (like Uplifter) that’s an added bonus!
Analytics for skill development:
As mentioned above, your club should be able to use your member software to evaluate members and athletes. Once evaluations are complete, the data needs to be available in a central location so that administrators can review club analytics and run membership reports to see how club members are advancing.
Good membership management software empowers your club with analytics that provide a view of member activity. Both at the individual and global level.
Have more questions about member management software?
At Uplifter we specialize in providing clubs, schools and associations with member management software solutions. If you still have questions about how membership management software can help your organization, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
