You could look at the cost to hire someone to do the same work, but that only takes you so far. The challenge here is placing a dollar value on these intangibles. Communicating or meeting with federal or state policy-makers.Serving on a board, committee or other national or chapter governance group.Writing articles or doing peer reviews.Dedicating time and expertise as a subject matter expert or instructor.

Sharing advice in the online community.Volunteering as a membership ambassador during new member onboarding or as an event buddy for a first-time attendee.Members contribute in many other ways to bring value to the membership experience, help your association achieve its goals, and take on tasks that would otherwise be assigned to staff or temporary workers, for example: New LTV metric: monetary LTV + intangible contributionsīut revenue isn’t the only value a member brings to your association, right? For example, make an educated guess that 75% of non-dues revenue (or whatever percentage you prefer) comes from members. A not-so-accurate number is better than no number at all. If your AMS gives you the ability to separate member and non-member revenue, that’s great, you’re way ahead of the game, and should be able to come up with a fairly accurate number. You can’t just take a year’s worth of event registrations, publication sales, PAC donations, and online course registrations and divide it by the number of members because many of those registrations and publications were purchased by non-members. When association leaders see how much revenue a new member can bring in over the years, membership staff have a greater chance of getting a bigger budget for first-year engagement efforts.Ĭalculating dues revenue is easy. Lifetime value (LTV) of a member = $10,000 With this dollar amount in mind, you can make better decisions about your budget for recruiting, onboarding and engaging new members.Īverage non-dues revenue per member = $700/year Membership experts have always advised associations to use the LTV metric to understand how much revenue an average member brings to their association. Why aren’t associations using this traditional membership metric? Doesn’t lifetime value (LTV) still have something relevant to tell associations about their members and customers? Traditional purpose of the lifetime value of members (LTV) metric But, Marketing General Incorporated discovered something strange while surveying associations for their 2018 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report: only 10% of the participating associations measure and analyze the lifetime value of members, a drop from 16% in their 2017 report. Associations analyze their data so they can better understand members and customers, and make confident decisions about programs, content, and marketing.

Lifetime value of a crossfit member