I'm sure you know how much each member pays you in dues each year.  But, can you somewhat easily find what other revenue each member brings to your organization?    Can you calculate, on average, what each member pays your organization over the life of their membership?

In other words, do you know who the most (and least) valuable members are?   

If you can find this, it can open a whole new world of member recruitment and retention.  You can begin to show that members in a certain demographic are worth more than others.  So, do you stop recruiting businesses that may have a lower lifetime value? Or, do you adjust your retention strategies to try to increase their lifetime value?

You can do either, but you need to have good information.  Good member intelligence.  Cathi Hight talks about member intelligence during her frequent presentations at ACCE and other conferences.  If you've ever seen/heard Cathi speak, you know how passionate she is about having good member intelligence to help you make better decisions.

Our clients find that our member intelligence reports and features are some of the most valuable tools they use.  No matter what member database you use, you need to be able to extract this type of information.  Gaining this information AND finding ways to act on it can help you improve retention, increase new member sales and even generate non-dues revenue (indirectly).

If you have questions about the kinds of data you should be tracking and reporting on, please contact me at curt.moss@weblinkinternational.com.