To deliver an exceptional member experience, support your members’ learning needs
Are you considering your members’ learning needs and expectations as they move through their careers? Here are some ideas for how to improve the member experience through learning management.
As you focus on member relationships with your association, you likely think about the member experience – from their first interaction with your organization to the moment they renew. You may also think about it from the organization’s perspective: acquisition, onboarding, engagement, and renewal. Your association management software (AMS) supports t his member journey by helping you manage member data and processes more efficiently. But are you also considering your members’ learning needs and expectations as they move through their careers? While it’s important to look at the member journey throughout the member’s relationship with your organization, it’s also critically important to implement strategies, techniques, and technology to support their professional development through each phase of their careers – from student and early career to retirement.
What members are seeking
Start by thinking about what members want. As part of the 2018 Member Education and Career Development Report, Community Brands found that many members seek a place where they can network with other individuals while growing and developing their careers in various ways. In fact, fifty-one percent of members surveyed say they joined their current organizations for benefits such as continuing education.
Leverage a learning management system to support your members’ needs
It’s important to have a learning management system (LMS) in place to support your members’ professional development needs. An LMS digitally delivers educational content and courses to your members. It typically handles course registrations, course management, tracking, and reporting. It often also has a robust content library to house all your course components.
Integrate your LMS and your AMS for a better learning experience
The technology you rely on for membership management and learning management should work well together to deliver the best member experience possible. Using an LMS with your AMS supports your ability to consider what your members are doing and then deliver value to your members in each phase of their careers.
For example:
|
Career Stage |
What they’re doing |
How your organization can provide value |
|
Student/new graduate |
Interning, part of student association |
Job board (for internship opportunities), training and certification opportunities |
|
Early career |
Searching for and applying for jobs |
Job board, networking opportunities (including online community, annual meeting and career fair), certification opportunities |
|
Mid-career |
Growing their career |
Exam board prep, self-assessments, connection with mentors, recommended learning paths, industry news, alerts about legislative issues affecting the profession |
|
Late career |
Hiring, growing as a leader |
Job board, career fair booth, recruitment guide, leadership courses |
|
Retirement |
Mentoring, guest speaking |
Connection to mentor boards, path to maintaining credentials, industry speaking opportunities |
Consider these example scenarios of how integrating your AMS with an LMS can help support a great experience throughout the lifetime member journey:
- Learners seamlessly navigate from your website to your e-learning catalog to your member page. Any updates to user data automatically sync across your AMS and LMS.
- Create a shopping experience through e-commerce integration that allows members to purchase your association’s learning products from your association’s e-commerce store or LMS storefront. A full view of your members’ purchase history lives in your AMS.
- Automatically track learner progress through quizzes, assessments, checkpoints, attendance, scores, and completions along with credits earned. The data is shared through both systems, providing members more insight into their learning path through their AMS member profile.
- Send automated emails that acknowledge what steps learners have completed, and recommend next steps toward certification or credentialing.
Delivering an exceptional member experience includes managing and supporting members through each stage of their relationship with your organization as well as each stage of their careers. Be sure to have in place the right strategies and tools to support both.
