Membership Renewal risks losing members

[neptune]

Just my input on this year's renewal following the decision to have electronic and paper options. 

 

Having gone to my account to pay for this year, the only options provided to me by the club was paper membership at £53.00.  No option for the electronic membership, so I had to go searching for how to find and choose the option.

 

How many less tech savvy folks and perhaps occasional web users are going to see this as their only option and decide in these hard times that it's no longer worthwhile?  

 

It would be such a shame to lose members in this way.

 

Surely there's a better way during this transition phase to make membership Renewal straightforward and a pleasure to do.

 

More than happy to help the club become easy to do business with if it needs some focus and time to achieve.

 

 

 

[Kingster]

18 minutes ago, neptune said:

Surely there's a better way during this transition phase to make membership Renewal straightforward and a pleasure to do.

Sadly due to the way we have to use some third party tools to achieve this, there isn’t (to my knowledge) an easy solution.

[Captain Colonial]

As the person who volunteered to and was tasked with changing the membership system from essentially one level to three, I do appreciate your comments and offer to help with getting the system to work more seamlessly.

 

Back in December in a different post, I stated that “It has not been possible to create these three packages with an easy, reliable, trouble-free method of upgrading or downgrading between different membership levels.”. What that means is that if upgrading or downgrading had been enabled (and I did beta test this through almost 50 memberships), members could switch from one level to another at any point during the membership period.

 

Fine and dandy one might say, where’s the problem with that?  You’d be right, apart from the money bit.  The way it should work in theory is that those upgrading would pay the difference, and those downgrading would get a credit against their account (if any was due).

 

What was happening was that it only worked about 10% of the time and when it did, it was anything but obvious to the member doing so during the process.  Believe you me, I slaved over my keyboard to try and make it “easy, reliable and trouble-free”, but it proved impossible.  Not only that, it would have generated work for unpaid Admins on a daily basis.  I don’t like being defeated, but there are times when dragons cannot be tamed.

 

I communicated all this to the committee as I was working on it, and they were fully aware of having to go down this route in order to achieve what they wanted in the way that was the least imperfect.

 

In order to reduce any confusion as much as possible, membership renewal emails that go out 30 days in advance have this paragraph in them:

 

”We now offer two memberships options.  If your current membership includes posted printed copies of the club magazine, you can opt for a membership package where you can download digital copies of Westfield World from the forums instead.  If you’d prefer to do this in future, please wait until after your current membership period expires first!  Once it does, just go to the Store tab at the top of the forums and select “WSCC Membership with Electronic Magazine” instead at annual price of £35.  (Both membership levels include a posted printed copy of the annual WSCC calendar.)”

 

Similar versions go out when the membership expires as well.

To clarify from your comment:

 

”Having gone to my account to pay for this year, the only options provided to me by the club was paper membership at £53.00.  No option for the electronic membership, so I had to go searching for how to find and choose the option.”

 

There are essentially two membership packages, with and without printed mags.  The base point from where everyone started was the package with printed magazines.  When that package comes to the point of renewal, it can only renew THAT package.  You can’t renew membership with electronic magazines because that’s not the package you purchased to begin with.  That’s the way it needs to be viewed - they are packages that include membership as their primary benefit.

 

For the most part, this method is working well and just over 200 memberships are now with the electronic version of the magazines.

 

I hope this clarifies things for you and if it becomes easier to transition memberships in future, I’m sure the club will go down that route.

 

 

 

[Stuart]

Scott, perhaps make it clear also that, when you renew with a different package to existing, the existing stays there showing as 'expired'.  So it looks like you have 2 memberships - one expired and one current  Or at least mine did!

[Captain Colonial]

1 hour ago, Stuart said:

Scott, perhaps make it clear also that, when you renew with a different package to existing, the existing stays there showing as 'expired'.  So it looks like you have 2 memberships - one expired and one current  Or at least mine did!

Hi Stuart

 

Yes, I remember it well.  There was no way to fix that, so the bit in everyone’s profile that said their membership status has been removed instead, mainly because if their membership is expired, they’ll get a big fat “Your membership has expired!” notice across the top of the forums and they’ll be unable to post, PM or see certain forums areas, all of which should be a bit of a clue…!

[Kingster]

I suppose the bottom line is that you can’t “renew” something that you don’t have. Simples 😁

[Captain Colonial]

22 minutes ago, Kingster said:

I suppose the bottom line is that you can’t “renew” something that you don’t have. Simples 😁

 If you make it simple, there’s nothing left for me to do! 😳

[neptune]

@Captain Colonial Scott I appreciate your extremely comprehensive explanation. It must have been a frustrating period for you trying to provide options. The email content would have been extremely helpful sadly I didn't receive it. ( Just gone back through my junk folder too and nothing in there either). 

Perhaps there's a way to add some text to the renewal notice with a link to your guide in the membership section?