For any member-centric organization, it’s critical for executives to have a way to follow the trends of membership sign-ups, cancellations and active unit counts over time. A well-constructed dashboard will expose seasonal variations, the impact of marketing promotions and other growth and improvement efforts, as well as the impact of crisis situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ready to take a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of membership trend reporting? The following four statistics are the foundational components.
Year-Over-Year Comparison
This statistic allows you to see clearly how your current numbers stack up against last year’s performance. This could be year-to-date or a drill into the current or previous month to see how a promotional campaign is performing.
Joins and Cancellations (a.k.a. Terms)
Trends over time, as well as counts by operating segment, such as membership category and/or location, allows you to see how your various operating units are doing compared with one another. If cancellations are high at a particular location, for example, it may be time for an investigation. It’s also important to examine areas that are doing well to see if the success can be replicated elsewhere.
Active Units Over Time
A unit refers to a paying membership, whether it’s for a family or an individual. This statistic is the No. 1 metric for a membership organization and gives you the ability to visualize trends in active counts to help inform strategy and move the organization forward.
Suspended Units Over Time
During the heart of the COVID-19 crisis, there were unprecedented numbers of members who asked to put their membership on hold until it was safe to come back to in-person activities. This component shows visualization of the trend of memberships becoming active again.
Below is an example of a dashboard showing these metrics for the previous year and the current year-to-date from an ACTIVENet Hub database. Notice how the visuals make it easy to understand how this particular organization is tracking. This could just as easily be for the current month-to-date compared with the same month last year. The structure of Hub data makes these easy to put together.
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