Your Association's Biggest Threat Isn't Your Competition. It's Your Member Experience.
Member Experience
Your Association's Biggest Threat Isn't Your Competition. It's Your Member Experience.
What a 2010 pizza turnaround can teach associations about why members actually stop renewing.
Your association's biggest threat isn't a competitor down the street — it's the friction members feel every time they try to join, renew, register for an event or find help on your site.I spent years working in the trade association world before joining the software side. With all that I learned during my time there, there's one concept I wish someone had told me on my first day as an association staffer.
Let me explain it with something I think we can all relate to: pizza.
What Domino's figured out that some associations haven't
Around 2010, Domino's did something groundbreaking. They publicly admitted their pizza wasn't very good. The interesting part wasn't the apology; it's what they did next. They didn't just fix the recipe, they rebuilt the entire experience of being a customer, one point of friction at a time.
The "Pizza Tracker" turned the most anxious part of ordering ("where's my food?") into transparency. You could watch your order move from prep to oven to doorstep in real time. Saved profiles and "easy order" cut a repeat request down to a couple of taps: your usual pizza, your usual address, your saved payment. Done. Ordering met customers wherever they were. Domino's didn't force customers to change their behavior, they made changes dictated by their customers' preferences.
It worked. Over the following decade, Domino's value grew, and they continued to expand. Today, I'd argue Domino's isn't really a pizza company at all. They're a technology company that happens to make pizza.
But when was the last time somebody told you Domino's was their favorite pizza? Ask around your office. People will most likely name a local spot every time. Domino's grew anyway, because being the best pizza was never the goal. Being the easiest to order was.
Food
2 taps,
food ordered
- Open the app
- Tap "easy order"
Renew
4 taps,
and a call
- Find the login page
- Reset your password
- Locate renewal notice
- Call office w/ question
Now hold that thought and look at your association. Your members live in a world where dinner shows up after two taps and a pizza emoji. Then they visit your website to renew, register, or find a resource. Does that experience often feels like it's from a different decade? The gap between those two experiences is where retention quietly goes to die.
Why do members really leave associations?
Member experience is every touchpoint a member has with your association. Joining, renewing, registering for events, finding resources, getting a question answered all functions as one product, not five separate tasks owned by different desks.
So why do members actually leave? In my experience, it's almost never because a competitor won them over.
Members leave because it quietly became hard to be a member. The renewal invoice that requires a phone call to sort out. The event registration that doesn't work on your phone. The website where the one resource they need is buried four clicks deep. None of these feel like emergencies on their own. Together, they're the reason someone shrugs when the renewal notice arrives.
We tend to obsess over the wrong threats: rival associations, competing webinars, other conferences fighting for the same seat. Meanwhile, the actual experience of being a member gets treated as an afterthought. Every point of retention you protect is revenue you don't have to replace with new member acquisition, which costs far more.
Friction predicts non-renewal better than competition does.
How can you audit your own member experience?
The good news is you don't need a consultant or a massive public marketing campaign budget like Domino's. You just need a few minutes and a little honesty:
Join your own association as a stranger
Go to your website, find the join page, and complete the process. Count the clicks. Note every moment of confusion.
Renew your membership from your phone
If it requires pinching, zooming, or printing anything, you've found friction.
Register for your next event
Time it. Anything over a few minutes is costing you registrations.
Search your website for your most-requested resources
If staff can't find it quickly, members never will.
Call your own office with a common question
How many transfers does it take to get an answer?
Each point of friction you find is your Domino's moment.
Start small. You don't need to fix everything at once. Start with the audit above, fix the worst offender first, and treat the experience as the product. Your members will notice, even if they never say a word. That's the point, the best member experience is the one nobody has to think about.
FAQs: Member Experience for Associations
What is a member experience?
Member experience is the sum of every interaction a member has with your association, from joining and renewing to registering for events, finding resources, and getting questions answered. It's not one department's job. It's the product itself.
Does improving your member experience require a big budget?
No. Domino's spent millions, but the principle scales down. Simplifying a renewal form, cleaning up website navigation, or removing a required field from event registration costs almost nothing. What it requires is deciding that experience is a priority, not a someday project.
How do I know if my member experience is hurting retention?
Watch for members who don't engage between renewal cycles, event registrations abandoned partway through, and repeated staff time spent on the same routine questions. Those are friction signals, and friction predicts non-renewal better than competition does.
How can Novi AMS help associations improve their member experience?
Novi AMS streamlines your website, membership database, event registrations, and QuickBooks accounting into one system, letting members join, renew, register, and update their own information in a few clicks instead of a few phone calls. Less friction for members, less busy work for staff.
Ready to give your members their Pizza Tracker moment?
If you've been thinking about how technology could transform your member experience, we'd love to show you what that looks like.