Stunted membership growth can kill your organization.
If you fail to reel in enough members, your membership revenue can plummet and this can hurt your bottom line.
When it goes on for too long, a low membership growth rate can make your organization financially unsustainable.
In fact, WildApricot has established that 68% of organizations struggle with membership growth. This proves the severity of the problem.
However, you can easily expand your member base by leveraging the best membership management software to help you reach a wider audience of prospects.
It can help you to improve membership experiences which may earn you more referrals from your community. Additionally, you can use the right tool to market your organization and set up networking events where you can get more sign-ups.
In this article, we’ll explore the best membership management software for your organization in 2024 that can help you increase your revenue.
Quick summary:
- CustomerHub – Best for CRM integration.
- WildApricot – Best for email marketing automation.
- MemberClicks – Best for advanced member analytics.
- StarChapter – Best for event registration & management.
- Hivebrite – Best for collecting membership payments.
Let’s get started.
1. CustomerHub
CustomerHub expands your monetization opportunities.
You can use its private customer feed to target specific customer segments for more personalized marketing that can increase recurring subscriptions. Crucially, you can monetize this feed even if you have a small audience.
With CustomerHub, you get a range of diverse templates that can help you to quickly and easily create professional online courses.
It can also automatically create a website to sell your digital products, complete with free web hosting, which makes it the best membership management software if you’re starting out and want to build a digital store quickly.
Best features:
- You get a smart product library that displays unique content and selection items to your members based on their needs and purchase histories. This personalization can help you to attract higher-quality leads and land more sales.
- Its Stripe connector allows you to integrate your online membership platform with Stripe. Therefore, this can make it easy for your organization to collect payment membership payments while allowing you to automate content access afterward.
- CustomerHub also provides API triggers, which monitor your customers’ activity to alert you of important events such as products viewed and videos watched. This information can help you to automate your follow-up and increase sales.
Pricing:
- 14-day free trial.
- Starting plan: $79 per month.
Verdict
CustomerHub offers a wide range of integration options with Stripe, Zapier, Keap, and ActiveCampaign to help you easily collect payment and sync customer data so you can hit the ground running. What’s more, you also get very insightful membership management analytics that help you understand member behaviors so that you can improve member experiences.
2. WildApricot
WildApricot is a membership and event management software.
It delivers cloud-based member management, which allows you to back up important contact details so that you don’t lose them in case of a data loss event.
With WildAprocit’s email management automation controls, your organization can effortlessly use email to strengthen member relationships and boost loyalty.
It also offers you the ability to export data in CSV and QuickBooks documents, thereby easing your manual data entry work during financial reconciliation.
Additionally, you can set automated renewal reminders for your members, which can help your organization reduce its membership churn rate.
Best features:
- You also get a drag-and-drop builder that comes with free website hosting on AWS. Complete with mobile-friendly themes and WordPress integration, this allows you to easily build member-only pages that can generate more revenue.
- WildApricot comes with an event management module that you can use to sell tickets online, send RSVPs, and manage guest registrations and waitlists. So it can help you make your event more profitable and successful.
- It also offers a centralized financial dashboard that helps you to generate and track invoices and even generate financial reports. Consequently, this helps you to minimize reconciliation work while it also makes tax compliance easier.
Pricing:
- 60-day free trial.
- Starting plan: $60/month.
Verdict
With the ability to create email lists from advanced searches and to automate various email tasks, I find that it’s a great option if you rely heavily on email marketing. That being said, it offers many features for managing memberships beyond traditional solutions, and this can steepen the learning curve and increase your downtime.
3. MemberClicks
MemberClicks can help you improve member management.
It collects important data that helps you understand your members better so that you can discover opportunities to boost engagement and member satisfaction.
With its classroom modules, you can build learning paths to educate your members about your brand, which can drive greater loyalty.
You also get a job board, which can help you to provide career growth opportunities for members. In doing so, you can make your member base more financially empowered and this may grow your revenue.
Moreover, you can automate renewals, which makes it one of the best membership management software to help raise renewal rates.
Best features:
- It provides simple communication functions, like secure groups and unique digital channels, which you can use to strengthen relationships with your members. Additionally, this can expand your networking circles to attract new members.
- MemberClicks gives you customizable forms and templates that you can use to easily collect data from your members. So, you can easily register new members and tailor application forms to match each new individual’s unique profile needs.
- You get a comprehensive admin dashboard with real-time analytics about new members, renewal rates, and website engagement. This helps you to make data-driven business decisions that can grow revenue for your organization.
Pricing:
- No free trial.
- Starting plan: $4,000 per year.
Verdict
MemberClicks delivers advanced member analytics, which you can use to strengthen relationships, build engagement, and generate more revenue for your organization. However, I find that it supports a very limited range of membership payment methods, which means that you may have to collect most of your payments manually.
4. StarChapter
StarChapter is an all-in-one membership management platform.
You can use it to automatically segment members into categories so you can apply different and targeted engagement strategies that are likely to have the best outcomes for each group.
What’s more, your organization also gets website and content management tools that you can use to increase your efficiency and productivity.
Given that Litmus discovered that 72% of people prefer email communication, this makes StarChaper’s email marketing automation features critical. You can use them to onboard new members, provide renewal reminders, and promote products and events.
Best features:
- With StarChapter Pay, you can easily set up an eCommerce store where you can sell digital products, like event tickets, and merchandise to your members. This helps you to expand revenue streams to make your organization more profitable.
- You get a board and management module where you can assign different users roles and privileges depending on their responsibilities. So you can manage your governing body more efficiently, thereby creating stronger leadership for success.
- StarChapter is also an event registration software that you can use to promote events, sell tickets, and communicate changing event details. Therefore, it can help you to reduce no-shows and improve event attendance and revenue.
Pricing:
- No free trial.
- Starting plan: $49 per month.
Verdict
StarChapter shines for its event registration features, which can help you create more successful events for your organization to reel in more money from your members. Nevertheless, I find that StarChapter can be a costly solution to implement because you have to pay a massive set-up fee, making it unideal if you have a tight budget.
5. Hivebrite
Hivebrite centralizes all your data and membership management tools.
This makes it one of the best membership management software to help you avoid duplicate work and streamline your processes.
Essentially, Hivebrite provides electronic payment controls that allow you to automate and easily collect payments from your members.
You can also use it to curate a network of ambassadors and partners, who can provide valuable ideas that may help you build brand advocacy. Consequently, you can expand your reach and attract new members.
Interestingly, Hivebrite gives you a branded mobile app to provide even more value to your members.
Best features:
- Hivebrite has APIs that facilitate integration with various CRMs, namely Raiser’s Edge NXT, Blackbaud, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce. So this makes it easy for you to ensure member data is up to date across all your systems.
- It delivers powerful email analytics that can track bounce, click-through, and open rates. With this information, you’ll be able to get a better understanding of what emails work best so you can make your email campaigns more successful.
- You also get vital membership analytics, which allows you to identify active users and profile completions, among other data. This allows you to identify underperforming communities so that you can make them more active.
Pricing:
- No free trial.
- Contact Hivebrite for pricing.
Verdict
Hivebrite’s electronic payment module, coupled with its integration with CRMs like Salesforce, makes it an excellent choice if you’d like to improve how you collect membership payments. However, it’s not a readily customizable solution which makes it difficult for you to adapt it to very specific organizational functions and goals.
FAQ Section
What is a membership management software?
A membership management software gives you a centralized platform that makes it easy for your organization to manage payments, events, and memberships.
You’ll also get automation features that help you streamline iterative tasks such as reporting, renewals, and membership engagement, which can boost your productivity
What are the key features of a membership management software?
It should have in-built email campaign features, which can help you personalize email content for each member while lowering your manual email management steps.
What’s more, the best membership management software should have CRM integration modules so that you can automatically import contact lists and member data.
How do I choose a membership management software?
It’s critical to identify your biggest concerns and pain points so that you can choose a membership management software that addresses your immediate needs.
For example, if registering members & renewal follow-up are your top challenges, you should get a tool with features that can specifically help you to solve these issues.
What are the benefits of a membership management software?
A membership management system can help you grow your member base and even encourage continued member renewals, both of which elevate your profit margins.
Additionally, you may get event management features that help you to put together more successful virtual and in-person membership events for your organization.
How much does a membership management software cost?
Your organization may need to pay at least $40 in monthly subscription fees, with other options tending to be pricier but you get a more holistic solution.
That being said, the cost may vary according to the size of your membership, which enables you to get custom pricing options that can give you great ROI.
Conclusion
Your organization will lose members over time.
A lack of engagement is usually to blame for this, and it may make your members opt against renewing their memberships.
While churn is inevitable and natural, if you lose too many members too quickly, this can greatly lower your recurring revenue.
In fact, MGI revealed that 51% of organizations believe that members fail to renew due to poor engagement. So this makes it the biggest cause of membership churn.
You can drive member engagement by leveraging the best membership management software for organizations in 2024, which can help you automate engagement measures to help increase member satisfaction.
With the right solution, you can set up reminders and even automatic renewals to help you lower cases of involuntary membership churn.
It can also minimize your administrative burden, by automating iterative work like collecting payments and member data, which can make you more productive.
