How to craft your membership focused KPIs

Having a good understanding of member engagement is one thing but finding an effective way to measure it is just as important.

The best way to achieve this is to identify specific areas of activity and monitor the way that they change as new strategies, products and services are launched. These areas are known as Key Performance Indicators or KPIs. They provide quantitative metrics that in this context, can indicate the health of an organisation’s engagement in three ways:

1. They migrate the thinking to more quantifiable areas
2. They provide metrics to sanity check performance and allow for course-correction
3. They facilitate healthy target setting

Crafting your KPIs

There are four levels to the structure of an effective KPI strategy. Firstly, an organisation must define its strategic goal as a high-level, long-term, organisational aim or aspiration. From this it generates a strategic objective which is a specific, shorter-term aim that can be more effectively measured. The KPI comes next as the measurable indicators define which specific metrics are needed to quantify the smaller steps and outcomes.

Tips for effective KPIs

Selecting the right metrics to use as KPIs is essential if they’re to prove effective. The adage of “that which is measured, is managed” can certainly apply here. There are four things to consider when undertaking this task.

1. Focus primarily on what moved the needle, considering the opportunity that each KPI has to impact the strategic objective.
2. Pay special attention to the areas in which the organisation and its members interact. For example, there is little point in tracking Twitter engagement if members never use it.
3. Ensure each KPI is as simple as possible and its reason for selection is clearly communicated within the organisation. It is important that internal teams understand the overarching aim is to quantify member engagement.
4. Introduce a feedback mechanism for each KPI to inform future decisions.

Within Millertech’s work, there are many illustrations of this process. Examining an objective centred on new member event sign-ups for example, the following eight KPIs might be selected to provide an effective base for measurement:

1. Event sign-ups (Email)
2. Events posted (CRM & Website)
3. Event promotional emails Sent (Email)
4. Member telephone calls (CRM)
5. Website click-throughs to events page (Website)
6. Social media posts (Social)
7. Social media post likes (Social)
8. In-person bookings (CRM & Events)

To find out more about KPIs and engagement measurement, download your copy of our free eBook, Defining, measuring and solving member engagement.