Are We Building Products or Building Loyalty?

As competition grows, associations need more than successful individual products. They need relationships that give people a reason to keep coming back.

What would happen if a well-funded competitor decided to enter one of your association's most important business lines? Would your customers remain loyal, or would they move to another provider offering a better product, a lower price, or a more convenient experience?

Conferences, education, publications, and other products are no longer the exclusive domain of associations, if they ever were. Media companies, manufacturers, commercial training providers, and other organizations are competing for the same audiences. Many have the resources and expertise to develop products that are just as good as, or better than, those offered by associations.

We cannot assume that our history, reputation, or mission will be enough to keep people coming back.

Successful Products, Disconnected Experiences

When I joined ASNT in 2018, our departments operated largely in silos. Each focused on its own products, programs, and responsibilities, often with little consideration for what was happening elsewhere in the organization.

Membership concentrated on traditional measures such as retention and growth, although growth had been elusive for years. Marketing communications primarily promoted individual products and programs rather than connecting them to a broader engagement strategy. Product development frequently happened within departments without much cross-functional coordination.

I don't believe this experience was unique to ASNT. Conversations with association colleagues suggest that similar structures and challenges exist throughout our profession.

The problem arises when we become so focused on the performance of individual products that we overlook the broader relationship people have with our organizations.

Someone might attend a conference, take a course, purchase a publication, or volunteer on a committee. Each interaction may be successful on its own, but what connects those experiences? Are we giving people reasons to continue participating, or are we treating every interaction as a separate transaction?

Creating Reasons to Stay Connected

At ASNT, we've been working to change how people engage with the organization.

Our redesigned membership model introduced a free Associate tier that has brought thousands of people into ASNT, many of whom had never interacted with us before. Some have subsequently purchased products, upgraded their memberships, or become volunteers.

We also opened participation in our councils to all members, creating more opportunities for people to connect around shared professional interests. Changes to our annual conference programming have placed greater emphasis on professional connections alongside education and technical content.

We're also in the final stages of rolling out ASNT Connect, an online platform designed to help people discover and participate in communities, local sections, councils, events, and volunteer opportunities.

These initiatives are at different stages of development, and we still have considerable work ahead of us. What connects them is an effort to create more opportunities for people to participate in ASNT beyond an individual purchase or event.

Instead of asking only how to get someone to attend the next event or purchase the next product, we're also asking how we can help them become more involved with ASNT and the profession it serves.

The goal isn't simply to create more opportunities to sell something. It's to make participation more meaningful and give people reasons to remain connected, whether or not their next interaction involves a purchase.

An Organization-Wide Responsibility

Building those connections requires more than a membership engagement strategy or a new technology platform. Even well-designed initiatives will have limited impact if the rest of the organization continues operating independently.

At ASNT, we renamed our Membership department to Membership and Engagement, giving its leadership a broader role in looking at how people interact with the organization. But community and belonging cannot be the responsibility of one department alone. It requires departments to work together, with shared goals that extend beyond the performance of their individual products.

Consider a conference. We naturally measure its success through attendance, financial performance, and the experience we deliver to participants. But what happens after the conference ends? Have we helped attendees develop professional relationships, discover other opportunities within the association, or find reasons to remain involved throughout the year?

Technology and data can help us better understand participation across these activities, but the work doesn't have to begin with a major technology investment. It can begin with departments planning together and recognizing that their collective success matters as much as their individual results.

What Will Keep People Coming Back?

I don't believe relationships alone will protect an association from competition. People still expect quality conferences, relevant training, credible certifications, useful information, and other products that meet their professional needs.

Belonging cannot compensate indefinitely for products that no longer deliver value.

But the reverse is also true. An association that offers excellent products without building meaningful relationships may find itself competing primarily on price, convenience, and features. Those are areas where a well-resourced competitor may have a considerable advantage.

Associations have an opportunity to offer something more. By bringing people together around a shared profession or industry, building trust, and creating opportunities for ongoing participation, we can make the relationship with the association more valuable than any individual transaction. But that loyalty has to be earned through both the products we deliver and the connections we help people make.

So perhaps the question isn't whether your association has successful products. It's whether those products are helping build the kind of loyalty that will keep people coming back when they have other choices.

About the author Barry Schieferstein, CAE, is chief operating officer of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT). He writes Rethinking How Associations Work, a practical look at what is still working, what needs updating, and how associations can redesign themselves for today.