Building successful relationships with commercial and academic partners should be an essential strategy for all membership organisations.
Corporate and academic partnerships can be significant contributors to income generation and overall membership growth.
Most so called corporate partnerships are little more than a discount for bulk membership and are ineffective in securing long term relationships and income.
Corporate Partnerships
In our experience, the traditional corporate membership model (which is usually little more than a discount for bulk membership), is not especially effective in securing long term, durable relationships and income streams from the corporate entity and its employee members.
The nature of the affiliation means that the corporate tends to view it essentially as a route to discounts, whilst the member's perspective is that their "membership" is actually part of their employment package and not personal, or indeed migratable.
The key factors driving the corporate partnerships that we routinely help our clients to develop are:
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The corporate organisation sees the partnership with the membership body as delivering value in it's own right (and is prepared to pay for that).
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The corporate partner sees real and measurable benefit as a consequence of it's employees becoming members (discounted membership is a facilitator, not the reason).
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The member feels a sense of belonging, sees their membership as personal to them, of value to them, and something that they will maintain beyond their tenure with that particular employer.
Adopting a tiered approach with incremental benefits linked to each tier or membership category can be an effective tool, but the cost of the overall package then becomes a variable in line with the increasing level of service delivered.
The fundamental need is to understand:
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The value perceptions of potential corporate partners and their prospective employee members.
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What they really want from the relationship, and then…
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Setting a price that matches their expectations and propensity to pay.
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