Member communications, planned by lifecycle stage

01/ The strategy

A member communications strategy on one page

Five lines are enough: who you are talking to, what each message is for, which channel, how often, and what permission you hold.

Most membership communication is email, and most of it goes to people who already belong. Among US associations in Marketing General’s 2024 survey, the most common ways to engage established members were an ongoing email series and requests to volunteer, ahead of social media and member surveys.

Members still want email, but less of it. In Higher Logic’s survey of association members, reported on its benchmark blog, 61% said email is their primary communication channel and 51% said they receive too many messages. A strategy is how you decide what not to send.

The first 90 days are covered in depth on member onboarding; the wider channel mix is on digital marketing for membership organisations.

03/ The newsletter

The member newsletter: what goes in it

One lead story, one item chosen for the reader’s segment, one member voice, the dates, one benefit and one question. Short enough to scan and useful enough to click.

Relevance beats reach. In Higher Logic’s 2025–2026 association email benchmarks, a vendor dataset of about 1,500 associations and nonprofits, smaller targeted lists outperformed broad sends, and subject lines under 40 characters had the highest open and click performance. Its community benchmarks found digest emails of members’ own discussions opened more often than typical association email.

Build it to be read by everyone. The W3C’s WCAG 2 standard, organised under four principles (perceivable, operable, understandable, robust), can be applied to documents as well as web pages. In practice: real text rather than text in images, headings, descriptive links and enough contrast. More ideas for what members want to read are on content marketing for membership organisations.

05/ Welcome emails and packs

Welcome emails and welcome packs

The welcome is the most-used membership message there is. Make it personal, give one first step, and follow it with a pack members can keep.

In Marketing General’s 2024 survey, 81% of associations welcomed new members by email, 42% with an emailed welcome kit and 35% with an invitation to follow them on social media. The posted welcome kit is fading: 23% used one, down from 31% two years earlier.

The phone still matters. Trade associations were far more likely than individual-membership bodies to make welcome calls (48% against 11%), and associations with overall and first-year renewal above 80% were significantly more likely to make them. That is a correlation in a US survey, not proof that calls cause renewal, but it is a cheap test.

The welcome starts the first 90 days, which have their own programme on member onboarding.

07/ Consent and PECR

Consent and PECR: can you email members?

Yes, but what you may send depends on the message and on who receives it. Service messages need no marketing permission; marketing needs consent or a soft opt-in for individuals.

Start with the message. The ICO’s direct marketing guidance says service messages, sent for administrative purposes with nothing promotional, are not direct marketing; its own example is a gym calling about a failed membership payment. Automatic renewal notices worded neutrally may not be marketing either, but a message that actively encourages renewal is likely to be. Direct marketing also covers promoting aims and ideals, so fundraising and campaigning count.

Then the recipient. Under PECR regulation 22, marketing email to individuals, including sole traders on the ICO’s lawful-basis table, needs consent or a soft opt-in; email to limited companies sits outside that rule. Every message must identify you and offer an opt-out, and the ICO’s email rules say not to make people log in to unsubscribe.

Charities gained a second soft opt-in. Section 114 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 inserted regulation 22(3A), in force from 5 February 2026, for email whose sole purpose is to further a charity’s charitable purposes. The ICO gives taking out an annual membership as an example of supporting a charity, and the soft opt-in covers only contact details collected from that date; the Fundraising Regulator has published guidance on it.

Statutory notices differ again: a company may send documents such as AGM notices electronically only to members who agreed to that, under Schedule 5 of the Companies Act 2006. The strategy-level view is on membership strategy. This is a summary, not legal advice.