Member Segmentation Strategy: Improve Club & Association Communications

Discover how a strategic member segmentation strategy can significantly improve communication within your club or association. By dividing your diverse membership into distinct categories, you can send targeted messages that are highly relevant to specific interests and needs.

From new sign-ups to long-time members who have been there so long they are a part of the furniture, your club or association's members are a vibrant, diverse bunch of people. Yet, many organisations still treat them as a single audience for all communications. This is not a particularly effective way to talk to a diverse group. A much better way to communicate with a group of people, like the members of a club or association, is to segment that group and communicate with them in a more specialised way. It's basically an old-fashioned divide and conquer, except a friendly divide and conquer; a divide and conquer with friendship and information.

So today, we will discuss how and why you should segment your membership to improve your communication with them. 

Why Segment Your Members For More Effective Communications

Think about how you consume information. You don't just passively read everything; you seek out news, updates, or offers that truly matter to you. Your members are no different. They want to receive communications that are relevant to their specific interests and needs within the club.

By dividing your members into categories, you can ensure that messages about a junior sports clinic go only to families with kids, while details about an AGM are sent to all eligible voters. This targeted approach means less irrelevant noise for everyone and higher engagement with the communications that truly matter. It's about delivering the right information to the right person at the right time.

This strategy makes your communications far more effective, leading to a much higher engagement rate. Imagine being a member of a club or association where only a third of the emails you received were relevant to you. You'd likely start to tune out, perhaps just scanning subject lines before deciding not to open them. Eventually, you might even miss something important. However, if every single email you received from your organisation was specifically tailored to you and your unique interests within the group, you'd open every one. That's the power of segmentation. 

Send one set of emails to your junior teams, another to the Colts, a third to opens, and another to your supporters. You can make those emails much more relevant to those groups. The parents of the under-10s don't need to know when third grade is playing or what end-of-season party the Colts are throwing. Your supporters need to know game times and offers but don't need training times.   

I used a sports team in that analogy, but this applies to any club or association. 

How To Segment Your Members For Better Communications 

So, we know why it is important to segment your communications, so let’s now look at how you can effectively do so. 

The first step is to identify the ways you are going to divide up your members. If you already have multiple different membership levels or pre-divided communities within your association, then you’re already a lot of the way there. If you don’t, however, start looking at ways you can draw lines between your members. 

Look for different subgroups that already exist naturally within your organisation. Start looking to divide people by things like:  

 

• Interests & Activities: Which activities they engage with within your organisation, players, fans, social members, etc. 
   
• Membership Type/Role: Their membership level or role, like committee members, student members, full members, etc. 
   
• Demographics: Relevant characteristics like age ranges or location for targeted local communications.
   
• Past Behaviour: Their history of interactions, such as attendance at previous events, donations made, or specific purchases.
   
• Communication Preferences: How do they prefer to receive information? Email, SMS, videos, podcasts, app notifications, etc. You may need to survey and ask your members what forms of communication they prefer. 
   

So, go through your members and see how you can divide them by the above categories, or other ones that make sense to your club or association.  

How To Use Member Jungle To Mark Your New Segmentation 

Once you know how you will divide up your membership, you need a way to do this in your system that makes communicating with these specific groups easy. A really great way to do this is to use Member Jungle’s Member Tags Feature. With Member Tags, you can quickly and easily create a new tag and then assign it to different members. 

 

 

Once assigned to members, these tags can be used to quickly search for members, see who is tagged with that particular member tag, and email only members of that tag. Which makes it super easy to communicate specifically with the subdivision of members you are looking for. 
 

 

As you can see in the above screenshot, I’ve searched my membership for the Member Tag or Under 10s Parents, which will allow me to see who is in that subgroup and email them. All without worrying about muddying the water by sending that email to a bunch of other members to whom it isn’t relevant. 

There are other ways of doing this, with membership levels, products, and roles, but using member tags is quick and easy. Plus, members can be tagged with multiple different membership tags, so if one of the under-10s parents also plays for 3rd grade, you can ensure that they get emails for those two groups. 

You can also set up opt-in chatrooms and make them so that only members with specific member tags can join them. This is another great way to subdivide your communications by different groups within your organisation. 

What To Say To Your Segmented Membership

So, you’ve looked at the existing subdivisions in your organisation, maybe even done a survey or two to work out the best methods of communication for your members. Then, you broke them up into segments using membership tags. You’ve made chatrooms that only members with the correct tags can join and can send emails to those specific new groups. But what do you actually put in your new, more specialised communications?

The good news is, your segmentation work tells you exactly what to say. The key is sending content that's specifically relevant and valuable to that particular group.

• Interest Groups: Provide specific updates, schedules, and event invites related to the different teams and interest groups within your organisation.
• Social Members/Supporters: Announce upcoming social gatherings, special events, or club-wide parties.
• Volunteers/Committee Members: Share meeting details, action items, and resources pertinent to their roles.
• Highly Engaged/Long-Standing Members: Offer exclusive invitations, leadership opportunities, or requests for valuable feedback.
• Less Active/Lapsed Members: Send re-engagement messages, reminders of benefits, or surveys to understand their needs.
• Event Attendees: Follow up with recordings, surveys, or early-bird offers for future related events.
• Parents/Guardians: Provide updates on youth programs, specific activity schedules, or family-oriented events.
• Donors/Sponsors: Share impact reports, express gratitude, or offer exclusive recognition opportunities.

These are obviously just a few ideas of whom to talk to and what to say to them, but these really can be whatever works best for you. Also, make sure you use specific subject lines and titles. You are talking to segmented groups, being specific is going to help, your subject line doesn’t need to be “Times For Saturday’s Matches”, it can be “Colts Game Time Saturday”. Make it specific to the group you’re messaging, and your engagement will be much better and your communications will be clearer. 

Finally, review your messages and groups regularly to ensure that everyone is in the right categories and your new, more specific messages are hitting the mark. 

More Ways To Improve Your Communications

Okay, so now that we’ve covered why and how to segment your members for better communications, you may be looking for more general ways to improve the quality of your communications with them. 

In that case, check out How To Improve Your Club’s Communication With Its Members.