When most people think about the average life time value of a member they quickly try to calculate the average length of membership and multiply it by the average dollars spent per member in a year. While this is the traditional method, it’s also a very narrow way of viewing value. A member may have never attended a conference or event and simply paid their annual dues but this does this mean they don’t provide any other value to the community. LTV needs to be more holistic and embrace not just dollars spent but value provided.
LTV 2.0 is an emerging area which provides a more inclusive way of measuring who our most valuable members are. For example, I may have renewed my dues every year for the past 10 years with an average renewal price of $200 per year. LTV 1.0 would give me a value of $2000. However, this doesn’t take into account the 5 years I have served as a chapter officer, a further 3 years on a committee or perhaps the articles I’ve written for the association magazines and newsletters.
Now let’s take this a step further and consider the emerging social tools available such as blogs, wikis or file sharing. When we look at these different engagement opportunities, we are not just talking about writing a blog, we’re talking about all the associated activities such as rating, commenting, reading, sharing etc. Creating is just one attribute surrounding a blog but there are many more which can be measured and ultimately rewarded.
Let’s suppose we have all our engagement areas identified, how do we quantify the engagement? One solution which many associations are now using is to assign point values to each engagement activity and as every member performs an action, allow the system to dynamically record the associated point values.
By collecting all the points from both your social platform as well as the more traditional engagement activities (chapter officer, committee volunteer etc.) the society will finally be able to run reports to recognize their most valuable members in general but also for specific activities.