A lot of membership associations hesitate to set up a mentoring program for their members for one reason: they think no one will join.
But this fear is, on the whole, unfounded. In fact, statistics show that many professionals actually look for mentoring opportunities as well as get inspiration from these relationships. Here are just a few of those stats:
- 76% of people think mentors are important. [Forbes]
- People with mentors are happier at their current jobs than those without. [Forbes]
- 87% of mentors and mentees feel empowered by their mentoring relationships and have developed greater confidence. [Women Ahead]
- 82% believe that mentoring relationships help foster meaningful connections between mentors and mentees, across departments and the organisation. [Women Ahead]
- People who served as mentors experienced lower levels of anxiety and described their job as more meaningful than those who did not mentor. [HBR]
- Mentors found that mentoring enhanced the meaningfulness of their work. [HBR]
Furthermore, even if you can’t get everyone to sign up for your mentoring program, does that even really matter? Well, let’s think of it this way: If you have 1000 members and only 15% of your members join, that’s still 150 participants, and that’s definitely enough to run a productive program.
And soon enough, more people will be clamouring to join. That’s because if you implement a program with Mentorloop, the average Mentorloop Quality Score (MQS) is 4.6 out of 5. That means 92% of participants participating in a Mentorloop program are satisfied with their experience.
If, however, you’re still a bit unsure of how you’ll get members to join despite these numbers, we’ve got you covered. Here are some tactics we’ve tried and tested that have proved fruitful.
3 Surefire Ways to Get Members to Sign Up
1. Gauge members’ interest
Ask your current members if they’d be interested in a mentoring program and, if so, what they would like to see happen. This can help you determine guidelines like how long the program should run for, what areas they’re interested in and you should be prioritising, if they’d want to try out initiatives like reverse mentoring, and more.
Getting their input will help you get a feel for what your members think is lacking in their professional lives and how much time they’re willing to dedicate to such a program.
2. Align the program’s goals with your members’ priorities and interests
As we mentioned above, ensuring you understand your members’ priorities and interests so that you can better align your mentoring program with them is of the utmost importance.
After all, offering this program in the first place is about adding value to your association. And what better way to add value than to give your members what they’re craving when it comes to personal and professional development?
3. Get prepared
Once you have some preliminary buy-in and are getting ready to launch, make sure you have a marketing and recruitment plan in place. Having this prep work done ahead of time will ensure your sign-up efforts aren’t in vain.
Need some more direction? Thankfully, we created a Getting Started Guide for Program Marketing that will teach you:
- How to do your pre-promotion prep
- How to craft your comms
- Which assets you can take advantage of
- How to build interest and recruit
- How to maintain momentum
To learn more about how mentoring can help you engage your members year-round, download our free webinar kit: Engaging Industry Association Members Through Mentoring. Join our Head of Sales for EMEA, Jess Benham, as she covers how industry associations can use mentoring to address member engagement and retention issues as well as the cost that comes with both.
PLUS: The kit also includes some resources picked by Jess to help you start building your best mentoring program yet.
Watch the preview:
Ready to get started? Download the guide to learn how to get your members excited about your new mentoring program.
