Member Management is Higher Logic's built-in solution to a traditional third-party Association Management System (AMS) integration, and is available in our Higher Logic Thrive Community (Thrive Community) product. Member Management enables customers to fully manage free and paid memberships for their community users, including membership dues, renewals, and payments, without needing a third-party AMS integration.
Before we begin...
This article is written specifically for customers who leverage our Higher Logic Thrive Platform offering, which is a combination of our Thrive Community and Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) products. This articles provides an overview of how Member Management interacts between your Thrive Community and Thrive Marketing Professional.
- On the Thrive Community side, Member Management tracks membership dues, renewals, and payments.
- On the Thrive Marketing Professional side, you can bring the users associated to your memberships over to be used in renewal campaigns.
Member Management setup
Higher Logic will work with you to create all of the Membership Types you plan to offer your users (these are the Individual or Group Memberships users purchase to gain membership benefits).
- In Thrive Marketing Professional, Target Groups are automatically created for each of your Membership Types.
- It's important to note that a Membership Type's set Renewal Limit (Number of days before the end when members can renew) dictates how many Target Groups are created for it. For example:
- If the Renewal Limit is 90 days, meaning members will be able to renew their membership 90 days before it expires, Thrive Marketing Professional will automatically create three Target Groups: a 30, 60, and 90 day version. This means members will receive renewal reminder emails via the Renewal Campaign at those three intervals.
- Alternatively, if the Membership Type's Renewal Limit is 30 days, only one Target Group will be created for it.
- Thrive Marketing Professional will put members in these Target Groups based on their expiration dates.
NOTE: If there are no Group or Individual memberships within these expiration ranges, the Target Group count will be 0.
Target Group management
In Thrive Marketing Professional, your Member Management-specific Target Groups are stored in the Member Management folder. In addition to the 30, 60, 90 day groups discussed above, there are two additional "default" Target Groups that are important to understand:
- All Active Members
- All Auto-Renewers
NOTE: Each Individual Membership and Group Membership represents a single member. Remember, while a Group Membership may have hundreds of members, only the Membership Contact is counted as an Active member or Renewer member.
The All Active Members Target Group encompasses all members except for those in the All Auto-Renewers Target Group. This is because the Renewers group is for members with auto-renew memberships; these members don't need to belong to a Renewal Campaign to be reminded that their membership is due in 90 days, 60 days, or 30 days; their memberships will automatically be charged and renewed.
Keep this in mind when selecting one of these Target Groups in Thrive Marketing Professional. Because of this "siloing" between the two Target Groups, you may need to choose both of them if you want to send information from Member Management that reaches both of these groups of users.
Renewal Campaigns
- Renewal campaign creation happens during the provisioning process: as you go through implementation, upgrade to Thrive Platform, or set up Member Management, Higher Logic will help you set up this campaign.
- Each Individual or Group membership represents a single Active member; with Group memberships, only the contact for the Group membership is the Active member, meaning only they will be pulled into a renewal campaign. In other words, even if a Group membership has 200 members, only the Group's Membership Contact will be targeted.
- There's a single Renewal Campaign for all Membership Types.
- In Thrive Marketing Professional, one Compound Target Group will be created, by Higher Logic or you, to pull in all of the Target Groups (30, 60, 90, etc.) into one Target Group, in order to capture all of the users for the Renewal Campaign.
- This is done because when you create a campaign you can only select one Target Group. That one Target Group must be Compound so it can capture all of the members you need to reach.
Personalization
In addition to the Target Groups and Renewal Campaign, Member Management also offers personalization in Thrive Marketing Professional. It's set up just like any other type of Personalization:
- Settings > Setup > Bridge Configuration (only UPI).
- There are two sections: Member Management and Online Community.
- When adding columns for Contacts, there is no personalization type for Member Management; there is just Online Community. If you're unsure about which fields are Member Management, specifically, you can see them on the Settings > Setup > Bridge Configuration (only UPI) page (image above).
- This same concept applies when you're creating or editing a message: Member Management Personalizations are in the Online Community option.
Member Management Personalization testing in messages
- To test personalization for Member Management data, you must associate a Member Management Target Group (e.g., All Active Members or All Auto-Renewers) to the message in order to test personalization on the Review & Send tab.
Syncing
If a user unsubscribes from Thrive Marketing Professional, they will be removed from the group count. In Thrive Marketing Professional, it's important to click the Resync Now button to keep the counts up to date, as shown below.