Royal Statistical Society: Unpaid Member Renewal Campaign

RSS has more than 10,000 members in the UK and across the world. As a charity, they advocate for the key role of statistics and data in society and work to ensure that policy formulation and decision making are informed by evidence for the public good.

Around 6,000 RSS members made up the core membership of ‘Fellows’ and ‘Professionals’. With an annual membership cycle members pay by annual/quarterly direct debit, or via credit/debit card.

When Chord first met with RSS, there was already a process in place for renewals, including:

1. Members were first contacted in October via email to check if their contact details had changed and to reiterate membership benefits.
2. A renewal notice was then sent via email in early December.
3. Emails were also sent in January when most members renewed their membership.
4. If a member had not renewed by the end of March, membership benefits were suspended.
5. Membership then defaulted if payment was not received by the end of June.

The challenge was to make personal one-to-one contact by telephone and email, to encourage members to renew. If it was not possible to secure a renewal, it was important to establish and record the reasons.

Having worked previously with the client on RSS lapsed member research, Chord understood RSS and its membership.

Chord were commissioned by RSS to contact 750 unpaid members (across all paid membership grades) during February and March to increase renewals and avoid the loss of membership benefits. A key requirement was to also capture the reasons why the membership had lapsed and/or the reasons they did not plan to renew. Prior to calling, we worked with RSS to develop a comprehensive campaign brief which we shared with our team.

Primary Objectives

1. Engage with unpaid members to encourage them to renew by effectively communicating and reinforcing membership benefits and answering any questions that they may have.
2. Take DD and payment card details from members wishing to renew.
3. Gain feedback by capturing and reporting valuable information about why members have decided not to renew.

Secondary Objectives

1. Send tailored emails to members following telephone conversations and leave tailored voicemails where possible.
2. Enhance data quality by verifying member contact details, including email address, work or home address and alternative phone numbers (particularly mobiles).
3. Referral to RSS membership team when questions fell outside of the remit of the campaign.

Positive Outbound Telephone Outcomes

1. Renewed – Direct Debit payment
2. Renewed – Payment taken
3. Renewed directly with RSS – as a result of Chord activity
4. Renewed – transferred to the RSS membership team for payment
5. Intends to renew
6. Considering renewing

In addition to positive outcomes, 12 other negative/other outcome categories were set up to record a range of different outcomes.

Daily Chord agreed to:

• Capture card details directly in payment portal and uploaded the receipts to a secure SFTP location.
• Process Direct Debit details through Smart Debit, as well as recording details separately and securely for RSS.
• Send information emails to unpaid members.
• Transfer enquiries to the RSS membership team if appropriate.
• Suppress records from calling, as and when instructed by RSS.

Weekly Chord agreed to:

• Upload the completed DD BACS forms to the SFTP for RSS to download and process the payments.
• Arrange a conference call with RSS if required, to discuss campaign progress.
• Process a suppression file containing details of all members who had renewed RSS membership since the campaign began.

On Completion of Campaign, Chord agreed to:

• Issue a statistical analysis report to include campaign statistics from calls made over the duration of the campaign. This report showed the number of unpaid members that had renewed, unpaid members spoken to, data changes, emails sent, voicemails left and a breakdown of reasons for not renewing. It also included the nature of any ad-hoc enquiries from unpaid members spoken to (qualitative feedback).
• Return the calling file securely in Excel format with data changes appended, for uploading to the RSS CRM system.
• Issue RSS with a data destruction certificate once all data supplied by RSS had been effectively returned and deleted from Chord systems.
• Issue a client feedback questionnaire and arrange a review meeting to discuss and evaluate the results of the campaign.

In addition to this, 70 members intended or were considering renewing. The main reasons for this were, members awaiting salary payments or for their employer to make the payment on their behalf.

To achieve this, Chord:

• completed 15 telemarketing days.
• made 1,631 calls.
• had 263 direct conversations with members.
• left 380 voicemails.
• sent 1,151 emails.

Telephone numbers were not available for 20% of members, which explains the lower than typical telephone reach rate.

The majority of members were receptive to the calls and grateful for the reminder to renew.

11% of member contact data records were updated by Chord, keeping personal data accurate and up to date in line with UK GDPR.

Learn more about Chord’s other work with the Royal Statistical Society here.