7 Membership Engagement Strategies That Actually Work in 2025
Loyalty points, bonuses, and quality content – those are well-known ways to bring some engagement to any membership site and business.
However, broader membership engagement strategies can come from some unexpected sources. We’ve explored various case studies, company experiences, and trends to give you a sense of what can truly work today and beyond 2026.
Let’s take a look at them.
Re-think your current design
Membership engagement is not just about adding a new feature to your site or a new lesson to your course!
It might be about rethinking your design completely or switching your membership software / LMS to a more modern or growth-oriented solution. And it can be one of the game-changing membership engagement strategies.
In the ION case study, we’ve found a few great ways how redesigning a content hub for members and audience boosted engagement up to 7× higher vs an older site.
They made a focus on more interactive content, design with better UX, analytics to track engagement and content downloads, and tried to deliver more frequent content (webinars, podcasts etc.).
Maybe it’s time to re-think the visual and UX side of what you deliver to members?
Use membership management software
A centralized membership management platform that comes with content interface, event management, multi-level membership, invoicing and more has the potential to automate 90% of the member engagement activities.
Don’t take our word for it – a membership engagement Ewald Consulting case study properly highlights how they more than doubled the client roster (from 20 to 47 associations) without increasing internal staff by using membership management software to streamline, deliver deeper engagement and retention.
So, how can membership management software as one of the key membership engagement strategies actually boost engagement?
- Automate crucial interactions and simplify onboarding.
- Improve member retention and growth.
- Provide a modern launchpad for client interaction and messaging, as well as other social features (likes, comments).
If you are on WordPress, budget-friendly and the best membership plugins like ARMember can help you integrate a membership management process super easily.
With all the essentials and extra tools you need for member engagement and growth, you can:
- Sell various levels of interactions, including recurring, one-time and gift memberships.
- Provide social community features.
- Sell online courses and manage affiliates.
- Send instant SMS and WhatsApp notifications for various interactions.
- Allow members to run their own member network.
Improve event attendance
Memberships are always centered around events or at least use events as an extra opportunity to boost engagement for passive content sites!
How to make members happier and more engaged in this regard?
Damco Group reported that member activity and event attendance of the golf club increased up to +60% in the first quarter. After launching self-serve booking, in-app messaging, and personalized reward journeys, they modernized their system, introducing real-time availability, feedback features, and loyalty tiers to boost member engagement.
Here are possible membership engagement outcomes for such actions involving focus on self-booked events:
- Increase member satisfaction.
- Double new member onboarding speed.
- Reduce manual admin communications.
Improve personalization & behavioral notifications
Based on the case study that researched selling subscriptions in apps, improved onboarding, personalization, behavioral notifications are key for member engagement and, thus overall business improvement.
Using tools and tactics like capturing user preferences upfront (e.g. meditation length, goals), using push notifications triggered by behavior; adjusting content based on engagement metrics are all crucial engagement strategies.
Overall, the studies show that users reported higher satisfaction and engagement metrics (session frequency etc.) after implementing risk-free experiences, personal loyalty rewards, and a variety of payment options.
Start an affiliate program to motivate members to earn with you
When your members love what you do, they naturally tell others. But what if you gave them a money-worth reason to really spread the word?
Offer rewards to loyal members for bringing in new sign-ups with an affiliate program. People love to be recognized and rewarded for helping others.
If your membership site runs on WordPress, a plugin like AffiliatePress is probably the best solution for that need – most importantly, it integrates with the ARMember plugin for selling membership subscriptions. A win-win!
It allows you to manage multiple commission types (one-time payouts, recurring commissions, or even tiered rewards) so that you can create an affiliate system that works for your membership model. It also keeps everything transparent for your members, giving them dashboards to track clicks, sales, and earnings in real time.
At first, only a few active members will probably share their personal links on social media or in their newsletters… But within a few months, you can expect engagement inside the community to skyrocket.
Embrace AI for member engagement
Artificial intelligence has its say in many sectors of the economy beyond big tech, including content creators and membership sites. That’s good news for you if you want to improve audio, video and multimedia content on your subscription website.
So, how exactly can you implement AI to boost member engagement? Here are a few ideas:
- Add interactive learning elements to content.
- Decrease member drop-offs using AI onboarding and chatbots.
- Add AI-trained agents to be studying companions.
Enhance your communication and offerings
Create multi-channel touchpoints to meet your members on every step of their way – combine email, in-app messages and community posts so that members hear from you naturally, and not via promotional emails only.
If your membership software supports that, use push notifications or SMS for urgent updates (new content, event reminders).
Opening a two-way dialogue also often leads to more engagement and interest, for example:
- Run polls, surveys, or comment threads for feedback.
- Create “Ask Me Anything” sessions.
- Run live interviews and Q&As.
- Publicly act on member suggestions (“Based on your feedback, we’ve added a new tutorial section”).
With easy-to-use tools like Typeform or Google Forms, you can do that without much investment on any type of website.
So, what are common membership engagement strategies?
From our experience, case studies, and general trends, we can safely suggest the following member engagement strategies and tools for your business:
- Extra personalization: understand member preferences, segment member groups, and deliver content that brings value.
- Better content, design, and experience hubs: content portals, interactive/hub content, webinars, podcasts, community content.
- Tiered loyalty and reward systems: offer more benefits to more engaged or longer-term members.
- Better membership tools: membership management systems, consolidating tools, automating processes such as billing, onboarding, events
- Digital / mobile apps + seamless self-service: easier booking, dashboards, getting what members want is always best
- Focus on events and personal interactions: forums, exclusive events, social aspects and other things that build a community are important
- Real-time feedback and interaction: push notifications, in-app messages, feedback forms.
When you talk with your members, refresh what you offer, personalize and innovate, engagement becomes organic and members log in because they want to!
FAQs
How to measure membership engagement?
You can measure membership engagement by tracking members participation in activities such as content interaction, direct feedback as well as number of renewals. You can also use analytics tools or membership plugins to monitor active members, engagement time and feedback trends.
How to boost member engagement?
You can boost your members’ engagement by focusing on personalization, better content, design and experience. Sending real time feedback and personal interaction also plays an important role.
What should be included in an engagement strategy?
An engagement strategy should include clear goals, member segmentation, more personalized content, multiple communication channels, reward systems and analytics tracking.
What is a member engagement strategy?
A member engagement strategy is a strategic plan to keep your current members active and engaged. You need to build a personalized relationship with them by offering better content, personalized experience and more chances to interact.
Why is member engagement important?
Member engagement is important because it helps increase your members retention and your revenue. By boosting your members’ engagement, you can build a strong community.
How can AI improve member engagement?
Yes, AI can improve your members’ engagement by adding interactive elements to your content. You can add AI chatbots to help members with easy onboarding. Further, adding AI trained agents as study companions is also great for improving member engagement.
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Brian Denim
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