Richard Walker shares his latest perspective on the challenges facing membership organisations. In this piece, he turns to a critical but often overlooked area: how membership research and re-engagement strategies can help organisations bring back lapsed members. And he asks, are your best future members the ones you’ve already lost?
Despite what you might read on LinkedIn, success doesn’t hinge entirely on winning over Gen Z, Gen Zalpha or Gen Alpha. Shock, horror. Your salvation might NOT lie in the hands of a podcasting, TikToking 23-year-old.
More likely, it’s buried in your own database. This blog is about what we’ve been calling the “Boomerangs”. They are the members you used to have. The ones who once paid, once cared, once believed in what you offered, but drifted off. You didn’t throw them away. But you never gave them a reason to stay, or to come back, either. The question is – how do you catch them?
A bit of background. The common challenges facing membership organisations.
Earlier this year I authored a (provocatively-titled) blog titled “Are membership organisations in danger of becoming obsolete?” in which I highlighted nine common problems and challenges facing our clients that serve memberships – and nine questions organisations need to be asking of their memberships.
It’s a long list of struggles related to issues like engagement / passive membership, and the challenge of keeping up with expectations related to things like social / ethical matters and digital transformation. The blog also shared ideas regarding personalisation whilst accessing the emotional (as well as the rational) triggers and drivers. Click here if you missed it first time around.
The (Avoidable) Problem of Lapsed Members
Call it churn, attrition, lapsing, exiting, cancelling, ghosting — the semantics don’t matter. What matters is that they left, and your acquisition team is now working twice as hard (and possibly spending twice as much) to replace them. If your members are still leaving in greater numbers than what they’re joining, it’s an existential threat.
More worrying: many organisations don’t know why members leave. They think they do. They’ll point to a few exit survey pie charts and call it insight. But those charts are rarely honest, rarely nuanced, and rarely acted on. It is imperative that you understand the REAL reasons why – and don’t just pay lip-service to it in a generic exit survey.
Here’s the brutal truth: most members don’t leave out of boredom or on a whim. They leave because their needs evolved and your proposition didn’t. Because you stopped being relevant. No one noticed they were drifting until it was too late.
Why Member Reactivation Matters: More than Acquisition?
Reactivating lapsed members can deliver up to 10x more ROI than acquiring new ones. (Sources are at the foot of the blog if you want the numbers). And yet, many membership organisations default to acquisition (finding new members) and retention (keeping existing ones).
What about those boomerangs! A timely nudge, reframed benefit or shared peer story can be enough to bring them back. People will rejoin a membership if you can communicate the value effectively. And it’s not a “standing start”. You’ve worked hard to build up brand familiarity and trust.
First, Understand Why Members REALLY Lapse
Before you can win them back, you need to understand why they left. Not the surface-level reasons (“too expensive”, “not using it”) — the real ones.
For a sports governing body, it might be injury or changing life-stage. For a professional body, it might be perceived relevance to career direction. For a cause-led organisation, it might be perceived values misalignment or a lack of emotional payoff. Lapsed members don’t all lapse for the same reason — and they won’t all respond to the same nudge. That’s why segmentation (or personas, at the very least) is non-negotiable. Without it, you’re just guessing.
Member Needs Change. So Must You.
Stop focusing on what your members did (joined, stayed, left). Focus on what they need. Because membership is a value exchange — and when the perceived value drops below the effort or cost, people walk.
Ask yourself:
- Have your members’ motivations evolved since they joined?
- Are you fulfilling their current needs, or just what worked in 2019?
- Are your “loyal” members truly engaged — or are they just inert and too busy to cancel?
- What about your newest members – are the common motivations for joining in 2025 the same as they were 2, 5 or 10 years ago?
If you don’t know the answers, that’s your starting point. You simply HAVE to understand the things – i.e. the needs, the motivations – that ultimately drive the decision to be a member (or not).
How to Catch the Boomerang: 5 Membership Reactivation Tactics
Reactivation isn’t about chance. It’s about using data and insight to design strategies that work. Success comes from knowledge, not intuition. Here’s how to build it properly.
1. Ask Better Questions
Forget generic exit surveys. Run targeted re-engagement surveys with lapsed members — ask what they still care about, what would bring them back, and what they felt was missing. Here’s the bonus – not only will you learn – but they’ll feel like they’ve been listened to and you’ve proved you genuinely care about them.
2. Segment Like You Mean It
If you have one, use your segmentation – understand how they’re unique and engage with them appropriately rather than relying on the one-size-fits-all (because… in membership in particular, it just doesn’t). At the very least, use whatever data you DO have — membership type, lifestage, inactivity duration — to create tailored messaging. Segmented campaigns deliver up to 40% higher ROI than generic ones.
3. Trigger the Right Nudges
Use lifecycle automation to your advantage. Members inactive for 30, 90, or 180 days should receive personalised, relevant nudges — not spam. Some organisations see engagement jumps of over 300% with this approach.
4. Tell the Right Stories
Don’t just tell people what you offer. Show them how members like them are benefitting. Peer-driven stories are emotionally powerful and help re-establish a sense of belonging. But it HAS to be relatable.
5. Offer a Reason to Return
Whether it’s a “welcome back” discount, exclusive content, or event access — give them something that makes rejoining feel like a smart move, not a desperate ask.
Reactivation: Faster. Cheaper. Smarter
Reactivating lapsed members isn’t just a marketing exercise or just another inevitable stage within the membership journey. It’s commercial sense. You’ve already paid to acquire them once. They know your brand. They trusted you enough to join. Don’t let that equity go to waste.
Summing up, going for new members is fine (and, quite probably, is a necessary and important part of the strategy) – but ignoring those old members is foolish.
If you’re serious about boosting engagement, driving growth and maximising lifetime value, start by looking at who left — and ask how you can bring them back. The boomerang effect is real.
Want to learn how to catch more of them? Talk to us. We’re Mustard, and we help membership organisations uncover the insights they need to stop the churn, re-engage the lapsed, and deliver value where it matters.
Sources: