White Paper: The Neuroscience of Member Loyalty

WHITE PAPER

The Neuroscience
of Member Loyalty
Executive Summary
The lifeblood of any association is its membership. The healthier and stronger
an organization’s membership is, the greater its ability to fulfill its mission.
Effective recruitment and retention strategies are critical components for
membership growth and development. Retention strategies are especially key
as more resources (time and money) are needed to recruit members than to
retain them. Members that choose to renew each year obviously come back
because they understand the value of the organization in their lives and /or
professions and are loyal customers and evangelists. What separates these
individuals from the others?
In some ways, membership retention is more of a science than an art.
Associations are made up of people with different motivations for their actions.
The field of neuroscience gives association executives a better understanding
of how people make their decisions. Neuroscience research helps executives
understand how associations can develop programs that will form deeper
relationships, stronger connections and ensure member loyalty.
One such type of program is a loyalty rewards program. Rewards, or points,
programs exploit the four principles of neuroscience—rewards, emotion,
memories and social interaction—to achieve higher results in member renewal
rates. They engage members on a regular basis, building on the desire by
people to stay connected and be rewarded for the right behaviors. This
strengthens the relationships—beyond attending conferences or meetings—
tapping into everyday life. In addition these programs can bring in new revenue
and associations can easily implement and manage them.

www.affinitycenter.com
@2012 Affinity Center International LLC, All Rights Reserved.

Membership Retention
Challenges
After spending 20 years as executive
director of Society of Marketing
Professional Services (SMPS), one
would expect Ron Worth has seen
a few things change. And he has,
though perhaps nothing as big as
how challenging it has become to get
members to renew.
“It used to be members joined and
stayed with it because it was what
you did as part of your career,” Worth
explained. “It was automatic.”
Now Worth and his team are
constantly challenged to figure out
new ways to keep members engaged
so that when renewal time comes
around, members recognize the
value they get from the association
and respond by renewing. SMPS
orchestrates a series of touches
throughout the year either in-person,
on the phone, via email and direct
mail or through the Chapters. They’ve
run contests, built an in-house social
media platform and conducted survey
after survey to anticipate what the
members will want next.
The ultimate goal is for members to
think, “I can’t give up my membership,
because I can’t find this value
anywhere else.”
If Worth’s story sounds familiar, it’s
because it’s a common reality many
associations face today. Retention
efforts continue to demand more
of an association’s resources, and
many associations already work
within limited means. This growing
allocation of resources specifically
to membership retention efforts is
severely impeding associations’
abilities to advance their missions
overall.
According to the American Society
of Association Executives (ASAE),
membership issues continue to


dominate executives’ top five
areas of concern for the coming
year: membership retention, value
of investments, membership
recruitment, annual meeting/
conference attendance and
sponsorship revenue.1
In fact, the same study
reported that 33% of
association CEOs said they
are more concerned about
member retention in 2012
than they were in 2011.
A fresh perspective on
membership retention
is to view it as more
of a science than
an art. Association
members all join for
different reasons. The
field of neuroscience gives
association executives a better
understanding of how people make
their decisions. Neuroscience research
can help executives understand how
associations can develop programs
that will form deeper relationships,
stronger connections and ensure
member loyalty.

Top Five
Membership Concerns:

SOURCE: Associations in Uncertain Economy:
Attitudes and Behaviors Among CEOs and
Members Impact Study, ASAE Foundation

Where Member Retention
Stands Industry-wide
It’s getting harder to keep members.
While statistics show that, ultimately,
most members renew, associations
are spending more to keep them.
More associations are increasing the
number of contacts they make with
their members, be it email, direct mail
or other, regarding renewals. In 2012,
23 percent of associations sent seven
to nine renewal contacts, up from
18 percent in 2011.2
Associations also spent an average
of $40,358 on renewals in 2012,
compared to $24,943 in 2011 and
$27,520 in 2010.2

Association Average
Expenditure on Renewals

SOURCE: 2012 Membership Marketing Benchmarking
Study, Marketing General Incorporated

www.affinitycenter.com | 2

An Association’s Success Is Based
on the Engagement of its Members
While there are a myriad of reasons
for members not to renew their
membership, active members
are more loyal and renew their
memberships at higher rates than
less active members.3 Therefore,
member engagement is a critical
factor in strong member retention and
achieving association goals.

members outside their role within the
association, and take into account
things like their job demands and their
personal needs, and then develop
programs to reward membership and
drive loyalty. Neuroscience can help,
by providing an understanding of how
people’s brains process information
to make buying decisions or become
loyal joiners.

Organizational psychologist Rensis
Likert said, “The greater the loyalty of
a group toward the group, the greater
is the motivation among the members
to achieve the goals of the group, and
the greater the probability that the
group will achieve its goals.”

How the Brain Works
toward Loyalty

Member engagement takes on a
variety of forms ranging from very
committed and time-consuming to
minor, daily interactions. It could be

A study of MRI scans of loyal and
less loyal customers found that in
the case of loyal customers the
presence of a particular brand serves
as a reward during choice tasks,
but less loyal customers do not
exhibit the same reward pathway.
It also found that loyal customers
had greater activation in the brain
areas concerned with emotion and
memory retrieval suggesting that loyal
customers develop an affective bond
with a particular brand, which serves
as the primary motivation for repeat
purchases.5

• Volunteering on a board
• Attending a conference
• Joining a Chapter
• Purchasing a product
• Calling an 800 number for
assistance
• Downloading research or other
resources
• Purchasing from an affinity partner
or sponsor company
ASAE and the Center’s “Decision
to Join” report shows there is very
little statistical difference between
non-engaged members and
lapsed members. “Those who are
not involved lie perilously close to
former members in their overarching
assessments of the value they derive
from associations. If former members
are thought of as being dead, the
uninvolved are close to comatose.”4
To bring non-engaged members
back to life and improve member
retention, associations must look at


To describe loyalty we have looked
at four principles from the field of
neuroscience—rewards, emotions,
memories and social interaction.

Member Minute
Jack has been in his job for
15 years and loves what he
does. He used to belong to
four industry associations but
with budget cuts this year
he is narrowing it down to
the two that matter most to
him—one for his current job
and one for his future career
moves. Which two should he
choose? Which would bring
him the most value, beyond
the monthly publication and
annual conference?

In order to become loyal to a brand
the brain must make a decision of
brand A over brand B, a process
which relies on the brain to make
predictions based upon expected
reward and then evaluate the results
to learn loyalty. The brain is required to
remember both positive and negative
outcomes of previous brand choices
in order to make accurate predictions
regarding the expected outcome of
future brand decisions. For example, a
helpful salesman or a points program
may serve as a reward to encourage
future customer loyalty.6


Rewards
A reward is the positive value
someone assigns to an object or
behavior. Primary rewards include
those that are necessary for the
survival of species, such as food,
sexual contact, or successful
aggression.7 Secondary rewards
derive their value from primary
rewards. Money is a good example.
They can be produced experimentally
by pairing a neutral stimulus with a
known reward.
Neuroscience portrays a conflict
in the brain between the desire
for immediate gratification from
a small reward versus delayed
gratification from a greater reward.
The limbic system causes people
to be temporarily inclined towards
the immediate gratification, but the
reasoning cortex of the brain can
overcome this inclination by reminders
of the better delayed reward.8,9
In loyalty programs, this conflict is
diminished by creating a balance
between the immediate gratification
that can occur when points are
themselves framed as mini-rewards
with the delayed gratification of the
sizable reward that can only be had
by a considerable accumulation
of points. In short, adding the
“earn” experience to the “burn”
experience allows the member to
have their cake and eat it too.
Emotions
“When it comes to shaping decisions
and actions, feeling counts every bit
as much—and often more—than
thought.”10 The brain chooses what
data to store and to retrieve based, in
part, upon emotion.11
When the brain detects an emotionally
charged event, the amygdale
releases dopamine in to the system.
Jill Eichwald quotes John Medina
in the Maritz Institute white paper,
“The Dynamics of Effective Business


Communication Through the Lens of
Neuroscience”:
Because dopamine greatly aids
memory and information processing,
you could say the Post- It note reads
‘Remember this!’ Getting the brain
to put a chemical Post-It note on a
given piece of information means
that information is going to be more
robustly processed.12

Brain systems work in parallel, mixing
emotional and rational functions
in various ratios. Unconsciously,
emotions color how the association
and programs are viewed, and
whether people feel motivated to
buy more, advocate for, work harder,
bond with others ... or join the
disengaged who simply “bear with”
the organization.
In addition, people’s emotions,
attitudes and moods impact others
and their social group as a whole.13
This phenomenon of “emotional
contagion” goes beyond face-to-face
interaction. As several studies have
shown, emotions, including happiness
and loneliness, can be spread through
social networks.14
Memories
For humans, it is highly pleasurable
to remember past enjoyment. People
respond to current experiences
and make decisions based upon
remembered past experiences.
Memory is a critical factor in
determining behavior and attitudes.
People remember better what is
charged with emotion.15

Member Minute
Leah sits at her desk thinking
of all she has to do—at
work, home and for the trip
to see her mother—while at
the same time needing to get
the quarterly reports done.
How is she going to get it all
done and still have time for
herself? She feels like with
each promotion she loses
some of her spark and now
she asks “How do I move
forward with what I was
meant to do with my life?
How can I afford to do what
I want to do?”
Is she thinking of her
associations as a resource to
help create a path forward?

When a person perceives an object,
groups of neurons in different parts of
the brain process the information about
its shape, color, smell, sound and so
on. The brain then draws connections
among these different groups of
neurons, and these relationships
constitute perception of the object.
Subsequently, whenever someone
wants to remember the object, they
reconstruct these relationships.


Neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins points
out, “The brain doesn’t remember or
recall things with complete fidelity—
not because the cortex and its
neurons are sloppy or error-prone,
but because the brain remembers the
important relationships in the world,
independent of details.”16
In addition, isolated pieces of
information are memorized less
effectively than those associated
with existing knowledge. The more
associations between the new
information and things that someone
already knows, the better he or she
will learn it.
Creating meaningful experiences that
form positive memories will contribute
to an association’s success. If people
enjoyed interactions with a brand, and
felt good about themselves during
the experience; these feelings will be
remembered and triggered in future
interactions, and will prompt people to
want to continue to do business with
the brand.
Social Interaction
Neuroscientist Daniel Goleman
explains:
The social brain is the sum of the
neural mechanisms that orchestrate
our interactions as well as our
thoughts and feelings about people
and our relationships. The most telling
news here may be that the social
brain represents the only biological
system in our bodies that continually
attunes us to, and in turn becomes
influenced by, the internal state of
people we’re with. All other biological
systems, from our lymphatic glands
to our spleen, mainly regulate
their activity in response to signals
emerging from within the body,
not beyond our skin… Our social
interactions even play a role in
reshaping our brain, through
“neuroplasticity,” which means that
repeated experiences sculpt the
shape, size, and number of neurons
and their synaptic connections. By
repeatedly driving our brain into a


given register, our key relationships
can gradually mold certain neural
circuitry.17

People pay enormous attention to
what other people think, feel, say and
do. There are many influencers that
drive people’s behavior and choices.
People, for the most part, do not
make decisions independently. Rather,
they are influenced by the behavior
of others.18 And by those they view
as credible, reliable, well-intentioned
or well-informed, and by people
they identify with in some way.19
Cooperation and social acceptance
are so important to people that when
excluded it is physically painful.

Applying the
Neuroscience Research
Why People Join Associations
Associations exist because people
are wired to be social. To understand
what causes members to be loyal to
an association, one can look to the
research of neuroscientists about how
the brain processes information. The
field’s findings show that member
loyalty, or the need to join, is tied to
the member’s level of engagement
with the group.
People make decisions rationally and
emotionally at the same time without
even knowing it. Matthew Lieberman,
a neuroscientist at UCLA, says we
are aware of rational processes. They
require effort and conscious intent.
Rational processes are experienced
as self-generated thoughts. But,
automatic processes, or emotional
processes, operate outside of our
awareness and conscious intention.
They require very little effort and are
usually experienced as perceptions
or feelings.20 While members search
rationally for the value an association
brings to their lives, they also need
to have positive feelings toward the


association to actually renew their
membership.
Don’t Leave Member
Engagement to Chance
When it comes to the active
participation of new members,
associations must start with the end in
mind and decide what they are driving
towards and then create an image of
what true member engagement looks
like and drive towards that vision.
To build member engagement and
in turn member loyalty, associations
should ask themselves:
• Are we bringing value to the
members beyond the expected?
• Is the value obvious or is it hard to
experience and see?
• Are we determining what members
value or are we getting input from
them?
• What we are asking from members?
• Are we being truly creative or are we
just restating what has been done?
• Do we understand our members?
• Are we creating positive memories
for our members?
Loyalty is Based on
Members’ Memories
Loyalty and member engagement
programs are successful when
they arouse positive emotions in
members and cause them to find
the relationship to be rewarding.
Those positive emotions help
transition memories from temporary
to long-term memory storage.
The goal is to attain members’
long term storage of positive
interactions with the association so
that renewal becomes automatic.
Eichwald quoted research that
describes the brain’s process of
converting memories:


When people encounter new
information, it’s the working memory
that takes it in and matches it
against old information stored, or
memorized, in a different part of the
brain. The greater the number of
related associations between new
and existing information over time,
the stronger the memory will be.21
Similarly, people can remember a new
piece of information better if they can
associate it with previously acquired
knowledge that is already firmly
anchored in their memory.22 And the
more meaningful the association is
personally, the more effectively it will
be remembered.

Four Principles of
Neuroscience

What is a Loyalty Program?
Many options are available to
associations seeking new programs
that engage members. One such
type of program is a loyalty rewards
program. Rewards, or points,
programs exploit some of the research
of neuroscience to achieve higher
results in member renewal rates.
By definition, loyalty programs are
structured marketing efforts that
reward, and therefore encourage,
loyal buying behavior—behavior,
which is potentially beneficial to the
organization.
Loyalty programs are common in the
retail, travel, and financial sectors.
Most people have come into contact
with one and may participate in many.
They either offer discounts upfront
or a collection of points for coupons,
free products or services, and
other rewards. Retailers use loyalty
programs to engage customers and
prompt them to associate a positive
emotion with the organization.
To date, the association industry
as a whole hasn’t utilized loyalty
programs to improve member
retention, but there is no clear reason
why. Consumers love them. Smart
Money reports, “In the aggregate, U.S.
consumers now hold about 2.1 billion
memberships, up 60% since 2007.”23


Mike Spellecy is a vice president
at Maritz who has worked with
loyalty and reward programs for
over 30 years. He translates this
concept from a business and
retail perspective to associations:
“Loyalty programs should be seen
by association executives as a long
term vehicle for driving members
to consider the association first
when they need a product or
service the association offers.”

• Let association executives
collect detailed member profiles
and member segmentation so
they association executives can
understand more about their
segments of members and can
treat them according to their
needs and wants. For example,
communicating with members in
the ways or frequency they want,
or even creating the type of content
or events they’re interested in.

Enhancing Member Engagement
and Association Membership

• Allow members to connect and
socially engage with others who
share a similar interest and wish to
share information and insights.

As Spellecy explains, associations
are created when a collection of
individuals come together around a
common interest or problem. But,
members’ needs are divided. First,
there are the people who sign up to
gain access to a particular seminar
and are never heard from again
because they have fulfilled their
specific need. The second group has
a vested interest in the goals of the
association and returns to discuss all
issues facing the members.
The loyalty program is an association
benefit that all members consider
highly valuable. It is the glue that
helps members stick with the
association. Through regular, even
daily, interactions with the loyalty
rewards program, members keep
their associations on the top of their
minds. In addition, they link a positive
experience with their associations
each time they earn a reward.
Loyalty programs can help member
engagement because they:
• Offer a platform that tracks,
monitors and evaluates members’
activities, allowing associations to
quickly modify programs to keep
members engaged at higher levels
and reduce attrition or disengaged
members.


Cutting through the Clutter
Like other programs, a loyalty rewards
program cannot be successful if
people don’t know about it. The white
paper “Understanding What Makes
People Tick” applies neuroscience
research to human’s capacity for
attention. It points out two important
facts: “people can’t pay attention
to everything at once and people
need help breaking through the
communications clutter.”24
Associations often implement a
number of programs that end up
competing for members’ attention,
and worry about adding one more.
Loyalty programs can align with and
complement other existing programs.

Member Minute
Carolyn had forgotten that
she joined an association
last year. She paid her
dues and then life got busy.
Recently, the association was
asking her to renew and pay
her dues. She asked herself,
“Why renew? I didn’t utilize
the benefits when I belonged
the first time.” What is the
value of the membership to
her? She didn’t feel that the
association offered anything
that enhanced her life or her
career. She was going to
pass this year.

In addition, message delivery is
critical. By using a combination of
existing communications channels
that members are used to applying
attention to, and unexpected
communications techniques that can
grab attention just by virtue of their
novelty, associations can effectively
cut through the clutter. Regardless of
how communications are delivered,
ensuring that messaging design is
personally relevant, motivating and
honest, with a clear call to action, can
drive attention.


Three Ways to Improve the Bond
with Members Right Away
While loyalty programs should be
viewed as a long term retention
strategy, there are ways to jump start
member engagement.
• Talk, treat and reward. Based on
the insights gained from loyalty
program activities, associations
can recognize members differently
and provide relevant discussions,
according to how they want to be
treated.
• Through loyalty programs,
associations can create a dialogue
or strengthen their member
community. Many associations
already ask for input and feedback,
poll members on areas of content/
information, or conduct surveys
for member satisfaction, but the
most critical step is to take action
based on results and input.
• Test new and unique engagement
tactics that are built on
understanding the neuroscience of
people’s behaviors. Make engaging
with the association interesting
and fun. Loyalty programs
can add a new, and perhaps
unexpected, dynamic to the typical
interaction with associations
that members are used to.
Loyalty programs can exploit these
four principles of neuroscience to
achieve higher results in member
renewal rates. They engage members
on a regular basis, building on people’s
desire to stay connected and be
rewarded for the right behaviors. This
strengthens the relationship—beyond
attending conferences or meetings—
by tapping into everyday life. In
addition, these programs can bring
in new revenue and associations can
easily implement and manage them.


Associations that implement programs
based on neuroscience research can
form deeper relationships, stronger
connections, and ensure member
loyalty. Loyalty rewards programs
help associations connect with
their members in different ways and
more often. They provide regular,
positive interactions within the normal
stream of business and life, and are
opportunities to remind members
of the value of their membership.
It reminds them of why they chose
this particular association over the
others. Each little interaction makes
a member more likely to renew.

Loyalty is the End
Result of Effective
Retention Strategies
Members are not one dimensional, nor
are the behaviors they demonstrate
or the ways they make decisions.
Members connect from self to
industry, from career today to career
tomorrow. The need to motivate, and
drive behavior at these different levels
is key to moving a member from an
occasional supporter to an advocate
for the association; and from a yearly
member to a lifetime supporter.
For Ron Worth and the SMPS team,
implementing a loyalty rewards
program brings hope that they
will be able to offer a new value to
their members and the firms with
which they work. The regular, even
daily, engagement a loyalty rewards
program can offer the association’s
6,000 members helps take the
pressure off of the team to provide
constant interaction. They can
focus instead on their mission and
member services such as helping
firms develop marketing programs
that help them stand out and aiding
members searching for jobs.

Member Minute
Ella’s association recently
added a loyalty program
that rewarded her for
participation. She was eager
to get more value from
her membership dues and
while she hadn’t been an
active member previously,
she became involved in the
program. She found that
not only was the loyalty
program itself engaging;
but there were a lot of other
association benefits she’d
been missing—things that
could help her with her life
and career.
She was getting value
everyday, making her
association membership
indispensable to her lifestyle.


References:
1.

“Associations in Uncertain Economy: Attitudes and
Behaviors Among CEOs and Members,” Impact Study, ASAE
Foundation, Washington, Winter 2012, p. 8.

2.

Erik Schonher et al. “2012 Membership Marketing
Benchmarking Study,” Marketing General Incorporated,
Alexandria, 2012, p. 9.

17. Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New
Science of Human Relationships, New York, 2006.

3.

“Member Retention Strategies,” ASAE Associapedia, http://
www.asaecenter.org/wiki/?page=Member%20Retention%20
Strategies

18. Matthew J. Salganik, “Experimental Study of Inequality and
Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market,” Science, 311,
2006.

4.

“Decision to Join: How Individuals Determine Value and How
They Choose to Belong,” ASAE Press, Washington, 2007, p.
4.

19. E.J. Wilson & D.L. Sherrell, “Source Effects in Communication
and Persuasion Research: A Meta-Analysis of Effect Size,”
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 21, (2), 1993.
pp. 101-112.

5.

Hillke Plassmann et al.“What can advertisers learn from
neuroscience?,” International Journal of Advertising, 2007;
26(2): pp. 151-175.

6.

Peter Kenning and Hillke Plassmann, “How Neuroscience Can
Inform Consumer Research,” IEEE Transactions on Neural
Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, Friedrichshafen,
Germany, Dec 2008; 16(6), pp. 532-538.

7.

Tim Ambler et al. “Brands on the Brain: Neuroimages
of Advertising,” Business Strategy Review, September
2000;11(3), pp. 17–30.

8.

George Ainslie & John Monterosso, “Behavior: A Marketplace
in the Brain?” Science 306 (5695), 2004, pp. 421–423 quoted
by Jill Eichwald et al. “The Dynamics of Effective Business
Communication Through the Lens of Neuroscience,” Maritz
Institute White Paper, St. Louis, 2011, p. 13.

9.

Kacey Ballard & Brian Knutson, “Dissociable neural
representations of future reward magnitude and delay during
temporal discounting,” NeuroImage, 2009, pp. 45, 143–150
quoted by Jill Eichwald et al. “The Dynamics of Effective
Business Communication Through the Lens of Neuroscience,”
Maritz Institute White Paper, St. Louis, 2011, p. 13.

10. Daniel Goleman, Emotional intelligence. New York, 1995.
11. Antoine Bechara et al. “Double dissociation of conditioning
and declarative knowledge relative to the amygdala and
hippocampus in humans,” Science, 269 (5227), 1995, pp.
1115–1118.

15. Joseph LeDoux, Emotional Brain: The Mysterious
Underpinnings of Emotional Life, New York, 1996.
16. Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence, New York, 2004.

20. Matthew Lieberman, “Reflexive and Reflective Judgment
Processes: A social cognitive neuroscience approach” in
J. P. Forgas, K. D. Williams & W. von Hippel (Eds.), Social
judgments: Implicit and Explicit Processes, New York, 2003.
21. Helene Hembrooke, & Geri Gay, “The lecture and the laptop:
Multitasking in wireless learning environments,” Journal of
Computing in Higher Education, 15 (1), 2003, p. 46–65
22. C. Dzubak, “Multitasking: The good, the bad and the
unknown,” Synergy: The online journal of the Association of
the Tutoring Profession, (2), 2008 retrieved from http://www.
myatp.org/ejournal.htm by Jill Eichwald et al. “The Dynamics
of Effective Business Communication Through the Lens of
Neuroscience,” Maritz Institute White Paper, St. Louis, 2011,
p. 8.
23. “6 Rewards Programs Worth Your Loyalty,” Smart Money
Magazine, March 22, 2011.
24. Giulietta Versiglia, “Understanding What Makes People
Tick: Applying Discoveries in Neuroscience to Optimize the
Potential of People,” Maritz Institute White Paper, St. Louis,
2009, p. 11.

12. John Medina, “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and
Thriving at Work, Home, and School,” Seattle, 2008, p. 1118
13. Sigal Barsade, “The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and
its Influence on Group Behavior,” Administrative Science
Quarterly, 47, 2002, pp. 644-675.
14. Jill H. Fowler & Nicholas A. Christakis, “Dynamic Spread of
Happiness in a Large Social network: Longitudinal Analysis
over 20 Years in the Framingham Heart Study,” BMJ, 2008,
337:a2338



White Paper: The Neuroscience of Member Loyalty

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White Paper: The Neuroscience of Member Loyalty