In today’s market, organizations whose revenues rely heavily on membership dues are scrambling not only to retain their current members, but also to attract new members. Unfortunately, as in any industry, discovering “high potential” targets—those individuals who you know have a vested interest in your organization and to whom you can then market—can often be difficult. People need your organization, you just need to identify them and show them how the benefits you offer fill said need.

One attractive and affordable approach to this challenge is tapping into your journal’s database of authors. Undoubtedly, a certain number of these authors will be existing members in your organization, but that leaves those authors who have yet to experience the perks of membership that you have to offer. You know up front that these authors have a vested interest in your organization, thus making them prime targets for your marketing efforts. In fact, in many instances, a more targeted list of potential members could not be obtained even if purchased!

A few questions must be considered before initiating a non-member author campaign:

• What percentage of our submitting authors are already members? In the event that the large majority of your submissions are made by existing members, feasibility and profitability may need to be questioned.
• What percentage of our submitting authors submit multiple manuscripts over the course of a year? Same situation here – a base of submissions coming from unique authors is preferred.
• How much is a new member worth to our organization? And, how much time and expense will marketing to each potential member require? This is a function of membership dues and the number of years you can reasonably expect to keep a member on board. The good news is that a non-member author campaign is typically an extremely low-cost project and requires little time after its initial setup. So, even if your member dues are minimal, your campaign can still be very worthwhile, especially when the lifetime of a membership is considered.
• What is our expected rate of return? Estimate your expected rate of return, possibly based on prior marketing campaigns, and remember to factor in average member lifetime.

Once these questions are considered, the process of running a non-member author campaign is beautifully simple; all you need is a way of pulling a report that shows your journal’s authors, a way of cross-checking your authors against your membership database, and a medium to communicate with these authors (phone, e-mail, or direct mail).

Lastly, let’s take a look at a hypothetical situation in order to illustrate a non-member author campaign. We’ll assume a conservative 1% rate of return. If 1,500 authors are contacted each year, we could reasonably expect to gain 15 new members directly from this program. If our members pay an average of $150 in annual dues, it can be estimated that we will see $2,250 in new member revenue. If the lifetime of our average member is five years, we can therefore expect to receive $11,250 from the campaign. Now, keep in mind that this is an extremely hypothetical situation, but nevertheless, and even if you consider a smaller rate of return or a shorter member lifetime, the return on investment is still substantial.