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Cost Benefit

At ASAE Annual in San Diego, I am leading a discussion in the Decision to Join Lounge on Sunday at 3pm. The topic is how DTJ applies to trade associations. I have been a big trade association cheerleader in trying to get ASAE to do a DTJ for trades, which I hear is their next study.

So, I am going through DTJ again, just preparing some things for my talk (which is right after Blogger-Con BTW). I discovered, or was reminded, of an interesting dichotomy.

The first sentence of the book reads: "A person’s decision to join an individual membership organization is not a cost-benefit analysis." However, when the folks who had ever dropped membership in an association were asked the main reason why, "Did not receive the expected value to justify the cost of dues" was the #1 answer.

Long story short, don't think that you don't have to worry about cost/benefit. It may not be the main reason people join, but it will be the main reason they stay.

Comments

Tony Rossell said…
Matt -- I agree with your question. You may want to take a look at a big debate on this very same issue on the Membership Marketing Blog. You can find it under the label, "DTJ". Let me know what you think. Here is the link.

http://membershipmarketing.blogspot.com/search/label/DTJ
July 16, 2008 at 3:15 PM
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