What It Means To Be Truly Member-First
Member experience as a driver of long-term membership value
Member experience is often referenced within membership businesses, yet it is rarely defined. Across memberships I’ve worked in, I’ve seen it reduced to onboarding steps, bloated feature sets, short-term engagement tactics, and community events treated as the experience itself. In practice, this approach is shaped more by internal priorities and outputs than by the lived experience of those the membership exists to serve. Over time, this diminishes member engagement culminating in them choosing not to renew.
So what exactly is member experience? It encompasses every interaction a member has with a business, from first discovery, to the ongoing relationship they develop, through renewal and beyond. More importantly, it is determined by the feelings and perceptions formed in each of those moments. Consequently, every single touchpoint matters, from your website to your events, your onboarding to your invoicing, your communications to your community, because each contributes to how the membership is ultimately experienced.
This distinction is what sets member experience apart from customer experience. Memberships focus on building ongoing, long-term relationships, rather than one-off transactions. Whilst this signifies recurring revenue for the business, member loyalty is earned by a sustained sense of belonging, progress, and alignment with the membership's purpose. The member experience is therefore created on a continuum. A membership is only as strong as its members' experience of it; how they feel after each interaction, whether it helps them move closer to a meaningful goal, how compelled they are to engage with the wider community, and whether the value it provides genuinely improves their lives or grants access they could not achieve alone.
Member experience determines retention more reliably than any other factor. It follows, then, that the strongest strategy a membership business can adopt is one that places the member - rather than organisational convenience - first. To be truly member-first requires a different way of thinking altogether: one that centres how members feel and progress over time, and whether the business is genuinely aligned around delivering that experience.
The retention reality
Today, there are an ever-expanding range of commitments, content and services competing for members' time and attention, including an increasing number of memberships operating in similar spaces. The subscription economy has expanded rapidly over the past decade and this trajectory is expected to continue, with the global market size projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 13% from 2025 to 2033.
Oversaturation of the market, coupled with now-ubiquitous subscription pricing, has resulted in choice overload and, understandably, subscription fatigue. Economic uncertainty and rising scrutiny on spend poses another challenge to membership businesses. Put plainly, the cost of membership is measured against expenses that feel more urgent, more practical, or more immediately valuable.
A membership that isn’t emotionally resonant can quickly fall down the priority list. Memberships therefore need to deliver both the tangible (a clear value proposition) as well as the intangible; something members can feel. What transforms a membership from being non-essential to necessary lies in member experience.
When considering a membership offering and the experience members are having, the answer is rarely to add more. Yet, in my consulting work across membership businesses, this was often the first solution leaders landed on: bundling in more products and services in an attempt to meet every perceived member need. These would typically take the form of a higher number of events, expanded features, increasingly dense communications, and amplified promotion of these supposed benefits. This response overlooks member experience and its role as an emotional driver to retention and renewal. Crucially, it tends to bypass the perspective of the members themselves. While carefully considered additions may add value, they often introduce greater complexity and confusion for members, undermining how the membership is actually experienced.
Before adding anything new, it’s worth asking a different question: do members already feel aligned, understood, and supported at every point they currently touch the organisation - and do those touchpoints consistently enhance the member experience rather than work against it? It is the corrections made here, first and foremost, that answer the question of necessity - transforming a membership from a non-essential into something members would genuinely miss.
Where experience is actually created
Viewed through the lens of member experience, operational and administrative activity become experience-shaping, rather than neutral business functions. They actively influence how supported, understood and aligned a member feels across the member journey. A member-first approach requires a consistent willingness to prioritise the member experience over organisational ease - not as an absolute rule, but as a guiding principle for decision-making at every interaction. At its simplest, this means returning to a single question at each member touchpoint: is this easier for us, or better for them?
When organisational ease is the principle by which a membership is designed, processes may function smoothly internally while disconnecting the business from its members. A member-first approach, by contrast, requires that even necessary constraints are examined through the question of impact. As we’ve explored, the most significant member experience gains are rarely found in what is added, but in how existing interactions are designed, delivered and improved. A more effective starting point is therefore to map out where experience is already being created across the business.
These interactions occur across multiple organisational touchpoints, each not just a step in a process, but a moment of experience. Beyond functional convenience, how do the process designs make members feel? Do they instill confidence, surety and momentum, or introduce friction, uncertainty and emotional effort? How easy is it to participate and engage, not just logistically but emotionally? How much confidence do these interactions give members that their time, money and trust are being respected and met? Reviewed from the members perspective - outside in, not inside out - these moments reveal more than operational audits alone.
Elevating the member experience does not require making processes more complex or introducing unnecessary steps. Contrarily, the strongest member-first decisions often simplify what members encounter, even where the underlying operational work remains complex. Administrative and operational moments should feel considered, human and intentional, not opaque, convoluted or effortful. Member experience is created not only in the moments designed deliberately, but also in those that are overlooked.
Member experience as philosophy, not function
When member experience is shaped by every interaction a member has with a company, it is best understood less as a function and more as a philosophy that underpins how the entire organisation operates. It should therefore not be seen as the domain of a single role or team. This holds true for solo operators and smaller memberships - where one person may touch every part of the member journey - as well as for larger, more complex businesses.
As memberships grow, multiple teams can become responsible for delivering distinct but interconnected parts of the member journey. Member experience lives in the collaboration between them. It is the continuity and consistency of service, tone and emotional impression across that journey, from first impression through to renewal, including what happens after a member leaves and how they are received if they return.
Every individual and team therefore creates member experience, whether intentionally or otherwise. This includes internal functions and any outsourced partners involved in delivery. Friction, delays and miscommunications are not merely operational issues; they are experienced by members directly and contribute to how the membership is ultimately felt. When awareness of this is embedded across the organisation, it can significantly improve the member experience and reposition the business to become member-first.
When member experience as a philosophy is woven into company culture, the natural consequence is that every function of the business operates with the member in mind. To be truly member-first is therefore not a matter of ownership, but of collective responsibility.
What this looks like in practice
In practical terms, this means:
- A clear, company-wide philosophy on the member experience you wish to create, with a map on how this is implemented and maintained at each stage of the member journey
- Training for all internal teams that links member experience directly to commercial outcomes, clarifies each team’s contribution, and is reinforced through appropriate KPIs
- Clear briefs for external partners that articulate your member experience philosophy and establishes guidelines for consistent alignment across delivery
- Operational processes designed explicitly to support the delivery of an optimal member experience at scale
- An individual or team responsible for stewarding member experience across the organisation, and for staying up to date with member experience best practice
- A commitment to understanding your members’ wants, needs, goals, expectations and challenges - recognising that these evolve over time, and that your membership must evolve alongside them
What it means to be truly member-first
Framing member experience as a key commercial driver brings into sharp focus where membership businesses priorities should sit. Taken together, the ideas explored in this essay point to a simple but often overlooked truth: member experience is what members feel when an organisation is truly aligned around them. It is not defined by any single touchpoint, but by the cumulative effect of everyday interactions and whether those moments consistently reinforce a sense of belonging, progress and trust.
This principle holds regardless of structure or scale. Across all forms of membership and subscription models, those that endure are the ones that place members’ lived experience at the core of their strategy, decision-making, services, and operations. In doing so, many experience an additional benefit to being member-first in greater strategic clarity for the business.
An anchor to being truly member-first is a sustained commitment to understanding members. Their wants, needs, expectations and challenges evolve over time, and a membership that remains relevant must be willing to evolve alongside them. This understanding is an ongoing discipline - one that underpins everything else.
That is why I advocate for a member-first approach, and what The Member-First Method is being developed to support: helping leaders design memberships that are aligned around their members, and experiences that are efficient and scalable but also genuinely felt by the communities they serve.