Renewal Notifications Beta
Detailed Instructions
The paragraphs below give detailed instructions for the steps required to setup renewal notifications. These FAQs will also assist with supplemental information. Contact brenda.lundeen@growthzone.com with questions.
Preparation for notifications
1a - Update the emails that will be sent out
Four emails will automatically be sent out to your members. Adjust any wording in these email templates as desired. Do not modify or remove the merge fields.
- Edit the desired email templates - How-to steps
- Assign the templates to the correct Automated Messaging selections. How-to steps
General Message | When Sent | Default Template Title | Automated Messaging Selection |
| Membership is coming due | On your selected Renewal Notification Date | Membership Renewal Reminder Email Template | Membership Renewal Reminder |
| Membership expires soon | 3 Days before expiration | Membership Expires Soon Email Template | Membership Is Expiring |
| Membership expired today-you are in grace period | Day after expiration | Membership Entering Grace Period Email Template | Membership is in Grace Period |
| Grace period ended, your membership has expired – contact association to reinstate | Day after grace (if applicable or if not, then date after expiration) | Membership Has Expired Email Template | Membership Has Expired |
Note: Adding additional merge fields is not recommended. They would have to be tested to ensure data is able to be populated when this template is sent.
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1b - Update the Information on Membership Types
Not all Membership Types have to be setup for sending out renewal notifications. But those that are, you will want to make sure the information that will be visible to those renewing is up-to-date.
- Identify the Membership Types that you would like to have notifications sent for.
For instance you might want to exclude Lifetime, Legacy, or Courtesy "type" memberships figuring you might handle those with personal notification or no notification at all. - Update the identified Membership Types with any changes to make sure it is ready to be viewed by members. e.g. Membership Name, Membership Description and any Terms/Conditions (if applicable)
How-to steps
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1c - Update the Drop Reasons
If a member chooses not to renew, you can present them with several pre-made reasons for why they are not renewing. Reporting on these drop reasons over time, will make it easy to see possible trends or concerns. Mark those that should be options to select as 'public' reasons. If only one reason is public, then nothing will show to the member; it will automatically be selected.
- Update and Add Drop Reasons. How-to steps
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1d - Double-check Default Access Level
When a membership is dropped, the access to the Info Hub is brought back to your default access level. This level should already be set at a level that is good for anyone that creates a login but should be double-checked to make sure it is set as you would like.
- Check your Default Access Level How-to steps
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1e - Sign-up for Notifications
Staff members of your association have the ability to sign-up and receive email notifications when notification emails are sent out. In addition, you can receive notification when the recipients respond to the renewal request. You'll want to get yourself and any other interested staff people to select to receive these notifications.
- Select to receive the "Renewals Emails Sent" and "Membership Renewal Response Submitted" email notifications. How-to steps
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2 - Send out test renewal notifications
Now that you've edited the emails, the membership types, the drop reasons, and signed up for notifications, let's setup and send out some test notification emails so you can see what the members will actually experience.
- Create a new Membership Type. (If you want to make it look really 'real', you can copy over the description of one of your identified memberships to this Test copy.)
- Make sure that you assign a Recurring Fee to this Membership Type. (Hint: Free Memberships are automatically renewed and members do not receive reminder emails.)
- Assign the Test membership to a Test contact. Make sure the Billing Contact email is your own email address or one that you will be able to have forwarded to you to verify that it looks correct.
- Assign 3 more Test memberships making a total of 4.
- On the Contact's Profile, click into the Membership. Then click in to edit the Membership Name under Membership History. How-to steps
- Set the dates on the membership to dates that will cause Renewal notifications to be sent out. Do this for each of the 4 Test membership types using the chart below as an example.
- Contact brenda.lundeen@growthzone.com and let them know the names of your newly created TEST membership types. Tell them you'd like to have test renewal notifications sent out for these Test memberships.
Based on the date that GrowthZone will be enabling the Renewal Notifications for you, set the dates on your 4 test Memberships appropriately using this example:
| Based on Renewal Notifications being sent on 6/6/2018… Change your Membership Dates according to whatever your Sending Date will be | Expiration Date | Renewal Notification Date | Grace Period Expiration Date | Email sent because |
| Test Membership #1 Will Send Renewal Reminder Notification | 6/15/2018 | 6/6/2018 | 6/25/2018 | Renewal notification date is ‘today’s date’ |
| Test Membership #2 Will Send Membership Expires Soon Email Template | 6/9/2018 | 6/1/2018 | 6/25/2018 | Expires soon notification is sent 3 days prior to Expiration Date |
| Test Membership #3 Will Send Membership Entering Grace Period Email Template | 6/5/2018 | 6/1/2018 | 6/25/2018 | Entering Grace period notification is sent the day after Expiration |
| Test Membership #4 Will Send Membership Has Expired Email Template | 6/1/2018 | 6/1/2018 | 6/5/2018 | Membership has Expired notification is sent the day after Grace Period has expired. |
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3- Schedule data consult
After you've successfully seen renewal notifications sent out and they meet your approval. You can go ahead and contact brenda.lundeen@growthzone.com and let her know you'd like to schedule your data consult.
The data consult will find out from you a few key pieces of information so that we can properly prepare your membership data using mass update utilities to save you time from manually having to update dates.
Questions you need to answer will be these:
- Which membership types should be changed to Renewal Notification / Auto Drop?
- Is there a date we can rely on to indicate when the membership should expire?
Is it the expiration date on the Membership? Is it the Next Bill Date? - When do you want your renewal notifications sent out? 14 days ahead?
- How long do you want your grace period to be? 30 days?
After we've understood the answers to these questions, we will perform mass updates on these membership types to prepare them for sending out renewal notifications. We will also determine a 'cut-over' date - the date when you will start sending renewal notifications instead of your previous process of creating invoices that are emailed to the members.
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4 - Renewal notifications sent out
Congratulations! Once you've completed the above steps, your first renewal notifications will be ready to be sent out for those memberships that fall after the determined cut-over date.
You will be able to check out the members' response by viewing the Membership Renewal Status report. Enter the Expiration date range of the memberships that you have just sent to. You can also view the emails that were sent to the members under the Communication history.
And don't forget, if someone indicates they want to be invoiced, the invoice will be created and is available for them to pay in the Info Hub, but you might want to send them a reminder email with the invoice link attached. You can find and resend these open invoices on the Invoices/Sales tab under Billing.