Implementing a LMS to add value for your members

The webinar kicked off with a quick poll to ask attendees how much education is part of their member value proposition.

49% of attendees said education was a ‘significant’ part of their value proposition. 18% said education was ‘almost all’ of their value proposition.

Paul and Alex shared findings from three reports to highlight the importance of learning programmes for associations.

Based on the 2024 Membership Marketing Benchmark Report, the top 3 reasons for members to join an organisation were:

• Networking with others in the field
• Continuing education/professional certification
• Accessing specialised and/or current information

The 2025 Association Outlook report also highlighted that education was the top value proposition associations were looking to push this year.

In addition, the Association CEO index 2024 summarised how CEOs think education and training programmes are a key area for opportunity and growth.

When deciding the create a learning programme, it’s important to have a strategy in place. This learning strategy needs to work with your overall organisation goals. Your programme might be addressing a skills gap amongst your audience. A key focus should be on the outcome of the course, what will your members get out of completing it?

A learning management system (LMS) is software that helps you manage your education and training programme.

An LMS is used to provide educational and engaging content to be completed by a member at their own pace.

With online courses, content can be broken down into sections referred to as ‘chunk’ learning. This makes a 3-hour course seem less daunting and members can log out and return to the course when it’s convenient for them.

An LMS is also used to make course content interactive. For example, you can incorporate quizzes, drag and drop components, and Q&A features into the content.

You can use an LMS to provide:

• Online courses
• Live webinars
• Webinar and conference recordings
• Micro-credentials (small courses you take)
• Bundles/packages of courses
• Sponsored/scholarship webinars

Most associations need business cases to get board approval. Paul advised to work out your ‘share of the wallet’; this involves finding out from members/non-members what their current annual investment in learning and development is. This can help you put a business case together by showing the potential revenue opportunities of having an LMS if your target audience is currently investing in their education.

It’s important to understand how your members want to learn and the courses they would like to be available. At the end of a course, ask for feedback to see what changes could be made.

Another key area to consider is whether you should charge for your course. With in-person events you must cover costs like venue hire and catering. By having an LMS, you might be able to provide more free education. One way to make revenue is to get sponsors for a course. They could benefit from the branding, or they can host and deliver the content directly.

You could also provide a learning subscription, where people pay a fee to access your education but won’t receive the full list of member benefits.

After highlighting the opportunities of having an education offering in place, the discussion moved on to what was holding people back from expanding their education offerings.

Another quick poll found the top challenges to be:

• Creating content – 57%
• Managing the admin of the process – 45%
• Getting members to attend – 45%
• Need a system to deliver the training – 24%

To overcome the challenge of creating content, it’s important to repurpose the content you already have. For example, if you recorded sessions from your annual conference, you have content that can be used to build courses.

Don’t forget about promoting to non-members if driving member sign up is a challenge. You can use your learning programme to provide insight into the benefits of joining as a member.

It’s important to be consistent and continuous in promotion of your learning programmes. This includes promotion on channels your members are most likely to see including your website, blog, newsletter, social media, banner ads, and push notifications on your app.

Whether you have a CRM, AMS or EMS, integrating your learning management system helps to create a single source of truth (check out our blog which explains this concept) when reporting on your members.

It is beneficial to have a master member record which includes all the key information about a member. Within your system, you can then see if your member has been engaging with any content or up to date with their membership fees. If they haven’t paid their fees, you might want to remove their access from the educational content.

By having data in one location, you can also improve your reporting capabilities. It’s important to look at your analytics from your learning management system to make improvements. For example, you might spot patterns, like a certain group of courses being completed at the same time, so you could then offer these as a bundle.

We have our own solution, Cloudtoolz, that makes integration easy – clicks, not code.

Integrating your systems also provides a more seamless user experience for your members. A single sign on means members only log into one system to manage their membership. Ideally, you want them to go to your website and log in to access everything they need, rather than having to access a separate learning portal.

By providing a system that’s easier to use, you can also reduce the number of inbound enquiries. For example, single sign on means you are less likely to have people who need help logging in or struggling to access different systems.

You can create a member onboarding programme on your LMS. Members can return to this if they are unsure of how to use a system rather than reaching out to your team first.

You want your members to get value from their membership and the statistics covered show the drive for education as part of the member value proposition. It’s important to use the resources you currently have to offer education and it can be incredibly beneficial to have a learning management system in place to help you streamline the processes.

Fundamentally, as with any key decisions in your organisation, you should consider what your member’s wants and needs when building and executing your education strategy.

Zentso recognises the Traditional Custodians of the land, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.