Members join associations for community, learning, connection and career support. Yet most engagement still centres around annual conferences and event apps that only come to life for a few days. Once the event is over and the app fades from the home screen, members go back to juggling emails, calendars and the noise of everyday life. The result? Valuable engagement moments are lost, and associations miss a chance to stay connected with members where they are every day.
A year-round members app, always within reach on a member’s phone, acts as a constant reminder of the value their membership brings. Rather than being confined to a few days at an event, your association becomes a daily resource for professional development, connection and industry insight.
Here’s how a year-round members app delivers ongoing value in ways an event app simply can’t match.
Members stay connected beyond the conference
An event app captures attention for a moment, but it doesn’t become part of a member’s daily routine. A membership app lives on the home screen and becomes the place members turn to first when they want to connect, learn or find support. Within the app, members can search a directory to find someone they want to connect with, send messages, coordinate virtual coffees or join discussions that matter to them. Conversations don’t end when a conference does. Instead, the app becomes a centralised hub where members interact with each other and with your association’s staff in one consistent space. When members have a question, need advice or want to share an idea, they tap the app first, not search through old emails or scroll social media.
Learning happens when members need it
Professional development is a primary reason people join associations, but members don’t always have time to sit through a multi-hour session at a conference. A year-round members app brings learning to them. Members can watch a webinar replay during a lunch break, complete a microlearning activity between meetings or review certification prep materials on the commute home. Instead of waiting to return to the office or sift through desktop portals, learning is always accessible in the palm of their hand. This convenience significantly improves how often members engage with your educational content and how they connect learning directly to the flow of their work.
Members stay informed with curated industry content
Members join associations to stay informed about the trends, challenges and opportunities in their field. A members app enables personalised content delivery tailored to everyone’s interests. Members can select topics they care about, customise their news feed and receive notifications when important updates are published. Whether it’s regulatory changes, research findings, sector news or policy developments, relevant information reaches members in real time. Unlike email newsletters that get buried or ignored, a year-round app keeps content meaningful and visible, helping members feel more informed and more connected to the larger professional community.
Practical tools are always at hand
Professionals need resources that help them do their work better. A member’s app can house templates, checklists, compliance tools, industry standards and publications that members use on the job. Instead of printing documents that quickly go out of date or digging through cloud drives, members access what they need instantly through the app. This kind of real-world usefulness reinforces the value of membership every time a member opens the app to solve a problem or find a resource that assists them in their daily work.
Career support that moves with members
Career growth is a critical motivator, especially for early-career professionals. A year-round members app can serve as a career centre where members explore job opportunities, set up alerts for positions of interest, access mentoring programmes and browse resources that help with interviews, resumes and professional branding. When members use the app to deepen their skills, plan next steps and find jobs or internships aligned with their goals, your association becomes more than a network, it becomes a partner in their career journey.
A platform that supports ongoing revenue opportunities
Event apps offer sponsor visibility for only a handful of days. A year-round members app, on the other hand, becomes a place where sponsor content, industry guides and partner features add continuous value for members and commerce opportunities for associations. Members show their certifications and achievements from the app, suppliers find new ways to engage with a targeted audience, and associations unlock diversified revenue streams that extend well beyond the event week.
The fundamental difference between an event app and a membership app is simple: an event app serves a short moment. A members app serves a lifetime of professional engagement.
With a year-round app, the association community and its collective resources are available not just for a few days at a conference, but every day in between.
The future of membership is continuous, connected and always within reach. If you’d like to explore what that could look like for your organisation, we’d love to show you.
Visit our members app page to learn more.