A Complete Guide to

Attracting and Retaining

Gen Z Members

Zara Quick run before work helps

focus the brain - love finding tips
to help my wellbeing on the
@myassociations page #myassoc
Contents

Introduction3

Who is Gen Z?  4

Influences on Gen Z’s Purchasing Decisions  7

Content Marketing for Gen Z 16

What Does Personalization Really Mean? 24

Their Preferred Channels: The Gen Z Customer Journey  36

Gen Z and Cause Marketing  40

Gen Z and Website UX 44

Summary48
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Introduction

Successfully attracting younger professionals to your association

requires two things:

• First, identify techniques that will get you results

• Second, dedicate resources into executing and

scaling those techniques

The reality is Gen Z is unlike any other generation before them;

they’re the first generation born into a digital, constantly
connected world. For associations aiming to drive engagement
with Gen Z, it requires providing a member experience that
resonates with their preferences.

Now you’re probably wondering: “What strategies can

I use to attract Gen Z members to my association?”

We’ll show you actionable, simple steps you can take.

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Who is Gen Z?
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Gen Z is made up of individuals born

from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s.
Growing up with numerous devices at
their fingertips, they have a constant
appetite for content.

Generation Z can spend up to ten hours a day immersing themselves

in content across a variety of channels, including Facebook, YouTube,
Instagram and Twitter (Adobe). They also place importance on the
NOW Effect: information must be mobile, transparent and delivered
in real-time.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Gen Z bring new energy, ideas and opportunities for today’s

associations, but this generational shift will demand a new set of
tools and strategic thinking in order to drive growth.

Reaching this younger, digital-savvy, and socially-driven generation

of constituents, requires organizations to take a holistic approach
to meet their shifting demands.

To begin, you need to understand

their view of associations.

According to a membership
benchmarking report on young
professionals from Personify, Gen Z
do see value in joining an association.
However, they’re not exactly clear
what the benefits are and, as a result,
they don’t see strong ROI.

Basically, though Gen Z do believe

there is value in joining an association
they don’t actually experience it after
joining. To attract and retain a younger
audience to your membership, you
need to not only understand what
influences their purchasing decisions,
but also what they value.

6
Influences on
Gen Z’s Purchasing
Decisions
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

No matter how great your sales team may

be, nothing drives a final purchase faster
than a recommendation from a trusted
friend, colleague, or family member.

42%
of young members said
they joined an association
based on a personal
interaction with a member.
(Personify)

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Despite Gen Z being so in tune with online content, they still strongly
value authentic connections with people.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Gen Z lives in a world where videos of people reacting to trending

content or unboxing new purchases has millions of views, and this
type of content has massive engagement.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Generation Z is constantly connected and are not shy about sharing

their genuine opinions on any and everything. This behavior influences
the way they navigate purchasing decisions. All generations hold
some level of value for reviews and recommendations, but it can be
said that Gen Z value them even more because of the nature of their
online culture.

Many B2C companies understand this and influencer marketing is a

staple of modern marketing because of it.

So how can your association leverage this information?

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Member Influencers

Identify younger members within your association that may be willing

to become brand ambassadors.

Once you have the right members, it’s

important to communicate on the right
channels. Most associations simply post
static text-based testimonials on their
website; the reality is, that approach
won’t resonate with Gen Z. To get your
brand ambassadors in front of Gen Z
online, you should consider turning to a
specific social media app.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Say hello to Instagram.

The photo-sharing app has evolved into one of the most popular
social media platforms today.

Instagram has the highest
engagement rate of all platforms:

Zachary

about 2-7% of all posts.

(Sproutsocial)

Zachary Had the absolutely best

evening last night
Zoey Looks like such an amazing
night!!!!!!!

Also, 64% of 18-29 year

olds use Instagram.
(Sproutsocial)

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

But, let’s get specific to associations -

46% of young members

said they use this social
media platform to keep up
with associations. (Personify)

76% said it’s an effective

way to stay in touch. (Personify)

Some associations, like the American Marketing Association, are

already using this channel to drive engagement with Gen Z and have
their own hashtags going on the social photo sharing platform.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

To truly make inroads with Gen Z on Instagram, you need to be aware

of a key difference between Gen Z and the millennial generation.
While both generations heavily value influencers to drive discovery,
unlike star-struck millennials, 63 percent of Gen Z wants to hear from
peers and everyday folks, not celebrities (Forbes). Fortunately for you,
that means you won’t need to try to get Cristiano Ronaldo to wear
your association’s swag in an Instagram post.

Encourage or incentivize young members to promote your association

on Instagram. Ask younger members who attend your organization’s
conferences to take selfies and post them along with hashtags to their
own Instagram profile.

You can go so far as to have a selfie photo booth at your conferences

(complete with silly costume pieces of course!) to encourage
attendees to take photos and post them to Instagram.

Zara Zayne

Zara Quick run before work helps Zayne What an amazing night
focus the brain - love finding tips networking with fellow members of
to help my wellbeing on the @myassociation #myassocevent
@myassociations page #myassoc #associationsrule

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Once you have the right brand ambassadors on board, consider

expanding on this approach through content, multiple channels,
and retention initiatives.

Create an Instagram page for your association

- Make use of the Instagram Stories feature

- Consider paid advertising on Instagram

Create video testimonial content for your

organization’s website

Create a loyalty program to incentivize younger

members to become brand ambassadors and
increase retention

These are just some modern examples of how you can appeal to Gen
Z’s value for peer-to-peer recommendations/endorsements. In order
to truly attract and retain Gen Z you need to engage them through
their preferred channels. It’s time to evolve beyond the traditional,
basic member review posted on your website.

They want a personal connection with the brands they choose to

engage with. It falls on you to provide an engaging experience that
will meet their expectations.

15
Content Marketing
for Gen Z
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

To effectively grow your membership

with younger professionals you’ll need
to create dynamic and relevant content.

Most associations do well with creating useful content that help their
audience navigate their education and career.

However, more times than not associations limit themselves to

company blogs and articles. Research has found that company blogs
are the least relevant channel for Generation Z (Campaign Monitor).

When you consider the channels they frequent most, it makes sense
why blogs aren’t popular with them.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Instagram is one of their preferred social media channels to engage

with associations and content. Additionally, research across multiple
studies show that Gen Z use YouTube the most:

85% of Gen Z say they

use the platform. (Personify)

32% say they use YouTube

more than any other social
media site. (Personify)

72% say they use Instagram

placing it in second. (Personify)

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Instagram is a photo and video sharing

app, and YouTube is all video. It’s safe to
say that Gen Z are visual learners.

Look at your current content through the user

perspective. Factor in some of the key attributes of
this demographic that has been detailed so far:

• They’re not clear on the benefits of being a

member

• They value authentic connections with the

brands they engage with

• They value peer to peer recommendations/

endorsements

• They spend most of their time on visual heavy

social media channels

When you put the pieces together it paints the picture of what
direction your content should go in if you want to effectively engage
this demographic.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Gen Z Value
Authenticity

Gen Z need visually strong, clear, concise content on your

organization’s benefits. Since they highly value authenticity and
peer endorsements, create content spotlighting members.

Here’s a great example of content that resonates with Gen Z.

Leading anime streaming platform Crunchyroll created a short web

docuseries of fan chronicles. They spotlighted fans of anime who
use their platform, and shared their story of how anime has directly
impacted their lives, inspired and influenced their careers, etc.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

With such a niche audience, Crunchyroll was able to drive

engagement by appealing to the preferences of Gen Z - catered,
personalized, authentic content.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Identify younger members who are willing to share how your

organization has impacted their lives, their career, etc. Tell stories
that will resonate with Gen Z and make them feel connected to
your brand.

It’s not enough to simply list out the benefits of your association in a
social post. Gen Z want to see authentic content from actual members
on how they directly benefited from your association – or as they say,
content that shows your members “living their best life”.

When distributing content, be sure to tailor it to the channels

you’re publishing on. Gen Z expects native and catered content
that is perfectly crafted to each channel. Repurposing content will
likely continue to have its place, but it’s still important to create
unique content for all your channels.

Blog Post Title

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Having seamless integration into where Gen Z find their information

will provide your association with more credibility. When creating
content, it’s also important to think about how Gen Z is consuming it.

Mobile is the primary device Gen Z (and everyone else!) access

the internet, all the content you are creating needs to be optimized
for mobile.

Users need to be able to easily access content on their phones. If it

doesn’t load properly, they will lose patience and likely not rely on
your association’s site again for other relevant content.

The adage holds true for Gen Z - content is king. It’s key to creating an
authentic, personalized experience that meets their high expectations
- which begs the question…

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What Does
Personalization
Really Mean?
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

It’s much more than inserting a name

token in the subject line of an email.

Personalization is a marketing strategy driven by the organization -

Based on consumer data

It aims to create personalized, or ‘one-to-one’, communication

with a single consumer or consumer segment.

Personalization strategies can go from relatively simple campaigns,

like segmenting emails by city and inserting someone’s first name into
the text, to more sophisticated onsite personalization campaigns, to
complex multi-device operations.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

To resonate with Gen Z, you’ll need to go deep with personalization.

They spend up to 10 hours a day

engaging with content online. (Adobe)

They simply don’t know a time without smart devices. They’re exposed
to a dizzyingly high number of marketing messages, far too many to
ever register consciously, let alone remember or act on.

Personalization strategies should:

• Limit the number of marketing messages a consumer is exposed

to in the first place

• Stimulate the brain to recognize stand-out messages - i.e. those

most relevant to the user

Simply harvesting data isn’t enough for effective personalization. You

need to create unique individual customer journeys.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Data Driven Marketing

The fact is, you don’t have to work too hard to capture data on
Generation Z.

They’ve grown up in the hyper-personalized world of targeted

ads and social platforms. As a result, they are willing to trade privacy
for personalized experiences.

Over two in five (44 percent) will provide their personal data to enable
a more personalized experience over an anonymous one (Wordpress).

Additionally, 44 percent of Gen Z

would stop visiting a website if it
did not anticipate what they needed,
liked, or wanted (Wordpress).

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Given that young professionals are

willing to trade in their privacy,
you can imagine how high their
expectations are for personalized
engagement. Your association needs
to evolve the way it approaches the
customer experience.

Go beyond basic profile info - factor in activity logs, engagement

across your channels, engagement with specific content, and more, to
create a complete view of the member journey.

A broadened view will allow you to see what resonates with Gen Z so
you can personalize engagement.

Here are some examples on how you can use data to create
personalized experiences and resources.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Email Campaigns

Many associations make the mistake of having a one size fits all
newsletter for members, or drip campaigns to nurture prospective
members. Take the time to segment your data. Create personalized
email campaigns that share content based on user activity across
your website and social media channels.

The reality is Gen Z has unique preferences for engagement. A very

easy example is our earlier statistic stating that company blogs are the
least relevant channel for Gen Z to engage with content. If your nurture
campaign or newsletter is riddled with blog posts, then chances are
you won’t drive conversion from a younger audience. Creating an email
campaign that targets this demographic with visual content will have a
higher chance of driving engagement.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Events

Leveraging data from your Career Center can create unique

opportunities to provide value for your members at events.
Advanced Career Center technology can provide data on your
members’ seniority level, career interests, interest in industry
topics, etc. You can use this data to suggest networking or even
mentorship opportunities at events.

With Gen Z putting such high value in personal interactions,

provide value by connecting them with the right members to
help them advance their careers.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Career Development

It’s one of the top reasons people join associations in the first place.

Based on our Society Member Survey continued learning, professional

development resources, journals, and events are all leading benefits
that members seek from associations. 

I joined because...
Prof
Develession
o a
rking Reso pmen l
etwo urc t
es
N 51%
34%
Co arn
ns

Le 64%
nt ing
tio
en e
mm agu
da

C
inu
Reco Colle

r
27%

ed
on
e
Care

tent
Openings

Journal
32%

55%
Job

Co
mmunity
ion

51
%
E
iss

45 M ve%
red
nt
Sha
45% s
Networking

(Source: Society Member Survey)

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Advanced career center software provides a central hub for members

to engage with this type of content. It will also provide valuable
insight into the career interests of your audience. Your association will
gain the ability to target Gen Z and provide value through unique
solutions and resources.

One organization, through their knowledge and understanding

around the behaviors and needs of their niche audience, created a
new engagement tool in their Career Center.

Through their research, they validated that academics will be more

likely to re-locate if there is a suitable role in the same commutable
area available for their partner. We worked with them to develop a
feature known as Dual Search.  

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Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

As seen in this example, the search behavior has been

altered to support the visitor’s objective. There is more
than one search box with a clear and intuitive design
to guide the user through the search.

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Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Once they enter their information the results are

displayed on an interactive map, so they can see more
details about the job. Further down is the listing of
the relevant jobs that they can review and apply for.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

These examples are meant to help you get the ball rolling on
leveraging data to create unique, personalized experiences and
resources for Gen Z - and your wider community.

As your audience gets younger, data (and how creatively you use it)
will be essential to your association’s success.

35
Their Preferred
Channels: The Gen Z
Customer Journey
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

We’ve previously mentioned that Gen Z

stated Instagram is their preferred channel
for keeping up with associations. But,
that’s just a step in the member journey.

On YouTube, Gen Z is looking for something a little different: information.

Unlike past generations, Gen Z prefers to learn via video.

A YouTube video about industry trends or a member spotlight video

is unlikely to make millennials look twice, but Gen Z is hungry for
informative clips that will help them learn and develop.

However, keep in mind that Gen Z doesn’t spend much time on any single
video. With an eight second attention span, you need to make your video
content bite sized chunks of information. 

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Aside from Instagram, Gen Z considers Snapchat their social

home, with over half accessing it 11 or more times per day.
What differentiates the youngest generation on this platform
is that they often promote brands through their snaps.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Jump on the opportunity to drive engagement and brand awareness

for your association among Gen Z on Snapchat! Your events provide
the perfect opportunity to encourage younger attendees to take
selfies and share snaps promoting your organization’s conference.

Reaching Gen Z on Snapchat is all about making your events snappy

enough to share or you can even encourage attendees to create
unique Snapchat filters just for your event through a competition.

To some, Gen Z’s content and engagement habits may seem

contradictory: They’re spread across numerous platforms, yet united
in their thirst for brand advocacy. They turn to non-celebrity online
influencers, but they’re skeptical of baring themselves to the wider
world. Although they prefer video content, it’s hard for them to sit
through one for more than eight seconds. The truth is, Gen Z is a
product of the complicated world they grew up in, and you shouldn’t
expect their social habits to be simple, either.

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Gen Z and Cause
Marketing
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Gen Z consumers are cause-based

buyers and want the brands they
surround themselves with to reflect
their own beliefs and philosophies.

They want to know - what does

your association stand for?

Digital newsfeeds across various channels, keep them on the pulse

of world events more so than previous generations. Online networks
allow them to immediately react and engage in conversation about
world events and issues. And, they are eager to get involved in causes
that speak to them.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

As educated members, they look for content that is both creative

and credible. When choosing to invest time or money into an
organization, they want to know what makes your association
stand out from the rest and to ensure that your organization is
both interesting and transparent.

There is a massive opportunity to attract Gen Z members through

cause marketing and your organization’s volunteer opportunities.

Success in cause marketing often means motivating an audience

to take action, such as becoming a member, making a donation,
volunteering, or participating in an event. Using a dedicated cause
marketing campaign, you can reach and persuade Gen Z while
also raising awareness for your association and its commitment to
social responsibility.

However, be strategic in who you choose to partner with.

New research from DoSomething Strategic, a social impact consultancy,

found that across 88 tested brands — like Dove, Patagonia, Nike, DSW
and Axe an average of just 12% of respondents had any “top of mind”
knowledge of connections between brands they were familiar with
and a social cause which the brand supported.

An average of just 12%

of respondents had any
“top of mind” knowledge

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

The disconnect ties back into authenticity. Many brands support

causes simply because it’s a good strategy to drive growth with a
younger audience.

If Gen Z do not view the partnership as sincere and authentic it will

not resonate with their values. Cause marketing will come across
more genuine if the connection between the brand and the cause
makes sense.

Instead of seeing if corporate conglomerates can assist, look at the

niche companies you already have relationships with. Leverage those
relationships and convert them into cause-marketing partners, it will
bring authenticity to your message.

43
Gen Z and
Website UX
 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Time and again associations make the

same mistake with how their website is
designed. The homepage is filled with
text heavy sections highlighting multiple
pages across the website - available
courses, blog, industry news, etc.

High quality UX is expected by this segment of your audience.

Associations need to navigate away from text heavy, convoluted UX
to keep the attention of younger professionals. Your website is your
organization’s online home base. All of your marketing and sales
efforts point back to your website for the purpose of sharing in-depth
information on why a prospect should join or renew their membership.
It’s well documented that millennials have an average attention span
of 12 seconds, it’s even less for Generation Z at 8 seconds. If your
website layout is confusing and hard to navigate, you can lose younger
members in 8-12 seconds.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

What do they look

for in a Website?

Younger professionals expect a reliable website experience. A website’s

reliability is based on certain UX elements. Expectations of younger
professionals for reliable UX:

Load page time ideally less than 2 seconds

404 redirect pages for broken links

Seamless mobile responsive web design

Up to date contact information

Chat support service

Resources easily accessible through easy navigation

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Both millennials and Generation Z agree that

Amazon provides the best UX. Some of the
attributes of Amazon’s website that you
should consider integrating into your own
association website are:

• Prominent search bar in the navigation menu

• Content is presented in an open, easy-to-read

fashion

• Image heavy layout rather than text heavy

• Simple navigation menu

• Consistent format when displaying multiple

pieces of content

Take the time to audit your website and ensure it checks all the
boxes. Your website is an important resource for your community.
You need to provide quality UX to meet the expectations of younger
members. This exercise is well worth the time and effort as improved
UX will help increase traffic, decrease exit rate, and increase your
search engine ranking.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

Summary

Let’s face it, implementing some of these steps will take time. But the
rewards you’ll reap will make the extra effort worth it. Remember:

• Clearly communicate the benefits of your association

• Help them to establish authentic connections

with your organization through other members

• Create rich member testimonial content (video, interactive, etc.)

• Get on their social channels – Instagram, Snapchat

and YouTube

Implementing the strategies listed in this guide will help grow brand
awareness, boost engagement, and increase retention.

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 Madgex | A Complete Guide to Attracting and Retaining Gen Z Members

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