With the move to online, it's increasingly important to offer flexible payment options to suit needs and circumstances. Often the most convenient way for ongoing payments is Direct Debit, and the Membership sector is no exception.
It’s the easiest way for Members to stay up to date with payments; they can pretty much forget it even exists. Payments get taken every month/year with no need for the member to do anything. Even with online payments by card, the member still needs to respond to renewal reminders and put their card details in.
It also saves valuable admin work chasing membership payments and frees up your time to increase engagement and grow your Membership base.
What you have to do if Direct Debit isn’t an option:
- Contact member to let them know a payment is due around renewal time
- If a member pays by bank transfer you will have to look for the payment in your bank, manually mark the member as paid and set their member status to active
- If a member pays by cheque you will have to wait for the cheque to clear, delaying receipt of the payment and again manually mark the member as paid and set their status to active
- If they don’t make payment you will have to manually de-activate their membership and chase them up again
This process takes up a lot of time to manage and plan to keep on top of the chases and payments.
What you have to do if Direct Debit is an option:
- An automatic reminder is sent to the member that payment will be taken
- Payment is automatically taken
- Your member database is automatically updated
Providers such as GoCardless even send out automated emails letting Members know when Direct Debits have been set up and cancelled, so they’re always in the loop.
This means Members get uninterrupted access to their Membership benefits year-round, without going through the hassle of updating payment preferences during renewal.
There’s also much less room for error; bank transfers going into the wrong account or cheques going missing in the post, to name a few.
Recording the data in CRM is a much smoother process as the member will automatically be marked as paid in the database. This gives the administrators peace of mind that the data is correct and hasn’t been marked as paid in error.
All in all, Direct Debit is by far the most convenient way to pay from everyone’s perspective.
Get in touch to see how we can include it in your Membership offering.
