By: Paula Gonzalez 

Engineers Australia needed to do two things: raise the visibility and credibility of the engineering profession in Australia and strengthen and grow its membership.

EA soon realized a new recruitment and retention campaign—called "strENGth"—was the way to get both done.

"Through strENGth, Engineers Australia seeks to remind members of the value a partnership with their professional body provides and empower, encourage, and support members to recruit their peers as members," says Noel Dos Santos, CAE, national manager of member growth. "Ensuring the strENGth message is front of mind is key to the success of this growth journey. strENGth gives voice to our value and relevance to harness the power of member referral."

Initial Elements of the Campaign

The strENGth campaign had two main objectives:

• Lead the way in creating a generation of chartered (i.e., certified) engineers.
  
• Grow EA's membership.
  

In order to accomplish these goals, EA knew it would need the buy-in and participation of key stakeholders, as well as a way to engage all members in the campaign. But the group also knew that to bring out true change it would need more than a member-get-a-member campaign.

EA began by test piloting its campaign in Victoria. It featured high-profile, local members (including the 2012 Young Australian of the Year) in videos calling on members to grow their profession and become leaders of the "Chartered Generation of Engineers."

"This cultural change drive challenged our members to embrace and celebrate their professionalism—their commitment to competency, currency, and ethics by becoming Chartered and broadcasting their Chartered Status … and empowers our young engineers to not wait to be told, but to be the creators of their profession," says Dos Santos.

EA also encouraged members to show their strENGth by

• wearing their membership pins
  
• including their membership in their email signature and business cards
  
• utilizing LinkedIn to show their membership status and spread the word
  
• introducing themselves as Chartered Engineers when meeting new people.
  

In addition to engaging the members in the campaign, EA also utilized a variety of marketing and communications channels, including social media, postcards, newsletters, articles, and a website.

Next Steps

After seeing success in Victoria, EA decided to take the strENGth campaign national.

This time, Engineers Australia featured senior Chartered leaders and CEOs of global organizations to act as official ambassadors of strENGth.

"These leaders stared down the barrel of a camera lens and shared their thoughts on what it means to be a member, and the importance of being Chartered, from both an individual and business perspective," says Dos Santos. "Our goal was for these ambassadors to inspire others to follow in their footsteps. The aim is for our members to tell this story."

The Results Are In

And tell it they did. Based on the strENGth campaign, Engineers Australia saw the following results:

• growth in new members, readmitting members, and renewing members
  
• more members working on becoming Chartered
  
• wide exposure of member videos, thanks to the ambassador organizations both sharing these videos and hosting them on their own websites, providing a collective reach of more than 300,000 customers
  
• an increase in members promoting their membership status in their email signatures and through social media platforms
  
• members wearing their member pin and proclaiming their membership status at industry meetings
  
• engagement of the profession's top leaders, who all accepted their invitation to be featured in the strENGth campaign within 24 hours
  
• becoming first-ever international recipient of the ASAE Gold Circle Award, in the member retention campaign category in 2014, as well as winning the President's Prize at Engineers Australia's 2013 National Excellence Awards, marking the first time in the award's history that a staff- and member-driven initiative has won the prize
  

According to Dos Santos, engaging the members and the profession's leaders was key to the campaign's success because it sparked many membership-related discussions within the engineering profession.

Paula Gonzalez is the director of member relations at the Produce Marketing Association. Email: pgonzalez@pma.com

Reprinted with permission. Copyright, ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership, April 2015, Washington, DC.