Work
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Acquiring active members
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is responsible for ensuring a steady supply of qualified professionals is ready to meet the world’s need for engineers. Doing so depends in part on a healthy pipeline of talented individuals choosing to pursue professional registration.
We worked with the Institution to shape annual campaigns to recruit new student members on campuses worldwide, and crucially, to keep them engaged throughout their studies. These campaigns helped it to become one of the world’s fastest growing engineering institutions.
The challenge
The Institution had a compelling offer to university students, especially because membership is free for the duration of their studies. But that free membership also presented a challenge. “What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly”; because of the low barrier to entry, members weren’t necessarily engaging with the full spectrum of the Institution’s offering. These inactive members were then less likely to upgrade to paid membership upon graduation.
The Institution needed to earn the attention of students during busy freshers’ weeks, then inspire them to make the most of their membership from day one.
The work
To value something, first you need to understand it. We began by repackaging the student membership proposition in a way that made the benefits feel directly relevant to them, emphasising the direct correlation between how active students were, and the value they would experience.
Based on this proposition, we built a campaign that positioned the Institution as the home of mechanical engineering. We showed students their important place in the wider engineering family, how membership was ‘customisable’ to their needs, and how the benefits increased the more they were involved.
The campaign was executed across direct mail, email, telephone, social media, video, lectures and online – reaching students in 90 countries around the world.
The impact
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is now one of the fastest-growing professional engineering institutions in the world, with over 120,000 members in 140 countries, bolstered by an increase in student members.
Those student members became more engaged with the Institution. Against a backdrop of declining paid membership for other similar organisations, the Institution saw a year-on-year increase in paid members over the duration of the campaigns.
