Best Practice: Moving Profiles to Prospects

Keeping your database clean is always a suggested best practice. However, not all profiles should be kept as a member profile. Have you had a member cancel and didn’t know what to do? Or maybe you have old lapsed members that you want to move out of the lapsed status but still keep the record of the profile? If you’d like to retain the profile to contact in the future, the best route is to move it to the Prospect Member Type. 

Did you know that your member profiles (pending, active, graced, and lapsed) all count towards your total number of member profiles allowed in your billing package with MC Professional? 

This guide can help you to find the best way to keep your database clean, manage cancelled members, and stay within your MC Professional billing package.

Glossary of Terms

Profiles: Your profiles in this category are considered to be member profiles no matter their status. (Statuses: pending, active, graced, and lapsed)

Prospect: A prospect profile is a non-member profile. It does not count towards your number of custom/ member profiles. They do not pay dues as they are treated as a non-member and cannot participate in member benefits. Often times Prospect profiles are retained to be able to communicate with those profiles and possibly use them for a membership drive in the future.

Where to see prospects:

• Settings > Account Settings
  
  (Note: To see if you are over your profile billing package limit See: Account Settings)

• Member Dashboard
  

Reasons Why You Would Want to Move Profiles to Prospects

There are several different scenarios on why you would want to move profiles to Prospects. Below are possible reasons:

• Members decided to not renew
• Members cancelled their membership
• Over your billing package profile limit
• Cleaning up historic lapsed members

How do I do it?

Moving a profile to the Prospect Member Type will depend on the structure of your member type.

• Individual Member Type
• Organizational Member Type
  
  

(Note: Before you move a profile to a Prospect, any open renewal invoices will be voided when you move the profile. This happens automatically. This can be an added benefit to clean up open invoices when you know a member is not going to renew.)

Individual Member Type

Moving profiles to Prospect can be done one of two ways:

• To Move One Profile at a Time From the Individual’s Profile: 

Once inside the member's profile, click ‘edit’ next to the Member Type. Use the drop-down to select ‘Prospect’ to move the profile. This is easy when you are moving just a few profiles at a time, or are already in the member's profile.

• To Move Multiple Profiles at Once:

From the Admin Home page, click Profile List in the top right corner. The Profile List area allows you to use the Advanced Search feature to filter your database to yield the results you are looking for. (See: Profile List for more details on how to do an advanced search and tag profiles) 

If you are cleaning up historic lapsed members, use the advanced search to filter by expiration dates. Below is an example of how to set up your search. 

Once you run your search you can tag the targeted profiles. When profiles are tagged the green actions bar will pop up below. Click ‘Actions’ > ‘Change Member Type’ > Use the drop-down to select ‘Prospect’.  

Tip: Once you tag profiles, they will remain tagged until you release them by clicking "Untag All", or utilize the "Untag Profiles After An Action" option.

Organizational Member Type

Unlink the linked user who you would like to move to Prospect: Prospects are structured like the Individual Member Types. Since the Organizational Structure has a relationship between the linked user (the person) and the organization, the first step is to break that relationship. 

Navigate to the Organization’s profile, then click on the ‘Linked Profiles’ tab. Find the linked profile you are wanting to move and click ‘unlink’. 

Once the profile has been unlinked, use your quick search at the top right of your screen to search for the member again. Once inside the member's profile, Click ‘edit’ next to the Member Type. Use the drop down to select ‘Prospect’ to move the profile. 

Note: Since this action is specific to each user, this will have to be done on an individual basis. 

What if the whole organization is cancelling or did not renew?

If this is the case then you will need to unlink each linked user and follow the steps above. The organizational record is not able to be converted to Prospect, therefore you will need to pull up the organization’s profile and delete the record. 

Note: deleted profiles will no longer show up in the member type, but are retained in an archived format and can be retrieved by filtering your advanced search.

How to Manage Prospects

How can I use my Prospect profiles?

Prospect profiles are a great way to retain profiles of people that you still want to stay in touch with. You can advertise your events to these profiles to increase registrant participation or target them for a membership drive in the future.

What if my now Prospect user wants to join membership again?

If the user that you moved to be a Prospect decides they want to re-join your membership, then the user will need to use their existing username and password associated with their prospect account to take the application form. They will not be able to renew, as they are no longer considered a member. As such, they will have to re-apply for membership. 

Other Resources

• August 2016 MCU: Best Practices for Online Member Acquisition (Video)
• Best Practices for Online Member Acquisition
• [The Highlight Reel] Best Practices for Membership Renewal Reminder Emails