Join, Now Go! New Member Conversion Email Campaign
Goals & Strategy
The annual photography conference, Imaging USA, plays a critical role in PPA’s member retention strategy. First-year members who attend the conference are significantly more likely to remain engaged, renew membership, and utilize their benefits.
The goal of the Join, Now Go! campaign was to encourage new members to activate one of their most valuable benefits: a complimentary All-Access registration to Imaging USA (valued at $479).
To achieve this, I developed a six-email sequence sent over three weeks to a segmented audience of first year members. The campaign strategy focused on:
Value-forward messaging emphasizing the monetary benefit of the offer
On-brand, supportive and empathetic tone acknowledging economic uncertainty and positioning the conference as a business investment
Highly scannable copy and clear CTAs to reduce friction and drive action
Video integration featuring PPA leadership to build trust and personal connection
A/B subject line testing to optimize engagement and identify the strongest value proposition framing
Messaging evolved across the sequence, with later emails leaning more heavily into tangible benefits, shortened copy, and urgency as the event approached.
Email Performance
Audience Reach: 2,082 new members
Open Rate: 47.7%
Total Opens: 1,629
Unique Clicks: 27
Click Rate: 1.6%
Results
The campaign successfully generated strong engagement from a cold first-year member segment during a high-volume holiday email period.
Key outcomes:
Exceptional open rates compared to typical association email benchmarks
Increased awareness of a high-value member benefit
Movement of new members deeper into the Imaging USA conversion funnel
Actionable insights from subject line testing that informed future campaigns
This campaign supported PPA’s core objective: connecting new members to its annual conference, driving long-term retention and community engagement.
