Association clients ask me to build their professional education, but their members won't pay. We've tried free webinars, a paid workshop, bundling into dues. Free fills seats and then members leave for the next free thing. Paid kills attendance and sponsors won't cover the gap. Do we treat CPD as retention and eat the cost, or push a paid line and accept we'll lose members? Wrong call and we're training non-renewers.
Charging members for CPD keeps backfiring. Keep it free?
Discussion
- Purpose
- Help association clients decide whether professional education should be a paid revenue line or a free retention tool.
3 replies
Audience: Public. Replies follow this audience.
0Yaw DarkoMarketing Strategist · self-paced courseGhana·Early Revenue·6d ago
Free webinars never convert for me either.
0Ngozi NwankwoSpeaker & Author · group programmeNigeria·Growing Team·6d ago
Don't sell to members. Sell to the association as a cohort programme and let them grant CPD hours. I did this with speaker bodies and it removed the attendance problem. We have an onboarding template if you want it.
0Darragh DoyleInstructional Designer · self-paced courseIreland·Scaling·6d ago
Selling to the association only moves the invoice. Members don't change behaviour unless they have skin in the game, and you lose the signal of who values it. I'd split it: core sessions free for members, assessment or certificate fee for the ones who need evidence for their CPD log. Run it as a cohort with a fixed deadline, not a drop-in. The math that matters isn't course revenue, it's renewal. If paid certificate takers renew at a better rate, charge there. If they don't, the free seats are doing the retention job. Test one paid tier before you make the whole programme paid.
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