01 / Recruit
Acquisition & campaigns
Bringing in members who renew — not just sign up.
Member acquisition →About us
A specialist membership marketing agency, and nothing else.
Membership Quest, also called Membership Quest, is a membership marketing and go-to-market agency founded by Dan Keegan. Our website is membership.quest.
We help membership organisations attract the right members and, the harder part, keep them.
Built for professional bodies, trade associations, membership charities, private members clubs, subscription businesses
What we do
- RECRUITAcquisition & campaigns
members who renew
- KEEPRetention & engagement
onboarding and year-round value
- DIRECTStrategy
direction, positioning, roadmap
- PROVEContent
value members feel all year
01/ what we do
Everything a membership needs to grow — and stay grown.
We work across the whole member lifecycle. Acquisition and campaigns bring the right members in; retention and engagement keep them; strategy sets the direction; content proves the value all year.
It’s one connected system, because a membership only compounds when the parts pull together.
The agency provides commissioned strategy and campaign delivery. The guides, surveys and calculators on this website are free resources that help a membership team define its problem before discussing paid support.
See the full picture in our membership marketing guide, or the individual services.
02 / Keep
Retention & engagement
Keeping members through onboarding, value and year-round engagement.
Member retention →03 / Direct
Strategy
The direction, positioning and roadmap a membership grows against.
Membership strategy →04 / Prove value
Content
Proving the value of membership in a way members feel all year.
Content marketing →The figures above are illustrative sector benchmarks — MGI 2026 (US survey), GlueUp’s published guidance and Harvard Business Review — not delivered client results.
02/ who we work with
Built for membership organisations.
If your organisation grows by attracting and keeping members, it’s who we’re built for — across professional, trade, charitable, private and subscription models.
Each model answers to a different register.
Charities in England and Wales sit on the Charity Commission’s register; employers’ associations and trade unions on the Certification Officer’s lists; and professional bodies whose subscriptions qualify for tax relief on HMRC’s List 3. We learn those rules before we market inside them.
171,777Main registered charities, England and Wales
36Employers’ associations on the Certification Officer’s list
Charity Commission register, 2 September 2026 · Certification Officer annual report 2025–26.
Who we help
- ProfessionalProfessional bodies →
- TradeTrade associations →
- CharitableMembership charities →
- PrivatePrivate members clubs →
- PrivateLuxury fitness clubs →
- SubscriptionSubscription businesses →
03/ how we work
Prove it first. Then build the plan.
New subscription-based startups and member clubs can start with an initial campaign on a free trial — so you see how we work before you commit. From there we shape an ongoing plan from £1,500/month, scoped to your goals.
Full detail on the pricing page.
- 01Start
Free-trial campaign
For new subscription startups and member clubs — an initial campaign that shows the approach in action.
- 02Plan
Scoped ongoing plan
A monthly plan from £1,500, built around your priorities across acquisition, retention and content.
- 03Measure
Measured to value
Reported against members won and kept, and the lifetime value behind them — reviewed and adjusted.
04/ what we believe
Four principles behind the work.
They’re also why the numbers on this site are always sourced and labelled — trust is a marketing asset, and we won’t spend yours on invented claims.
Principle 02 rests on a well-known finding: Bain & Company’s The Loyalty Effect reported that a 5% increase in customer retention increases profits by 25–95% (Bain; cross-industry, not membership data).
Principle 04 is also the rulebook. Marketers must hold documentary evidence for objective claims before publishing them (CAP Code rule 3.7), and fake or concealed incentivised reviews are a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (CMA guidance).
Principle 01
Specialist, not generalist
We do one thing: marketing for membership organisations. Every framework, benchmark and channel choice is built for how memberships actually grow — not borrowed from generic B2B or e-commerce.
Principle 02
Retention compounds
A point of renewal is worth more than a point of acquisition, because it repeats every year a member stays. We lead with retention and let it make every acquisition pound work harder.
Principle 03
Measure to lifetime value
Cheap sign-ups who churn in year one are a cost, not a win. We judge the work on the members it keeps and the lifetime value it builds, not on vanity metrics.
Principle 04
Only defensible claims
We don’t invent statistics or borrow other people’s results. The figures on this site are illustrative sector benchmarks from named sources, clearly labelled — never a promise of what we delivered.
05/ the founder
Founded and led by Dan Keegan.
Membership Quest is a founder-led practice. Dan Keegan started it to bring go-to-market rigour to a sector that too often gets generic marketing.
The difference: treating a membership not as a list to grow but as an economic engine to be understood, measured and compounded.
That means fewer buzzwords and more of the maths that matters: what a member is worth, where they leak, and which lever moves the number.
The maths that matters: do you know yours? · 0/3 in place
Each unticked line is where a first conversation starts.
“A membership isn’t a list to grow. It’s an economic engine — and it only compounds if you understand what a member is really worth.”
Written by Dan Keegan
15 minutes · video or phone
Book a free consultation.
Book a free consultation to talk through where your membership leaks and which lever moves it most. New subscription startups and member clubs can start on a free trial.
- 0115 minutes, video or phone
- 02Where your membership leaks
- 03The lever that moves it most
- 04A plain next step
Pick a day that suits · live availability
Work with us
Let’s grow your membership.
Ongoing plans from £1,500/month.
07/ sources
Every claim, and where it came from
Vendor and US sources are labelled as such.
- Marketing General Inc. — 2026 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report highlights (82% median renewal)Industry survey, US
- GlueUp — Member acquisition cost vs lifetime value (3:1)Vendor published guidance
- Harvard Business Review — The value of keeping the right customers (5–25×)Practitioner journal
- Bain & Company (Rigby, Reichheld & Dawson) — Winning customer loyalty is the key to a winning CRM strategy (25–95%, from The Loyalty Effect)Consultancy, cross-industry
- Committee of Advertising Practice (ASA) — CAP Code section 3: misleading advertising (rule 3.7, substantiation)Self-regulatory code, UK
- Competition and Markets Authority — Fake reviews guidance (CMA208), April 2025Regulator guidance, UK (DMCC Act 2024)
- Charity Commission for England and Wales — Register of charities: sector overview (2 Sep 2026)Regulator dataset, England and Wales
- Certification Officer — Annual report 2025–26 (lists of trade unions and employers’ associations)Regulator, UK
- HM Revenue & Customs — List 3: approved professional organisations and learned societiesGovernment, UK