Services

Membership

We have found most membership programs exist without understanding the impact of pricing and benefit structures.  Too often, we see to much be given away at the “base” level membership which increases membership service costs, decreases participation in higher level memberships, and decreases full admission gate revenue.  Our membership services are designed to increase renewal, revenue, and development opportunities.

Membership Focus Groups & Survey

The Cincinnati Zoo conducted member focus groups and a member survey to identify ways in which to more effectively operate their membership program.  As a result of these projects, the Zoo “redesigned” their membership program which resulted in lower operating costs, higher conversion to upper level memberships, and increased revenues.

Membership Audit & Review

It is our experience that many membership programs are not currently maximizing revenue and development opportunities due to improperly designed membership pricing and benefit packages. Our membership audit and review is a two-phased approach used to first identify the amount of potential lost revenue via an audit, and second, model the economic impact and membership size of different pricing and benefit packaging strategies. This “real world” exercise has been conducted recently at the Seattle Aquarium and Miami MetroZoo and is currently being conducted by the Dallas Zoo. In each case, more than $350,000 in unrealized revenue was identified and early returns suggest this revenue will be fully realized.

APPROACH: Our two-phased approach begins with an audit of the membership program. The audit factors all costs related to membership including acquisition, renewal, membership service, benefit usage, and most importantly lost admission revenue. Upon completion of the audit, the amount of potential revenue will be identified. At this point, the project can stop or continue with the second phase based on the potential revenue gain.

Should the decision be made to continue with the second phase, we will conduct a survey of members to determine the impact of different pricing and benefit packages on renewal. Upon completion of the survey, we will model the impact of different strategies from an economic perspective, member upgrade perspective, and member size perspective. Additionally, we will Benchmark your membership program with peer membership programs and review and recommend specific acquisition and renewal strategies.

The Membership Audit & Review is forward thinking and may challenge many ideas about membership. We recommend presenting the results in-person to review the methodology and strategy behind the implications in order to ease implementation of the strategies. Our charges for the Audit are $5,000 and the Review (includes survey, model, benchmarking, acquisition and renewal strategies, and presentation) are $15,000.