Open Forum

Hello: Would anyone care to share their ideas and/or experiences in any recent successful membership marketing campaigns. Tools you used? Creative themes? Thanks!!

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John Goodroe
Director of Development
Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center
Mobile AL
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Hi John,

two years ago our marketing team introduced a reward for every staff member who convinced someone to join our "friends of" organization. The active member gets half of the first annual membership fee, the other half goes to a staff account. Individual membership is 50 € / year, so for each new member aquired the employee gets 25 €, while 25 € goes to the staff account. The staff account is made because not all employees have direct visitor contact, thus less of a chance to aquire new members while working. The staff account is used to fund activities like the Christmas party or parts of the annual staff day.

Last year, 70+ members joined our membership organization on the grounds of this model.

Best wishes

Angela

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Angela Kipp
Depotleiterin / Collections Manager
TECHNOSEUM
Mannheim, Germany
angela.kipp@museumsprojekte.de

Join the Regisrar Trek at
http://world.museumsprojekte.de

Original Message:
Sent: 06-20-2016 11:48 AM
From: John Goodroe
Subject: Membership Marketing

Hello: Would anyone care to share their ideas and/or experiences in any recent successful membership marketing campaigns. Tools you used? Creative themes? Thanks!!

------------------------------
John Goodroe
Director of Development
Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center
Mobile AL
------------------------------

We have a Corporate level membership, which is actually rather lame, but it is what it is.  Last year we made a major appeal to every member of the local Chamber of Commerce (over 600 members).  The letter stressed what could be done of every single C of C member joined.  While not resulting in an enormous influx of new Corporate memberships, we did increase that level threefold.  We plan another appeal, leaving out those who joined, but making sure they get their renewal notices with a special note about what they helped fund for the year.

A proposal I have been working on, based on other successful programs, is to expand the benefits - and cost - of corporate memberships.  The strategy is pretty straight-forward.  Corporate level memberships are based on a combination of number of employees and company revenue.  Costs of those memberships might range from $500 for a company with 5 or fewer employees to $10,000 for companies with 1,000 or more employees.  The benefits would be that every employee and immediate family could visit the museum as much as they wanted, get discounts (with ID) and the corporate leadership would get free use of events spaces for X number of hours per year, not including set up/take down and cleaning costs.  Programs like this have to be right sized for the communities they serve. 

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David Beard
Director
Museum of the Gulf Coast
Port Arthur TX

Original Message:
Sent: 06-20-2016 11:48 AM
From: John Goodroe
Subject: Membership Marketing

Hello: Would anyone care to share their ideas and/or experiences in any recent successful membership marketing campaigns. Tools you used? Creative themes? Thanks!!

------------------------------
John Goodroe
Director of Development
Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center
Mobile AL
------------------------------

One of the new key strategies put together by our Marketing and Membership Team to increase investments was to put together what we call a Face to Face engagement team within Museum Services with 70% of their work in membership and marketing while the other 30% was in Museum Services. It originally started out as a lead generation activity to acquire visitor contact, however, it has now become one-on-one conversations with relevant offices connected to "ask" campaigns.  This team has garnered close $200,000.00 in less than two years by visitor engagement (one-on-one conversations).  The program became so successful as part of our membership programs, the team now conducts at least 2 or 3 membership drives each year for the Museum with "engaging conversations" with our visitors.  I believe several Museums are now looking at this option.

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Dana Carroll
Director of Museum Services
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Washington DC

Original Message:
Sent: 06-20-2016 11:48 AM
From: John Goodroe
Subject: Membership Marketing

Hello: Would anyone care to share their ideas and/or experiences in any recent successful membership marketing campaigns. Tools you used? Creative themes? Thanks!!

------------------------------
John Goodroe
Director of Development
Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center
Mobile AL
------------------------------