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AMMC Report

Avalon
By AVALON | November 02, 2011 4:17 PM
Categories: Conferences/Events, Arts Fundraising
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A group of Avalon staffers headed to Philadelphia in late October for the American Museum Membership Conference (AMMC).  AMMC is always a fun and informative conference, and this year several of us presented some great sessions. We thought we’d also share with you some of the take-aways from the sessions we attended:
  • At a session called Fair Market Value Regulations presented by Deputy General Counsel of the Smithsonian Institution Marsha Shaines, we were reminded that member benefits have a real and tangible value – nonprofits need to check IRS rules about the value of benefits, and talk with their counsel to ensure compliance, as penalties do apply. An example is that if a museum offers a special evening admission to members, that access must be valued in line with general admission pricing, even though the benefit is not available to the general public. Food for thought.

  • If you’re unsure where to start with improving your marketing and fundraising programs, always start with an audit of your renewals. Most important, are you maximizing the number of efforts? You should mail renewals as long as you are making money. With renewals running smoothly, focus next on reinstating your 0-5 year lapsed members, to engage them as soon as they lapse. Finally, once renewals and reinstatements are working well, turn your attention to acquisition. Also, a reminder to all direct marketers: pay attention not just to the bottom line, but also to what the details in your data are telling you – for example, recent rising average gifts could be masking falling response rates, and this can spell trouble, especially in acquisition and reinstatement, where you want to get people in the door.

  • Avalon has long been a proponent of multi-channel integration, and now it’s a hot topic across the fundraising/marketing spectrum. A multi-channel approach is critical for donor engagement and retention. Direct mail is still king, but in Avalon’s experience, adding email campaigns that correspond to and mesh with your direct mail is a good place to start.

  • Of course, at a conference for museum membership managers the subject of on-site visitor conversion is always a big topic. You have a visitor standing right in front of you and you don’t want to lose the opportunity to sign up a new member in that moment. It’s critical to train staff and volunteers to promote membership on the spot, even offering incentives to motivate them to talk with visitors about membership. And once you’ve acquired email addresses and new members, engage them immediately with an email welcome series.

  • The Tapping Technology for Membership session covered QR (quick response) codes for on-site visitor engagement – just make sure your landing pages are mobile-optimized before launching this option. Other newer technologies museums are using include voice broadcasting or IVR (interactive voice recording) for renewals – for example, a phone recording that says, “If you want to renew, press 1 and talk to an operator.”  Both QR codes and voice broadcasting and IVR should be used in conjunction with other channels, not as a stand-alone approach.

  • There was a lot of discussion around group buying websites, like Groupon and Living Social.  Turns out, for museums, these sites are not all they’re cracked up to be.  A number of museums reported that they participated with one of these sites in a 50% discount deal for membership, but they are all now finding it very difficult to renew these members without offering them the same 50% discount.  As an example, The Newseum tested offering a 50% discount vs. a 10% discount on renewals and the results were staggering – about 90% responded to the 50% discount and only a handful responded to the 10% discount. These donors are also not giving to appeals. In one example, The Art Institute of Chicago reports that it sent an appeal to its 5,000 discount-site-acquired members and got zero responses! And when you factor in the cost of servicing these members, you’re likely losing money on them. Rather than offering discounted memberships, a better use of these website deals would be to offer discounted admission or special exhibition tickets and then rely on your on-site conversion and follow up welcome series to convert them to membership!

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