Museum Membership Innovation: Unlocking Ideas for Audience Engagement and Sustainable Revenue

to drive sales and encourage an “investment” mindset, then bundling

When we think of marketing, the aspects related to promotion are usually what come to mind. Promotion includes all of the tools available to the museum to market its membership program, such as brochures, direct mail, social media, earned media, email marketing campaigns, and pay-per-click advertising. The brand strategy, messaging, creativity, and

six characteristics that provide important distinctions among member involvement as signified by their motivations, values, and needs, including (1) centrality and pleasure; (2) desire to learn; (3) escapism: spirituality and creativity; (4) sense of belonging and prestige; (5) physical; and (6) drivers of involvement.40

four core drivers of loyalty, including identity, satisfaction, trust, and commitment.

So, while not all long-term members feel a sense of connection to their museum, there is a subset of members who identify deeply with the organization and feel a strong sense of belonging through their membership. To ensure they are focused on building relationships with those members who are truly committed to the organization, museums will need t

Despite decades-old research into member retention that links participation in special interest groups to higher renewal rates, museums have not fully integrated this concept into their membership business model.23 Of those museums that do offer special interest groups, such programs are often promoted as an add-on to the traditional membership pro

Moreover, because research shows that a significant portion of visitors and members are unaware that museums are nonprofits, they may not equate purchasing a membership with making a donation at all. Instead, it is likely that many members think of their membership more in terms of a buy-to-give concept, similar to a for-profit social good product

Museums would be wise to do more to help transactional members understand that there is an important distinction between joining and giving.

Social norms can be a potent device in communicating the prosocial behavior of being a member. While inclusion of social norms messaging may seem like an obvious strategy in a nonprofit setting, countless museums miss out on using this influential technique when marketing membership. This is not the time to be humble or ambiguous. Messaging that ex