As the perpetual state of Coronavirus uncertainty continues to loom over us, cultural organizations have never faced prolonged, unplanned, closures in the way we are now. Historically, the majority of closures are brief, lasting for a few days or even weeks. Yet with no end in sight, cultural organizations are facing an entirely new, unprecedented challenge.
For many organizations who depend on income from on-site purchases like admission tickets, special exhibitions, and gift shop sales, the membership department is one of the only sources of income at the moment. In a time, however, when members cannot physically come on-site, the question becomes, how do we reinforce the value of being a member?
This past Monday, over 700 membership and museum professionals joined Ash Harris (Vice President of Guest Experience @ San Antonio Zoo), Kelli Buchan (Director of Membership @ The Franklin Institute) and Dan Sullivan (Head of Partnerships @ Cuseum), as they discuss ways that you can continue to reinforce the value of your membership, even when members cannot visit on site.
Watch the full recording here.
Read the full transcript below:
Dan Sullivan:
Hello, everybody, thank you for being here today. Hope you're safe, healthy, finding ways to kind of sneak a little bit of sunshine into some of these stressful days. For those of you who are joining us for the first time, welcome, and for those who are repeat visitors thank you for joining us again. As many of you know, our team at Cuseum has really committed to providing as many resources as possible to help cultural organizations stay strong during these very strange and unusual times. For today, you're gonna hear some great insights from our panelists. But one of the greatest resources is going to be the thousand or so other community members who are watching live as well right now, so please feel free to utilize that chat functionality to communicate with one another over the next hour or so. Feel free to introduce yourself as well if you haven't already.
This webinar is part of our Membership Monday Series. It's a weekly webinar. It's held every Monday at 3:00 PM Eastern. It spotlights membership professionals in the cultural space who are really kind of leading the charge and pushing the envelope. So, we are planning to tackle a variety of membership-related challenges and for those who missed it last week, we discussed communicating with your members during Coronavirus. And we had two amazing guests, Jennifer Thomas from the St. Louis Art Museum, and Ingrid Van Haastrecht from the Dallas Museum of Art. That recording can be found on the Cuseum website under resources or webinars. And a recording of today's webinar will also be available on the website later today.
Two quick housekeeping things before we jump in. Cuseum has two other webinars coming up this week. The first one is called How To Craft Meaningful and Mindful Digital Content In the Age of Coronavirus. That's Wednesday at 2:00 PM Eastern Time. And I'm not sure who needs to hear this. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's you, but we all need a little bit of levity in our lives during these, you know, incredibly heavy times. So, Cuseum is launching a brand new weekly webinar series called MUSE, ZOOS, & CLUES: A Weekly Hour of Happiness Happenings and Cultural Trivia To End Your Week. The first one is going to be this Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern Time so mark your calendar. A link will be available shortly for that.
Cultural organizations have never faced prolonged, unplanned closures in the way that we are now. Historically, the majority of closures are brief, they last for a few days or even a few weeks. Yet, with no end in sight right now, cultural organizations are really facing an entirely new, unprecedented challenge. So for many organizations who depend on income from onsite purchases like admissions tickets, special exhibitions, gift shop sales, the membership departments are really one of the only sources of income at the moment. So, in a time, however, when members cannot physically come onsite, the question becomes how do we reinforce the value of being a member? So, I'm so excited to welcome our awesome panelists today. We have Ash Harris, the Vice President of Guest Experience at the San Antonio Zoo. And Kelli Buchan, the Director of Membership at the Franklin Institute. And Ash, Kelli, thank you so much for being here.
Ash Harris:
Thank you.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. So, to get us started, can you just tell us a little bit about yourselves and your organizations. Ash, maybe you can kick us off?
Ash Harris:
Sure. My name is Ash Harris. I'm the Vice President of Guest Experience for the San Antonio Zoo. The zoo is approximately 105 years old. We have approximately 1.2 million guests a year. So, we're a fairly large organization. We have approximately between 76 to 80,000 annual pass holders. That's what we call our members at the zoo. And if you put it in household numbers, we have approximately about 40,000 households that we service in our membership program. Our age range is from zero to 100. We have a large group of individuals that are passionate about what we do at the San Antonio Zoo. They love visiting, and seeing all the things we have to offer.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome, and Kelli.
Kelli Buchan:
I'm Kelli Buchan. I'm the Director of Membership at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. We are the city's science center. I have been at the museum closing on 16 years next month. The majority of which I've spent working on our membership department, but also kind of dabbling in corporate relations and sponsorship, group sales, and some other key areas of the museum. Our annual attendance tends to be between 750 and 850,000, people a year depending on exhibits and other things that are affecting attendance. We have on average between 25 and 30,000 member households, most of which are families or grandparents who are looking to bring their grandchildren to the museum. The museum itself is closing in on 200 years old. So, in 2024, we will celebrate our 200th anniversary, which is really exciting.
Dan Sullivan:
That's incredible. Again, thank you both for being here. What are some steps that you have both taken at your individual organizations, both in preparation for the impact of Coronavirus, but also in response?
Kelli Buchan:
Yeah. So, first, I do want to say that everything per normal that I'm going to say is not a membership effort more than it is an organizational-wide effort. Nothing that we can do or put out into the world is, is membership alone. So, really we lean on our marketing and our education and our leadership teams to help us form these things that we've been doing both in advance and in reaction to the Coronavirus. It happened really quickly it feels like from being something that was on the horizon to something that was right in front of our faces, and we needed to, you know, close, and do all those things fairly quickly I think.
Initially, one thing that we did was we stopped promoting... We stopped actively promoting visits to the museum. So, our communications changed from come visit us this Saturday for a blow it up weekend. It's gonna be so much fun. You're gonna meet thousands of people. To, you know, we're open. We are cleaning extra. We've got more hand sanitizer. We're here for you if you want to come here, but less active promotion than we would have seen in the past. We also sent a communication like that, and about 24 hours later, 30 hours later, we were announcing that we were closed, for the initial two week period.
So, then we upped our communication. We doubled our newsletter that was exclusive to members. Usually one every two weeks. We decided to do that every week. And also as we increased our communication to our general audience including all of our member prospects, and people who have been members in the past to be much more frequent communications as well. We also have for people who are renewing and joining, you know, that, that number of people has really gone down, but we're keeping at it. We're pushing it, and we are responding with personal emails thanking people for sticking with us during this challenging time when their typical benefits are not applicable right now.
Ash Harris:
The same thing applies for the San Antonio Zoo. This did happen fairly quickly for us as well. One day we were open with six, 7000 guests, and the next day we had to sit down as an executive team and make a decision to close our doors, because of the Coronavirus. Just like Kelli, we spent a lot of time co- trying to communicate to all of our guests because just like Kelli, we just can't talk to one group of people. It was important for us to communicate to everyone. So, we spent a lot of time trying to coordinate newsletters and trying to figure out what's next. What can we offer to all of our guests while the zoo is closed? So we spent time with our great marketing department, and our animal care specialists, and they were able to push out a blast and push out social media alerts more than we've done in the past.
Normally, we spend time doing photos, maybe three or four photos a day. And you may see a video from us once, maybe once every two weeks. We started to make an effort to push videos almost every four hours and try and create a guest experience at the zoo while guests are at home. So that was our main focus was how can we push our mission? How can we push our vision while the institution is closed? Most of you all may not know this, but a lot of zoos and aquariums are currently still open. Employees are still going into work to make sure that the animals are well taken care of. And we wanted our guests to know that. Even though the doors are closed for ticket sales, we still are open 24/7, seven days a week. And we still need people to still be interested in our organizations and to still talk about organization.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. When it comes to a membership, what are values that a member can get out of their membership and then how does that change when they're not able to visit? What value is retained there? Ash, why don't you start with this one?
Ash Harris:
That's a really good question. Just like every organization, a large value that members receive is that admission. For us after two general admission visits to the zoo, your membership is paid for, and that's big for a lot of people. Another value that a lot of our members receive is we are part of an organization called AZA. So, we have reciprocals to different AZA organizations, so our members can go to another AZA affiliate organization, and receive either free admission or a 50% off admission. So, those are some great benefits that our members participate in. We also offer food and beverage discounts. We offer discounts on memberships.
And then what we started in 2019 that has been successful for us was, we went from, four years ago the museum used to have family memberships. We went to single memberships, and then we started to create a tiered program as of 2019. So, depending on which level you are in our annual pass program you can get early admission into the zoo during the summers. You can get a bring a friend for free. You could have complimentary tickets, discounts for birthday parties or private events that we offer. You can receive a souvenir cup with a free drink, your first drink. And then we've also added, attractions like rides. So, we've added our carousel rides.
These are benefits that our, our members are used to now. With those being closed, those are things that they are not seeing and doing. So again, you know, are, for us we are a great organization that really focus heavily on our mission. And that's where the reason why our guests come to our zoo is because they like what we do. Our mission is to inspire people to love, engage, act, and protect the animals, and the places that they live through the understanding of education and conservation and animal care. So, what we want to do now while we're closed to show value to all of our members is show them what we really do when the zoo is closed while we are really focusing heavily on you, on our mission, and while we push our mission.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Kelli Buchan:
Similarly, visitation is the most valued benefit of membership. So, we've typically focused on the reasons to visit reinforcing what we know about that motivation from our members. The mission of the Franklin Institute is to inspire a passion for learning about science and technology. And I think a lot of times that is focused on what we do inside the building. But I think that it's really interesting that the Coronavirus, and the situation right now has really given us an opportunity to showcase what else we do that people aren't aware of. So, a lot of our digital content that we're relying on now is not new. It's just repurposed for a different audience, our members being one of those audiences.
So, as an example, we are a trusted source of science content in our community, and we have a chief bioscientist who has been following the Coronavirus, and is going on our social platforms to say, "Hey. Let me cut through all the science. Let me cut through the CNN. Let me cut through everything, and talk in layperson's terms so that we can understand what's going on and what we need to know." Even so much as, as far as bringing in her daughter on one of the Facebook discussions to say, "You know, our kids are listening. Your kids are listening. They're hearing the panic. They're hearing the news. They have questions of their own," and kind of bring it down to a children's level as well.
We've had a robust professional development program focusing on educators and how they can be more productive in their classrooms. Well, every parent in the world has just been initiated as an in-classroom teacher. So, taking some of those resources and putting them forward for parents to feel more comfortable, and to, you know, get, get more out of this or the most out of this when they've been given a hand that they weren't necessarily prepared for common core math as an example. I don't know that we've touched on that one, but I hear a lot of that's coming back into kids' vocabulary. And just realizing that some of our programs can be virtual. Some of our explosions, and our, our fun stuff that you can't do at home. You can watch us on social media doing that. And some things you can do at home, and we're focusing a lot on just making sure we can still be the fun experience that people expect from us.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. To dovetail on that question, Kelli, when people can't be onsite, you can't show them anything physically, or even show them a great experience. How, then, do you convey that value to them when they can't visit?
Kelli Buchan:
I think it's an ongoing process for sure. We are showing them, I think, some really great content. It's just getting used to watching it from home, and we're committed to once we are able to open to, you know, not missing a step and really, one, getting back to the onsite visits as people are comfortable and reinforcing that we're here when you're ready for us. When you're ready for us not when we're saying, "Hey, we're open everybody come." It's gonna take a while, but doing that. But hoping that also during this opportunity where the only thing we can do is virtual that we're cultivating something that we've never been able to focus on and cultivate before, which is, we know that visiting is a huge benefit, and a huge motivator. But in all honesty, most people don't visit more than three or four times a year. And so, bringing us to their homes when they have nothing but time to pay attention to what us and other organizations are here to present, I think is a really great opportunity that we should hopefully capitalize on.
Ash Harris:
And I, I agree with Kelli because right now is a great time, just like she said, is to, to develop great content, especially through video. And just having an audience right now to be able to watch the videos that we create will open up an opportunity for us once we open to connect with more people outside of the San Antonio area for us or for people who visit the San Antonio Zoo. So, we are pretty excited about that.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Another question would be, when it comes to communicating with members, nowadays, everybody is starting to post on social media. How do you stand out from the pack when, you know, most of your members are likely members at other organizations? They're likely getting content from a variety of different sources. How do you stand out from the pack?
Ash Harris:
That's a really good question. You just have to create these really good ideas in these wild moments. And for us, I'll give you a good example. We have a 60-year-old elephant that some of you may have read on CNN, or from our website that we decided to celebrate their birthday. For about six months, we've been dying to figure out what we are going to do for our elephant. We want to connect her with AARP. We were thinking of just these really cool, fun ideas to be able to celebrate a milestone for an elephant that has lived beyond her lifespan in the wild and at a zoo. So, again, just thinking of just great ideas, wow ideas, things that will just make you stand out and make you interesting is how you kind of stand out from the crowds and through groups.
Kelli Buchan:
Yeah, I mean, to some extent, we blow things up on a regular basis, right? So, we're already starting from a point of, some fun and standing out in different content that we can, that we can use. And I think while we're doing some serious content because we are a science center, and we have some experts that can lend to that, we're just, we're taking our favorite... You know, our educators are posting some of their favorite experiments, and they're videos that we've had access to, but people are more apt to pay attention to certain things right now. You know, our chief astronomer went out with his iPhone in his yard the other night, we had a clear night. He said, "Hey, everybody, this is like impromptu night skies that you would normally come to the museum for. And here's all the planets that you can see tonight with the naked eye if you just follow along with me." And so, there's a lot of content that we can just repurpose outside the museum with simple digital tools, and that's just what we're trying to do.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So, what role does community, as in the community of your members play when it comes to establishing value of a membership. Kelli, do you wanna start with that?
Kelli Buchan:
Sure. I mean, this is something I don't think we're experts at for sure. I think that there is a sense at the Franklin Institute if you grew up in Philadelphia, likely one of your first field trips, if not your first field trip was to the Franklin Institute. That's a bond that we can't, we can't shake. Not that we would want to, but people say, "We brought our kids here. We brought our grandkids here first." It's kind of through the, through generations, something that's standing, and something that people can relate to. I don't think that we've had a really great success story with our general membership base yet where we've gotten them to come together and be a force with us with the exception of knowing anecdotally, and, you know, our loyalty and how many members we've continued to have over the years. But we don't really have a great answer for how we could get them to be a force together. So, I'd be really interested to hear what others have done with that.
Ash Harris:
And likewise, I think our biggest challenge is that just like Kelli, we are an organization that everyone grew up going to. They know about the zoo and everyone goes to the zoo. That's our aquarium that's close to their home and they remember their first trip to it, and they take their children and their family to visit. We got a challenge too. We started a group a few years back, called the Zoomers, which is a young professional organization that's a membership organization that we wanted to kind of grow to be able to foster this connection with our mission and to be able to be like our ambassadors when they communicate to young professionals. That something that we're still working through. We're trying to figure out, how do we get the group of people together? How do we bring all of the young professionals in San Antonio to one place to be passionate about what we do and how do we train them to communicate with others to have them join them? So, that's one thing I would love to hear from other organizations as well.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. We have an interesting question from the audience here. So, this is from Abby Wilson. She asks, "How can you show the value in purchasing or renewing a membership when giving virtual tours and images that are available to the entire public, not just members only?"
Ash Harris:
That's a good question. And we talked about this on Friday. For us at San Antonio Zoo any guests that watch us on our website, any guests that look at us on Facebook or through any social media platform could potentially be a member. So, our overall goal is to communicate to as many people as possible to be able to encourage them to, again, love our mission, love our vision, love what we do. And by becoming a member, you're saying that you, you feel passionate and strong about it. So, I agree with you. I think it's hard to be able to when you have social media out there and you're communicating to a large group of people to be able to show value for membership, but the overall goal is we want to show value of the overall zoo. Everything we do, we want people to see that it's important. And we hope that because they see that's important, then they'll take the time and the money to become a member because they feel passionate about what they've seen and what we do.
Kelli Buchan:
Agreed. I mean, we're looking at any person that we can reach always as a potential member. I think we're, we're still learning. We're still three weeks into this, and we're adapting every day. So, now we're talking more about, okay, we, we've got our communication increased for all audiences. Are there programs that we can pilot with members only and just give members a first crack at this? Seeing us do what we do and helping us kind of reform it, refine it to, to be better for larger audiences? Are there virtual events that we're planning that we can open early for members, for example. And these are things that we're just talking about now, and we'll hopefully see kind of flash out in the immediate future, but also for longer-term use.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So, many of us in the cultural space are familiar with the research that Colleen Dilenschneider does. She has done some research that showed that millennials tend to derive more value from supporting an organization's mission rather than free admission or financial benefit of being a member. How do different membership groups or demographics approach their memberships differently at your respective organizations?
Ash Harris:
I think for us, it falls in line with that. It doesn't matter from age zero to 100. The majority of our members are really passionate about our mission. And to the point where we've actually changed our membership titles to fit that. We have supporters, advocates, and defenders. Just heavily focused on our mission. And with that said, I can see it now. When I go through the emails that guests send us, we have very few that ask, "What are you gonna do for us because you're closed?" You know, the things that we see is, way to go to the San Antonio Zoo for showing us Lucky's birthday. Way to go for still showing us that you all are advocates for animal care.
So, that's great for us. That makes things a lot easier for us. You know, obviously depending on the demographics, we've noticed that the younger demographics really want to focus heavily on the wild animals like lions and giraffes and things that are not near. And our older audience are really more specifically connected to, native species and native animals. So, we have recently started to create programs and activities for an older audience to be able to participate in the zoo when it comes to conservation research. When it comes to native animals and native plants.
So, I think that's a way for us to be able to cater to both the, the millennial group that we have now that pretty much comes to the zoo to see lions, tigers, and bears. And also be able to cater to our older audience that's interested in the plants that grow throughout the zoo, and interested in the native species of animals that we have in, inside of the zoo as well.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Kelli Buchan:
Yeah, I think Colleen's research is definitely valid, and the younger people are looking for that kind of connection to an institution. Ours also really are kind of like the nerds and the geeks in the awesome sense of the word, and just want to feel more comfortable at their science center when there's not a whole bunch of families running around. When it's not a normal Saturday. So, events and different programs that are 21+, or other ways to enjoy the museum and science when it's not overrun with families and kids is a big thing as well.
And that isn't translating honestly, as easily. We're still working on it. We're looking at some events that we could do. Whether it be a virtual happy hour with some of our scientists or other events that, that would be a ton of fun, but we just have to take time to figure it out. So, we're not exactly there yet. But we know that at least 17% of our membership base are people without children in the household. And so, we have to figure out how to make sure we're resonating with them just as much as all the other members.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And I guess this really comes down to being more of a question of how do you reframe the value of a membership for those older audiences when a financial incentive isn't necessarily there. So, next question: is there a way that you can leverage your member community as a mechanism to deliver additional value?
Ash Harris:
Absolutely, absolutely. And a good way now that we're trying, for the San Antonio Zoo, we're trying to work with local museums and other cultural institutions to be able to do member slots. So, a member slot for us is a, a time and a, a period within a month we can swap memberships. So, a membership for one other organization can come to our organization for free, and then vice versa. So, I think that's a great way to expand on the value because not only are your members able to visit your locations, but they're also able to experience others. And then the great thing about that is the individuals from the other institutions, once they come to your zoo, you have a, a captive audience that could eventually become members that you can email, you can sync communications to. So, I think it's very important for organizations now. Especially, what we're dealing with now to figure out ways to be able to extend the value by connecting with their counterparts within cultural institutions that are right next door to them.
Kelli Buchan:
That's a great idea. I think in the current climate, we're all reframing the value of memberships simply as a factor of everything going digital, which is our only option right now at this point, right? So for us, showcasing the professional developments, it typically would be siloed outside of membership, for the most part. Just as a factor of where it falls into the model of the business. Same with some of our events, and just taking things and putting them online and saying, "Hey, we're here. We've got all this content. And when this is over, we're still gonna have all this content, and you can be a part of it. You can support it, and you can have your visits back once we're able to open the doors and welcome you." But I think that's just the factor of where we are and what's happened. We're all reframing every single day in terms of being able to present that we're still here, even though we're not in a physical building.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And going right along with that, like, I mean, we've all been thrust into this situation. How do cultural organizations need to change their frame of mind around pushing the envelope and exploring experimentation?
Kelli Buchan:
I think it's the only thing to do. I mean, we have, at Franklin Institute we have a team. We're on Microsoft Teams now, which is new. We're all figuring that out as we go. But there's channels. We're literally, you know, what is the saying? Throwing spaghetti at the wall. It's like, there's no dumb ideas here. We're seeing things on everyone's social media channels. How can we reframe? Reuse some of those, partner with people, and say, "Hey, you know, we just saw today, a, a news article about a local science fair that had to do it via Zoom, and they didn't want to let the kids down so they did their science fair."
You know, and how can we reach out and how can we be a part of those things in whatever way we might be able to, to kind of just support other organizations as we all go through this. But I think it's a time for innovation when we all have time. We're all busy, but we're at home and nothing is normal. And so, just being as innovative and imaginative as we can, and, and not being afraid to, to say to your peers, like, "What about this? Is this stupid? Or is this a great idea?" Just put everything out there and see what sticks.
Dan Sullivan:
It's funny. I was talking to Brendan, who's our CEO. And I was like, "You know, I feel like for every great idea there's several bad ideas," but you just have to be willing to embrace the fact that, yeah, some of these ideas are not going to be good. But you know, if you put forth 10 or 20 ideas, and you take two of them away, you know, and, and you can act on those. And those end up being very impactful ideas, then yeah. The eight silly ideas, who cares? You know, you had two great ones and you acted on those ones. I feel very strongly about not being afraid to fail, and not being afraid of anybody saying that's really not a good idea because when you look at the way that ideas build in or form.
There's a great book called Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull, and he talks about his experience. I think it was at Disney or Pixar or one of those. And they would have these kind of idea brainstorms where they would start with the end goal, which is we want to, we want to accomplish this, anybody have any ideas? And they would just start throwing things back and forth. And then one person's idea didn't even belong to them by the end of that conversation because it starts as just kind of a little seed, and then a whole bunch of different people input onto that. And that's really how it builds, and it can kind of bloom into a much bigger, greater thing. And that's why brainstorming is so important in a non threatening environment where you have nothing to lose, and that book is called Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull.
Ash Harris:
I was going to agree with Kelli. Right now is the perfect time. Normally when we're in the hustle and bustle every day, we're constantly trying to keep things moving. Keep it moving, keep it moving, but right now because everything's closed, we have this opportunity to again, just like Kelli said, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, and great ideas come from that. You know, it's, the simple things can be the greatest things. So, right now I just encourage everyone. I have asked my team, we have a Google Doc that we use that we just, just every day I say any idea you have just throw it out there. Any ideas that you have that it's revenue-generating, put it on the list. Any ideas that you have that we can do for annual pass holders, put it on the list. Because we want to constantly innovate and create new ideas while we're closed.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So, what can we learn from this when we go to reopen our doors? Whenever this ends, whether it's next month or in, who knows? I don't even want to take a crack at it. But how is this going to change the way that we are defining member value?
Ash Harris:
Well, for me, I think it's going to change the way we think about the whole idea of members-only want to become members because of the admission value that they receive. I think it's totally changing the game. Now we have to provide ways to be able to attract people who may not... For example, I would love to have members who don't even live in San Antonio. Who just feel passionate about our mission, feel, feel passionate about everything we do. So, I think with the situation that we have now, the good news behind this is because of all the hard work that we're all working on, will then allow us to expand on just really great ideas. And it will allow us to expand on the ideas of memberships being not just siloed to people that live in our area or close, but like they could eventually be people that live in another country, in another state.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Kelli Buchan:
Yeah, I think for me, really just trying to make sure I'm in my frame of mind, and you know, I'm sharing this with all of my colleagues is that I don't know that we want it to go back to normal, so to speak. Like, this is a new normal, and it's something that we should embrace in terms of what we've found out. We have gone digital in ways that I don't think we've ever had the time to do, the time to think about. And we're kind of forced in the direction by the circumstance of all of this. And I think that it would be foolish to go back to normal where we just focus on what we can do for that visit, and instead, really come up with a hybrid model to showcase membership that even if it's a rainy day, and you don't feel like driving to the city, guess what? You can go on a portion of our website or follow us on social media for something fun to do on a rainy day at home.
And just really capitalize on what we're learning and push it forward in like I said, a hybrid model that allows us to be more than that visit because we are already. It's just, you know, getting people to see that and to respect it and to feel like, you know, what? I didn't visit the Franklin Institute this year, or I only visited once or twice, but I still got so much because we're expanding the platforms in which we're reaching out to people.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. So Kelli, another question for you. How do you think that this experience has forced you, your colleagues, or the Franklin Institute as a whole to kind of get out of your comfort zone a little bit?
Kelli Buchan:
You know, that is interesting because, again, when we talk about what we do on a daily basis. I mean, our education team wants to do anything that they can to have that wow effect, to make someone inspired about, you know, oh my gosh, how did that science experiment work? That was amazing. And I was able to do it in my kitchen or asking science educators to think outside the box is I mean, we don't even have to ask them, they're there already. So, it's just figuring out how to best present it in this way.
I think from a place that has always been a place-based organization, we've focused on those visits. We've focused on those field trips. We've focused on bringing people into the building. I think the biggest thing to take away is how this has shifted our focus. And I think we knew it before but maybe hadn't presented it in a way that made us say, "Wow, like we have so much that is not only to be enjoyed when you walk into the Franklin Institute." And I think just, like I said, moving forward with that, it's our biggest win that can come out of this.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And just to kind of, you know, dovetail on that, you know, we've talked with a lot of our customers that have had questions that primarily focus on a hands-on experience when you're on site. You know, how do you bring that home? And oftentimes, that revolves around, well, let's give some actionable advice that let's say a young family can bring home. These are some activities you can do. These are some things that your child is learning about right now. And here are some ways that you can continue that learning after you leave our institution. So, we have a ton of great questions from the audience. I don't know if we're going to get to them all. But let's start with a few of them.
So this is from Melanie Patterson at the New York Botanical Garden, and she asks, "Member extensions is a big question right now followed by how everyone is adjusting card fulfillments and renewal notices. How do we respond to requests for extensions and the like?"
Ash Harris:
So, we are being proactive about it. We have made a decision that any guests that either purchase or renew an annual pass, they will receive an extension. Currently our extension right now is for 15 months. Normally our annual passes are 12 months, but we've decided to extend it for 15 months. We have also made a decision once we reopen, we are planning on doing something special for our current members. Even the ones that decided to not renew in the month of March and April. We haven't made a decision on what that looks like, but we know we want to do something special for them as well.
As far as our renewal, everything we do is digital and you know, we are huge fans of Cuseum. You know, this is a push for I recommend you all use Cuseum for your digital annual passes. Everything is done through that. So, that's made things a lot easier for us to communicate and renew with our guests.
Dan Sullivan:
Thanks, Ash.
Ash Harris:
My pleasure.
Dan Sullivan:
It wasn't what I was looking for, but I appreciate it.
Kelli Buchan:
So, similarly, we are advertising for current people joining, on our website. It says, "Please join us now. We, you know, your support is crucial. Your membership will start officially when we reopen." Their membership does start immediately. But similarly for that we have made a decision to extend all memberships for the... to accommodate for the lost time available to, to visit. One of the big reasons because it's spring break. You know, we know that a huge amount of our members were planning to visit, whether it's this week or next week or two weeks ago when their kids were off... were scheduled to be off for a week. And so, we want to just make sure that, that's not a, a, a point of contention for us. Once we reopen, we will extend everybody, so it'll cover the people that were existing members, people that renewed while we were closed, and people that joined while we were closed.
For us, it's not impactful for fulfillment. When you renew all of our fulfillment is digital at this point. You get an email with a temporary card and when you come in for your visit, you scan that temporary card or just show us your ID and your permanent card print out. So, as people start to visit if they're requesting new cards with new expiration dates, we can fulfill that onsite. But we're not really planning actually to do anything in terms of mailing once we provide these extensions.
Ash Harris:
Same.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Someone from the WonderLab Museum of Science, Health and Technology asks, "When this is over and we do reopen, what if any value-added benefits have your institutions considered for members?" So, that would be beyond the extension of a membership that most museums are already doing.
Ash Harris:
That's a great question. When we reopen, we plan on doing something special, like a grand reopening for our members or a special members-only party. We want to do something, again, to re-energize the people who really want to see the zoo and are really passionate about our mission that we do at the zoo to be able to come and visit. So, that's one thing that we're working on. We're still talking about other ideas for our members. We just haven't really... Again, we're throwing things on the wall and seeing what sticks
Kelli Buchan:
Yeah, and I think for us to be perfectly honest, I don't know that we're there yet. I mean, I think that we are currently still trying to make the most of all of our digital platforms, and all of these. We don't know whether we're going to be open in four weeks or 10 weeks or 12 weeks. And we also know as a science center based on some more of Colleen's work, that people are going to be more comfortable in open air. They're going to be more comfortable in zoos and gardens and other outdoor venues before they're wanting to come to a hands-on science museum. So, our bounce back might be a little bit later, than some other organizations. And we have some exhibits there opening this summer that we don't necessarily want to on the first week that we're open say, "Hey, come for this amazing stuff." If people aren't comfortable if they're not there yet. So, I think, right now we're focused on meeting people where they are, and right now that's in those digital platforms, and that's where our main focus is.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. So, a few more questions from the audience here. Melanie Patterson has asked, how are you both handling memberships and renewals? And Suzanne has a similar question, are you still sending out renewal notifications or renewal notices?
Ash Harris:
Absolutely. Our system is automatic. So, the renewal notice occurs one month before the expiration date so that that will automatically happen for our annual pass holders. We're, we're just communicating to our annual pass holders to let them know that the zoo is still open. Unfortunately, it's not open to guests, but it's still open for employees to come to work. To be able to feed the animals and to maintain the zoo as is. So, we're still pushing that. We're still communicating that to our annual pass holders in hopes that they will decide to stay with us and renew with us.
Kelli Buchan:
Yes, I mean, I think we took a brief pause, and you know, we want people to renew. We want to ask them to renew, but initially, we just took a step back to say like this, everyone is in kind of a, an unknown and you know, we want to be respectful in our asking, and we want to make sure that we aren't being inconsiderate to people losing their jobs and people just worrying about basic needs as opposed to their science museum membership. So, we did take a brief break backing off a little bit. But we're, we are pushing forward with renewals. We are doing all digital right now with the exception of people who don't have email addresses for. So, we're mailing to a much smaller audience right now. But we are pushing forward. Right now really our, our renewals are our only big stream of income without tickets, and without some of the other things that would normally be going on at the museum. So, we're forging ahead with much, much altered messaging that's really focused similarly to our digital programs.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. Murray Stringer asks, "How are you handling member communications with folks that don't have emails? How do you remain inclusive throughout that? Especially for smaller organizations that don't have any admin staff going into the office, and they don't really have access to a lot of those print materials that they normally would."
Ash Harris:
So, we do our print materials offsite. So, all that is automatically processed and mailed offsite. So, our admin team, we don't have to worry about that as much. Actually our print material went out the week we closed. So, that's already out and done for us for the next three months. But we still plan on pushing that print out for our members. We're going to keep moving forward because we do anticipate reopening and we're hoping to reopen soon.
Kelli Buchan:
Similarly, we think that the people who we don't have email addresses for are really important people. They may be more mission-focused from the start. So, it really is hard when we don't have a really clear way to communicate with them. So, we do have access to the office if we need it. We've sent some very short run mailings out to folks and a few of us have some note cards at home. We can just pop them in our local mailboxes on our corners or whatnot. But also in the coming week, in two weeks, we're going to institute some calls to members starting with those who don't have emails to just say, "Hey, you know, we hope you're well. We hope you're healthy." And really interestingly, we're planning to use our development staff, but hoping that we can get some other, other members of the team to just say, "Hey, you're important to us. And we just want to call and say hi." And hope that, that builds some rapport for people that we can get on the phone, and just some long term driving loyalty.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Britney asks, "You both shared increasing your content and communication efforts. Is that for the general public, or like the people that follow you on social media, or is that exclusive initiatives to your members only? And if they are member-only content how are you restricting that or providing those experiences?"
Kelli Buchan:
Ours are both. We increased our member communication then we also increased our general, we call it our general interest. People who have bought tickets, who have opted in on our website, kind of a catch-all of the Franklin Institute universe. We've increased those efforts to weekly, and now people are getting more than one message a week from us, members or not. For some of the stuff that we have sent exclusively to members, we've just use unindexed pages. At times to drive people, members, to a specific URL that even if you went to Google and typed something in you wouldn't find it.
But overall, we're not that concerned with restricting access, from other people. If it's something that we can provide to anybody that's going to be of value we want to get it out there, and then it's our job to frame it. Whether as a member you're helping us provide this to not only you, but others or because you're not a member, and you've enjoyed this so much please consider supporting us.
Ash Harris:
I agree. We have done the same. We have decided that anything that we produce should go to everyone. Again, because we want anyone to become a member. So, everything that we have is open for any guests to be able to see. We don't have any restrictions on our material as of now.
Dan Sullivan:
And another question, this is from Kelsey. How have you approached members and exploring donations beyond the membership renewal? Are your members already used to donating in addition to their membership? How are you kind of navigating those waters?
Ash Harris:
So, for us, we do a lot of donations. We have donations at our ticket window when we usually are open for rounding up. So, we offer the same opportunity online. So, when any of our guests go to our website, even if it's just to renew a membership or purchase a membership, they have an opportunity to donate. So, one of our biggest pushes is because we are still open, we have an emergency fund that we're focusing on because we still have to take care of the animals that live on the property. So, the first thing you see on our website is a call to action for the emergency fund. And that's been our biggest key to focus on, and on specific websites or specific links that you go to within our website, it will automatically pop up that same message. So, that's been our way to communicate. This is something that we really want guests to look at is our emergency fund.
And then we also advertise different things. Like we have the Adopt Animal Program, which allows guests the opportunity to adopt an animal onsite and receive a cute little plush, and a bio fact card that we are now mailing to our guests. In the past, they normally came and picked those up at the zoo, but we've decided we're going to mail those and ship those out. But at that time, we also talk about the importance of donating when they purchase that item as well. So, that's where we kind of stealthily tried to dive into putting the donation tabs on all the products that we have that we ship out as well as on our main page of our website.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Oh, we've got a difficult question here from Nancy Isaac at the Chicago Botanical Garden, and it's a two-part question. So first of all, how do you handle members and donors that feel you should be open because you're an outdoor living museum? That's part one. And part two is what do you say to those donors and members who tell you that they're going to drop their membership since you're not open? Any thoughts on that?
Ash Harris:
Wow. That's a really hard question. So, as an organization, we decided that we were going to focus on abiding by our city laws, state laws, and federal mandates when it comes to closing our zoo. You know, the main thing that we want to focus on is, you know, we're all about the guest’s experience, make sure that the guests have the best experience when they come to the zoo, all the way through their visit to the zoo, and when they leave. And we just felt like it would be hazardous to us if we decided to open up the zoo. And if something would happen, God forbid something would happen to anyone in the zoo. So, we understand people are very frustrated because we are an outdoor facility, and they want us to be open. And you know, we respect anyone if they feel like, because we are close, they want to no longer support the zoo.
I usually try to call those individuals and have a conversation with them. And again, push the importance of our mission. We try to encourage all of our members to become members because they want to focus on LEAP, you know, love, engage, act, and protect the animals that we care for. So, I respect their decision. If they decide that they don't want to renew their memberships, you know, I'll let them go. But the important thing for us is to make sure that anyone and everyone, including our animals are safe. And if that means closing our zoo to the public, so be it.
Dan Sullivan:
Kelli, you have any thoughts on that?
Kelli Buchan:
I mean, we're, we're not an open-air facility. So, I don't think we've actually gotten any of those. But at the end of the day, if, if we heard anything like that, we're also a science-based organization. And I think that we could pretty easily just impart on people that, you know, their safety and our staff safety and everyone involved in being open is of utmost importance to us. And, again, if they don't want to be members because we closed during a pandemic then there's not much we can do except to explain our point and hope that they understand. Then if they don't come back immediately, maybe they'll have a change of heart in the future.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Another question is are either of your organizations actively fundraising right now and/or recruiting new members?
Kelli Buchan:
So, we are, I guess both. We had the fortune or misfortune of dropping 200,000 pieces into households for an acquisition piece just days before we closed during this and because of the immersive nature of some of our upcoming exhibits actually closed an exhibit early, and will not be bringing one in that was scheduled for May if we're, if we're open or not. So, we're going to have to deal with that as we open and as people find out that some of the stuff that was advertised is not going on as planned. But we are communicating that with people as those mails come, a, as the mail comes back in. We're pulling those aside separately to say, "Hey, we just want to let you know that things have changed. We hope you're still interested in becoming a member." And then our renewals are moving forward.
Ash Harris:
Same here. You know, our biggest focus as far as fundraising is concerned is our emergency fund. That's key for us right now, and that's something that we're constantly talking about and doing. So, if you look on our social media platform, you'll hear and see that. We did decide to drop here and there just the pure fact that we have discount annual passes, and that we've extended the annual pass term from 12 months to 15 months. But again, that's been very low key and we've kept that very simple.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. One last two-part question from the audience. How have your open rates and click-through rates been affected since you've been emailing more frequently several times a week? How is your member communication different from the general public?
Kelli Buchan:
I haven't seen it in the past week as we continue to ramp up. Initially, we'd always expect a lesser unsubscribed rate from our member database than our larger database, but we didn't see any huge shifts because if we had we would have taken that into consideration when thinking about really upping communications because we don't want to see people drop off. So, I think our opens are around the same. I mean, we're still competing with a lot of other messaging in people's inboxes. So, I don't think we've seen a huge increase in opens, but we also haven't seen a huge increase in unsubscribes from either our member audience or our general audience.
Ash Harris:
For us, our open rate has remained the same. Because the information that we're sending, again, it's not advertising a sale. It's not talking about our future exhibits. It's really talking about how to stay positive in this time, and how to, to look at furry animals to get you through your day. So, our open rate has been pretty nice because of that because we intentionally communicate to our guests to be able to make them feel good about their day, and also feel good about the animals that we take care of.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. So, I've got one more question for you. Just before I get to that, a couple quick things. So, a recording of this webinar is going to be available later today on the Cuseum website, as well as a link to our shared, Google Community document with Coronavirus resources. And Ash, Kelli, you've been so great. I mean, incredible insight, obviously, with the number of questions that the community has asked and the chat communication just clearly people really finding a lot of value in this.
So, a reminder, Cuseum's got two more webinars this week. How To Craft Meaningful and Mindful Digital Content In the Age of Coronavirus. That's Wednesday at two o'clock. We're also launching MUSE, ZOOS, & CLUES, which is a weekly hour of happiness happenings and cultural trivia, museum trivia, zoo trivia, and that's going to be Friday at four o'clock Eastern Time. Thanks, everyone for coming.
Last question before you go, what is one big takeaway Kelli, Ash, that you would want each person watching to be able to consider and bring back to their respective organization?
Ash Harris:
I think the biggest takeaway, just like Kelli brought up, is that no idea is a bad idea. Anything you do is for the success of your organization. Just consider that. And definitely I highly encourage it. I know I've been reading some of the remarks. Definitely consider member swaps, especially for local organizations that's close by. Communicate to those organizations to figure out a great time for your members and their members to switch and visit your location and you visit theirs.
Kelli Buchan:
I agree. I think that's the biggest takeaway. I mean, we're all learning and looking at other people's stuff and sharing with your colleagues. I know here in Philadelphia, we have taken our quarterly membership forum of the region where we all get together quarterly, and, and taken that to Zoom every Friday. And we're just kind of in this together and sharing and, and each city and each region is going through this a little bit differently as you know, the spread and, and everything is different everywhere. So, I think just sticking together like we normally would, or even more than we normally would is really important because the ideas that are working at art museums can be shifted and work at science centers or at gardens or zoos. So, not just no idea inside our organization, but no idea that anybody is putting out is not worth considering for our own organizations.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Well, thank you, everybody, for coming. If you have an idea that you'd like to see on a webinar like this, shoot us a note. You can email us, hello@cuseum.com. You can email me personally, dan@cuseum.com or you can send us a message on the millions of channels that we're available on. So, thank you all. Thanks to everybody, for being here. Hopefully, you got some value out of this. Thank you again, Kelli. Thank you again, Ash, and I hope everybody stays safe and healthy.
Looking for more information? Check out our coronavirus resources page.