After almost two months of coronavirus closures, many museums and cultural organizations are preparing to welcome visitors and members back. However, while organizations may be reopening, many are doing so in a graduated way and facing new challenges. In particular, many are realizing that tourism will be down for quite some time, which has the potential to profoundly affect admissions and membership revenue. At the same time, cultural organizations may have renewed appeal to local audiences as the world embraces a “stay local” or “staycation” mentality for the foreseeable future.
Last Monday, 1,600 people joined Dan Sullivan (Head of Growth and Partnerships @ Cuseum), Tim O’Connell (Director of Membership & Annual Giving @ North Carolina Museum of Art), Julie Knight (Director of Membership @ San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), Sewon Barrera (Digital Marketing Manager @ Exploratorium) & Daniel Vincent (Director of Membership @ Trustees of Reservations) as they discussed shifts in audiences and membership marketing strategy in light of coronavirus. The webinar addressed how organizations can reorient the value propositions of membership and double down on local audience development to survive and thrive in the coronavirus era.
Watch the full recording here.
Read the full transcript below.
Dan Sullivan:
Hey, everybody. My name is Dan Sullivan. I'm the Head of Growth and Partnerships here at Cuseum, and I'm really excited for today's conversation. Hopefully, everyone finds themselves safe and healthy. To all of our first time watchers, I just want to say a welcome, and for everybody that's been here before, thank you, again, for being here. We're going to have over 1,500 people joining us today watching live, so if you're one of them, please feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat. Another thing, you can ask questions using the Q&A functionality, and we'll try to get to as many as we possibly can. If you see a question that's already been asked, feel free to give it a thumbs up, and that will allow us to prioritize the more pressing questions. So, again, super glad you're all here. Want to wish everybody another safe and healthy week.
And, a quick housekeeping item here, Cuseum has really been committed to providing as many possible resources throughout the entire Coronavirus pandemic, and we're going to continue to adjust those resources to make sure that they're as timely as possible for you. So recordings of all of our past webinars are available on the Cuseum website and continuing that trend, we're going to have another webinar this Wednesday called Exploring The Future of Museums in The Era of Coronavirus. Our registration link to that can be found on the Cuseum website, as well. All right. So let's get into this.
So after almost two months of Coronavirus closures, many museums and cultural organizations are preparing to welcome their visitors, and their members back. It's really exciting. However, while organizations might be reopening, many are doing so in a graduated way, and they're facing some new challenges, and specifically, a lot of them are realizing that tourism is going to be down for quite some time, and that has a potentially profound impact on admissions and membership, revenues.
At the same time, cultural organizations may have renewed appeal to local audiences as the world embraces this stay local or a staycation mentality for the foreseeable future. Listen to this panelist lineup for today. We have Tim O'Connell, the Director of Membership and Annual Giving at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Julie Knight, the Director of Membership at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, SF MoMA, Sewon Barrera, the Digital Marketing Manager at Exploratorium, and Daniel Vincent, the Director of Membership at Trustees of Reservations. We're going to talk a lot about shifts in audiences, and membership marketing strategy in light of Coronavirus. So excited that all of our panelists are here. Thank you for being here, and let's start off with some quick introductions. We'll go around the room. So, Sewon, do you want to kick us off? Give us a brief overview of your role, and your organization.
Sewon Barrera:
Of course. Oh. Nice to meet you, everyone, virtually. My name is Sewon Chung Barrera and I'm the Digital Marketing Manager at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Exploratorium is a San Francisco based museum of art, science, and human perception. We opened in 1969 by physicist, Frank Oppenheimer. In addition to being a museum, we are also a professional development home for teachers, as well as a global exhibit design trailblazer, and our mission is to transform learning worldwide.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. And, Julie.
Julie Knight:
Hi. I'm Julie Knight, I'm the Director of Membership at SF MoMA in San Francisco. Yes, we are just like we sound in a museum of modern and contemporary art, large museums. Today is our fourth anniversary from our, for our new building, with missing all that building and that red.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. For sure. And, Tim.
Tim O'Connell:
I'm Tim O'Connell, Director of Membership and Annual Giving at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Our museum includes the museum parks. We have a 164 acre museum park. We feel very fortunate to have that right now because that has been our open space and have been able to enjoy that as well. But fortunate to be there and to have the resources we do.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. And last but not least, Daniel.
Daniel Vincent:
Hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Vinson. I'm the Director of Membership at the Trustees, formerly known as the Trustees of Reservations. We are one of America's oldest conservation organizations, the largest one in Massachusetts where we're based. We're a statewide nonprofit, private. We have 118 sites across Massachusetts, ranging from open spaces, beaches, working farms, historic house museums. We even have a cross country ski facility, a couple of campgrounds, so, it is sort of part of our mission to try to be all things to all people all the time and we're struggling with some of that right now. But our members are very loyal and very vocal and we are dealing with reopening some of our sites this very week.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. And continuing that trend, I was just going to ask, what are some of your plans for reopening? Are you planning anything special to welcome back your members? What does that look like? Danny, you want to kick us off?
Daniel Vincent:
Sure. Well that's sort of a tricky question because it changes every day. What we're planning today for possibly tomorrow's reopening on some of our sites is different from what we were planning a week ago for those same sites. We're following the order of Governor Charlie Baker and his recommendations throughout and we have 118 sites. Not all of those are gated. We have a lot of just sort of open spaces, but out of our gated properties, we opened some of them a few weeks ago, to sort of passive recreation. Now what we're looking at is reopening our more formal sites with formal admission gates with a time to ticketing system. Something we have not done before to this degree and, again, thinking about it in a phased way. So can we open up our house museums just outside? The insides, , will be closed for the foreseeable future. What do we do with our beaches? What, what do we do with some of our other cultural properties? Each of our sites is unique and poses different challenges and opportunities.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And time ticketing. That's been a big topic of conversation on this webinar series. In regards to reopening, Julie, can you talk a little bit about what your plans are?
Julie Knight:
Sure. We are still hoping that we can open in July, but we literally have heard nothing yet. Even about just getting in beyond a very skeleton crew for mail and operations. We haven't heard anything about actually getting into our building, but we're still crossing our fingers and hoping that we can have a July opening. We also originally were looking at time ticketing and I think that is very sound for, basically, training people to come in in a paced way, but we actually currently right now are leaning away from time ticketing. We did time to get in when we opened our building four years ago and we only needed to do it for a few months and realized that, hey, the cadence is paused enough anyway and we have enough room in our building that once we sort of get people in the initial gate that there's enough to intersperse. So we are actually not looking at time ticketing right now, but we are looking at doing some members only days to go ahead and launch as a thank you to members and to also just they're a really good audience for us to experiment with and understand what the building will look like when we reopen.
There are some people on staff. We are a very progressive museum and there are some people on staff that are very interested in doing free days and I can't lie to you, I'm a little nervous about that just because when we've had free days before people come out of the woodwork and I don't know, I don't know that I am comfortable having our staff have that challenge, but it could be that we will do that after the member days. I think we're all just sort of trying to understand what that will look like. We are on Tessitura so if anybody wants to know that time ticketing has worked for us very well before, on Tessitura before and pushing people to online sales or even onsite buying on their phone. So that's a great thing too because we're looking at as contactless as possible experience when they come through the door
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Tim, you want to talk a little bit about your reopening plans? Anything special that you've got in mind?
Tim O'Connell:
Sure. We are in a phased plan right now with the state so we are just in phase one. Phase two, if things go well that may be coming in the next week or so, But that's all to be determined. Our plan is to go time ticketing. We want to do it in half an hour. The plans are based upon the occupancy of rates of what the building typically can hold and it's one quarter of that. So we're operating under that paradigm and we've repositioned it in our frontline member and visitor experience staff have been part of that is looking at the new flow to the building to make sure that we've got that good flow to the building. And that they are also in safe positions where our current setup is not ideal for social distancing, but we're reconfiguring it a little bit so they can remain safe as well.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And, Sewon, can you talk a little bit about your plans?
Sewon Barrera:
Absolutely. As Julie mentioned, San Francisco is a little bit slower to reopen, so I believe none of the museums in our area except for and such have opening dates set. So, on that note, we are brainstorming and making evolving plans. Definitely looking at time ticketing as one option as well as really pushing for online ticketing. But with acknowledgement that in San Francisco, cashless businesses are illegal. So we do have to think about how we would safely receive cash payments for tickets and things like that. And then we're also thinking about members only hours as well as making sure that our online programming is as robust as ever knowing that some members will maybe not feel so comfortable coming in even if the city reopens.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, it's definitely going to be a bit of a balancing act. So let's talk a little bit about the the demographic makeup or some of, where a lot of your visitors and members are coming from. Obviously, a big theme of today's webinar is really going to be focused on how are, how are we going to shift our focus to a much more local centric visitor or member. Sewon, do you want to, do you want to start by talking a little bit about that? What does your visitor and member base look like as far as where they're coming from and have you given any thought to how you might be able to respond to some of those decreases in tourism?
Sewon Barrera:
Yeah. Absolutely, Dan. So, our members are predominantly local to the California Bay Area. Around 20 to 25% of our visitors tend to be tourism related, domestic and international. I'm sure Julie might touch upon this too, but San Francisco actually saw a decrease in tourism last summer, which impacted all the museums in our attendance numbers. So, as a result, we actually already shifted our tourism dollars to be more locally focused. The stars are aligning in some ways, the silver lining in all of this. So along with that, even with our digital content promotions, we are specifically serving our local audiences, for the most part. So I think that shift has already begun as of last year. So I think domestic visitors, local visitors will continue to be a huge focus area for us.
Dan Sullivan:
Julie, can you talk a little bit about that? Obviously, you're also in San Francisco. Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen historically and how you plan to adjust that a little bit?
Julie Knight:
Yeah. Absolutely. And just to add on to what Sewon said for SFMoMA, tourists can make up 50% of our audiences. So when you have close to a million people coming in, if all of a sudden half of those aren't showing up, that's a real concern. So yes, we have, as I'm sure everyone has, we're all working on our budgets right now because without those attendees showing up we're really quite worried about the next fiscal year. As she had mentioned as well, we definitely are looking at marketing more to our local audience, a staycation, rediscovering your backyard, that thing. Go where you're most comfortable. Come back again.
And so in conjunction with our marketing department and they're launching that campaign, we are comfortably moving forward with an acquisition campaign as well that hopefully will launch around the same time as we reopen. And then obviously a reactivation campaign as well for people that may have dropped during this time of closure saying like, hey, we're open again. We have all these safety measures in place for both you and our staff. Please come in and feel comfortable and make this your art base. So we're all trying to do that as much as possible.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you. And, Daniel, Can you talk a little bit about this? Obviously you're fairly local-centric already, but we'd love to hear how you're, how you're adjusting.
Daniel Vincent:
That's right. Well, most of our members live in and around Massachusetts or the broader New England area and we have some traffic across our borders, but largely we are able to promote this stay local message to the extent that you're staying local in Massachusetts. Now, what's a little bit complicated for us is that with our beaches, especially on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, we do have a lot of out of state visitors, some with second homes or who have vacations. Many of them have the same week every year for their vacations. And so we're looking into how we can market to them so that they have a safe experience when we reopen. Then our large beaches in and around the Boston area are heavily populated in the best of times. And so we were challenged by inventing this time ticketing approach when it's really just been that members and others, but predominantly members who have that level of membership can access our beaches for free. So they're sort of accustomed to that.
We want to make sure that we're taking care of their needs, but we don't see a big push to normally to sort of get a lot of out-of-state traffic. So our state, say local message is really regional, and I'd say about two thirds or more of our members are within five or 10 miles of a Trustee's property that they can visit. So we're encouraging them to stay local. And then, again introducing time ticketing for some of our more popular larger sites that draw from a larger geographic area.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. And Tim?
Tim O'Connell:
Yes. We, comparatively to San Francisco, are not a heavy tourism base in the sense that people come internationally. We do have a pretty good percentage, but I would say it's more in the teens versus 50%. So from that standpoint, what we're really looking at is comfort levels for folks and how far, what used to be an adventure. So our folks might have wanted to travel to San Francisco for their adventure. Maybe I'm going to go five miles from where I live and that's good. I'm going to go to the museum. So we're really thinking, in that terms, on comfort levels and as Sewon was saying about just even on the digital component. So as we're rolling out, we're trying to figure out how much of this can we do with the experience and how are we inclusive of the folks that aren't even quite ready for that experience, an in person experience and combining those two efforts together. So we're definitely going to go at this gently and then learn as we go just like everybody else.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. For sure. And I think that segues nicely into, let's talk a little bit about marketing strategy, membership marketing specifically. Are you changing the way that you're approaching that to be more locally focused? To be more staycation focused and if you are changing that, what does that look like? What are you changing? Can you talk a little bit more nitty gritty on that? And then additionally, are there things that you're thinking about doing that you haven't quite initiated yet? What are some of the plans for the future as far as shifting your marketing strategy? Tim, you want to start us off with that?
Tim O'Connell:
Sure. I think the word for us all is nimble. The lead time when we were having big exhibitions and all those things, we took a pretty good lead time. On this, not knowing where we're going to open, what protocols we're going to be under. As I was putting our budgets together for the coming year, it really had a lot to do. How quick can we pivot on a decision and take advantage of a window or momentum? As far as marketing lists and things like that, just because I'm going to run more geographically based campaigns. And knowing that's where a lot of past members are in a certain vicinity, that's where we're going to double down. We probably won't buy as many lists as we have in the past for marketing, but look at our own database and also find some costs, cost savings in that as well. Try to make the most for the impact from the dollar.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. And, Julie, you want to talk a little bit about how that looks for SFMoMA?
Julie Knight:
Yeah. I mean we're looking at a couple different things. First of all, and I didn't say, well, 50% of our attendants are tourists, 50% are not. And our membership obviously does very much skew to what we're calling sort of our nine Bay Area counties. So 90 to 95% of our members do come locally. So in a way we can also see it on the sunny side too where if more people are coming locally, we do have a better chance to really make that conversion rate skyrocket. So, we would love to make that happen if at all possible. So we're looking at ways to maybe change some of the messaging for people that are doing online purchases. To encourage them to think about buying a membership instead of buying tickets, if they're buying those online. And then we are looking forward to doing a reacquisition campaign.
We have definitely continued to do renewals during the closure. Thankfully about a year and a half ago we'd launched an auto renew program and that has been bringing in the most amount of money each month, which is great. But we're still doing email and mail renewal campaigns. Although our mailings have really reduced to be pretty much just people that have renewed by mail in the past and to keep everyone else a little more fluid with emails and they actually increased the amount of emails instead of skipping every other month or something like everyone's getting emails every month. And even then of course we're seeing renewal rates down, but hoping that once we get open again, those people will come back.
And then like Tim said too, we actually had an acquisition campaign that was about to drop. It was within a week of when we closed, it was supposed to drop. So of course all that got worse cycled unfortunately. But the pieces we were able to save, we did. And we're looking at doing an acquisition campaign, like Tim said, to as local of an audience as possible, really digging deep into our own lists of dropped members and ticket buyers that have already come in and shown some interest to SF MoMA and trying to get those people to come back in as members.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Daniel, this might look a little bit different on your side, but can you talk a little bit about how you're responding?
Daniel Vincent:
Yeah. Sure. So I like what Tim said about being nimble. We're trying to be steady but nimble. So our policy is that we're not making any drastic changes in our campaigns, not renewal, not acquisition, but that we're responding to the situation as best we can and that we are communicating as best we can. So, again, we're challenged somewhat by the fact that we didn't really ever close. We closed some of our properties and then reopened some and now we want to reopen all of them. We've tried to have that resonate through all of our campaigns driving home the message that since our founding in 1891 the Trustees has depended on its members.
We need to depend on them, again, but they can depend on us for the open space access to nature and historic sites that we've always offered. So what we're doing is trying to shift our renewals and acquisition to online since our offices are closed. And we're challenged because we process our gifts in the office. So we've seen an uptake in online transactions, which is great. But, again, is that because we're shifting from direct mail into online? And little things like instead of heavily promoting access to our beaches, we normally do a, sort of, see on the beach, get to the beach around this time of year. We're really focusing just on the long term benefit of membership rather than just access to a specific site such that we used to have an insert promoting the beach. We removed that. Now all of our inserts and all of our campaigns stress an online gift for fastest service so you can get your materials.
And then lastly we did something that's a little old fashioned but it's been very successful. We actually only have email saturation for about 65% of our current members, so that's 35% of our people. We haven't even been able to share the openings and closures and other announcements. So sort of a let's stay in touch postcard. And then I was thrilled that we were able to do it from sort of start to finish in a week. Which for us it's Herculean, you're getting it printed, getting it mailed, everything. I think we've already had like a 15% response rate to that. People going online and either subscribing to our newsletters, giving us their email or even if they unsubscribed, we have had a separate bash to invite them to resubscribe and that's been very successful.
Dan Sullivan:
That's awesome. And last but not least, Sewon.
Sewon Barrera:
Yeah. I think as Daniel and Tim both mentioned, I think being, staying nimble is the name of the game for museums right now and I think as Julie mentioned, we are definitely focusing on launching an acquisition campaign once we have a reopening campaign and date set. In the meantime, every May is a month we celebrate our members. May is for members, and this May is the only Mays where we weren't able to offer onsite programming for our members because of our closure.
And so this year we actually launched a gated members only content portal on our website and on there, we're providing both exclusive online programming for our members geared towards families as well as adult audiences and then members only emails coming from our staff members as well as a deeper discount on our online store products and things like that. So we're able to offer a number of new benefits during this month that are friendly for our home visitors or members as well as use that as a casual acquisition campaign as well. We actually saw a lift in our membership acquisitions during this month and it's still going on.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great to hear. And I think that segues nicely. Can you talk a little bit about how you're catering to different segments of your member base? So, are you offering any special hours for members or even on a more granular level within your membership base, families, seniors, other demographics. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sewon, you want to continue with that?
Sewon Barrera:
Sure. So the Exploratorium is unique in that we have an adult only membership offering as well as the family ones. So Thursday evenings, six to 10:00 PM every Thursday, we typically offer a themed night with popup bars on the floor. Adults only experience makes perfect sense for the San Francisco Bay Area because the joke is that they're more dogs than kids in San Francisco. So we had to pivot and come up with an innovative new membership solution to really meet the audiences where they're at. And so our online programming is reflected similarly. We definitely have some content that's for this adult group as well as content that's for families and parents, parents turned teachers, things like that. So providing onsite programming that addresses our diverse audience that, as well, doing that, doing that online. That's been really important for the Exploratorium.
Dan Sullivan:
Thank you for sharing. And, Daniel, can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing on your side? How you're catering to different segments of your member base?
Daniel Vincent:
Well we introduced member ticket pre-sale this past year sort of experimentally for some of our large programs. And that's come in very handy because members are not familiar with that as a benefit and they're eager to access that. So that became a hallmark of our early communications around Coronavirus, that members heard about our information first. They have early access to whatever it is. So when that became time ticketing, we invited members for about a week where they could access tickets before the general public.
And hopefully as we respond to the changing environment and are able to open more of our sites and extend visitation hours, we'll have an opportunity to reach out to members again for some exclusive access. We also have many add on programs to our membership. So access to the beach is actually an additional category of membership, sort of elevated. You can buy discounted passes as a member, so the separate segment that we always have to reach out to separately. So we're seeing that there's interest in our cultural sites and our beaches, and so we tend to cater to those different constituencies a little bit differently.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you. And, Julie.
Julie Knight:
I love all these ideas. We actually don't necessarily cater to our different audiences quite as much as what other people have talked about although we do have senior discounts, and we have young adult discounts on our memberships. However, we do definitely find that some different groups of members take advantage of different types of benefits so, for instance, we do try to do member previews for at least six exhibitions a year. And we do find that a lot of the seniors, in particular, take advantage of the mornings to come in and do preview hours for members although that's not to say that they don't show up at our occasional parties, as well, in full costume.
We recognize a lot of those parties and events that we used to do so much to cater towards the young who want to come out on a date on a Thursday night and so on and so forth. We won't really be able to do so much anymore. So we're looking at still trying to continue the member previews for exhibitions, and hopefully people of all ages can come in and do those. And we do have, those are typically for us on a Thursday, and a Friday during the day. We have Thursday night that we're open, and then we usually do sort of for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning so if people are with their families that would be a time that they could do that. But we're also thinking of pivoting, we know already from our governor that really any events above 50 really won't be considered at the earliest until January.
So, we're looking at ways that we can sort of have a party to go in a bag or something like that so we're looking at different ways that we can say, have a preview for our upcoming Diego Rivera show in November where instead of having a member lounge put on a Thursday night where you could have a date night, when you check in we could give you little bags that maybe has a little scavenger hunt that you can do on your own. Maybe a craft that you can take home and do by yourself or with your family or that maybe has a suggestion for a selfie that you could post, of course, somewhere on our social media or something like that. And maybe even a drink recipe or something like that so our lounges are used to, usually drinks and crafts and some sort of activity and dancing and things like that so if we could provide some of the things like that in a bag, then that might encourage engagement for people that actually show up and see what happens.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Hearing that idea more and more, those kinds of summer camp in a bag or school in a bag or again on a date night out.
Julie Knight:
Exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
Super fun idea. And, Tim, last, but not least can you talk a little bit about your different segments, your membership base, how you're targeting them, how you're catering to them? And how that might vary based on families, seniors, different demographics.
Tim O'Connell:
Sure. So one of the good things with this down time, so this is a shout out to the member and visitor experience staff has been calling all our members so we've got about 20,000 members, and they turn out about 1,000 a week. So, it's been a great way to get feedback on what they love about us, what they also wish we would change. So we're taking some of that, and as we're figuring our roll, I guess rollback plans or rolling into the new operating. Well, I'm looking at a lot of that, so our seniors have a better idea of understanding their comfort level to what they want. They're important to us-they're our regular visitors. They come. Some come weekly. Some come more than once a week.
Young families, that as well, so making sure we're still reaching out to that. Our summer we run an outdoor concert series that is usually a big draw. And unfortunately not going to be able to do that. So we have many different segments, and we're really trying to talk to them literally almost individually on what they want and what they need from us especially coming back.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. While we're on that idea, how have the value propositions for memberships shifted during Coronavirus? So I'm thinking specifically, like, how might you attract audiences who typically would opt for a different vacation plan, go out of town, but they're exploring a more local option now. Tim, can you talk a little bit about that?
Tim O'Connell:
Yeah. I think that's really, the two factors I would say in travel is, do you feel safe, and do you have money? That's always the parameters on it. So if you look at those weak offers for a market, it can be a safe place, especially if we're clear about communicating what our procedures for keeping that, the protocols up around, hygiene and cleanliness and all that. So on that level we've got a value proposition that I think we can offer. And then also affordability. I mean, there are a lot of folks who are going to take a hit through this, but there's a lot of folks that are not. And then there's all, a lot of folks that maybe they were going to rent a vacation home. Right?
And that's not going to happen for a number of reasons, but you can get a family membership to your museum, or something like that. So I think there is a value proposition in that because people are going to be looking for a replacement for their big trip, they are planning for the family or the entertainment and the dollar is going to shift in some ways. And I think museums can position themselves in a way to capture that at this time.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Sewon, can you talk a little bit about how your value proposition has shifted as far as attracting different audiences, and different activities?
Sewon Barrera:
Yeah. Of course. In terms of memberships, especially since we are still temporarily closed, is something that we're messaging out actively to our current and potential members is our non-profit status and our mission really just reminding everyone that by purchasing a membership does help make our mission possible every day. So that's been a big part of our messaging during our closure. I see in the Q&A section some folks are asking questions about Exploratorium's very specific messaging as a hands-on museum. We've been hands-on since 50 years ago.
That's going to be a huge shift for us, and because we do design and develop a lot of our exhibits, I think, a lot of new innovations will come out, and I'm really curious to see what other hands-on museums will do, especially science centers. It's a big question mark, especially when you have over 600 exhibits that are very hands-on and interactive. How do you create a touchless or a less hands-on, but still interactive experience. I think it's a good, but big question mark for our team as we navigate the pandemic and I think that will be a change that we reflect when we reopen.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. And while we're on that, while we're on that question, we've got to hear, the question is from Martin DeMateo, and the question is the Exploratorium planning to not reopen its hands-on activities? How do they see this affecting the draw for visits and memberships if you're not at full capacity? So, you answered the first part of that question. As far as the latter part, do you want to take a crack at that?
Sewon Barrera:
Sure. It sounds like museum capacity is a fine balance between museum's comfort level as well as your local and state regulations. So I think those are evolving. I think probably on a daily basis for most museums, or especially as things get announced, I think, as I mentioned the, our primary question mark is going to be how do we recreate the Exploratorium experience and make sure it's safe for our visitors, and before our closure we did install a lot of hand washing stations, within the galleries, which is new and unique to the Exploratorium because a lot of the things are hands-on. And I think a lot, we're definitely to other museums that are reopening around the world to see what they're doing, like, temperature checks, things like that at the door, as well as trying to figure out what, what we do to our current set of exhibits especially curating exhibits that are less contact based. As so, I think it's a mix of making sense of what we already have, as well as innovating and creating something new.
Dan Sullivan:
Thank you for sharing, and getting back to our last question, Daniel, can you talk a little bit about how your value proposition has shifted over the last eight or so weeks?
Daniel Vincent:
Or even eight or so months, Dan. We started talking a couple of years ago about shifting the proposition of sort of more of a value based transactional membership to more affinity based. Recognizing that since our founding, again, we've depended on members for their support, that sense of loyalty, and belonging and not just creating missions and discounts and things like that. So and that served us well through this because we're able to talk about long term relationships that we're engaged in. And even that we need your support now and when we open we're going to depend on you even more. And I think that that's served us well.
But, in terms of value, probably the number one benefit to our members is free admission. So it's a little tricky if there is no admission at all. So the ability to get back on property soon, have it free and open to them, I think so resonates and so we're trying to sort of balance this sense of support and loyalty that we're depending on your support, but we need to reopen in a safe a way as possible with that demand, pent up demand, frankly, for free access so that's a little dance that we're doing right now.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And, Julie, do you want to quickly throw in on that as far as how your value propositions have shifted. I know you've talked a little bit about it in the last question, as well, but anything else you want to add to that?
Julie Knight:
Yeah. I mean, it is, it is something that we think about as well, and we find that up to 90% of our members are individual and dual level members which are definitely, absolutely, transactional, but we've always for years, we've always tried whenever we're actually having an in person or on phone transaction with people, and to a certain extent on our web, as well. We do try to promote that supporter level membership, which, for us, is the $300, which I think someone was actually asking about it, as well. That is our reciprocal level membership at all, as well. We which we are not currently planning on changing the price for at all, even though that benefit will, at least, hopefully in the short term go away. But we're hoping in the long term it will remain. And we always try to sort of start the discussion with that is what we see is what we see is, is like the best value of membership in that it gives you general membership, but it gets you all the passes and reciprocal and different ways to support the museum.
So as much as you, it's important even for these transactional members to constantly elevate to them how in, bring philanthropy into the conversation, and let them know how even an individual or a dual membership is really supporting us, but, again, like just even one level up is just brings them a little bit more benefit, but really supports the museum in a very different way so I think that that's one way that we're looking at it.
Dan Sullivan:
Thanks for sharing. I want to go back to something that Daniel had mentioned, too, and this is another question that has been coming up a lot recently. What role does your mission play in how you create value through your membership. Obviously, this is becoming increasingly more prevalent right now as transactional memberships start to lose some of their value to some folks, some of those lower tier members, as Julie was mentioning, who are more in it for the financial benefit of it. So, Daniel, can you start by talking a little bit about how you are creating that value? What does that look like? And then are you factoring that into your marketing and your messaging?
Daniel Vincent:
Right. So the Trustees are lucky because we are both a collection of assets so we have the physical historic house museums. Last year, we joined forces with the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, which was huge for us. So there are these assets. Right? These places that you can visit and interact with. But we're also a cause. So we protect over 25,000 acres from across Massachusetts, a hundred miles or more of coastline, which makes us second only to the state government in terms of coastline ownership and maintenance. We have these working farms, We have all of these agricultural sites and open space sites that depend on member support for just operationally. Even if we didn't have museums and didn't have them, we can rely on the loyalty of our members because they feel like they're supporting something bigger than themselves. There's a real sense of pride that you're supporting what basically is sort of like a mini national trust for the state of Massachusetts.
So there's a real sense of ownership, and it goes both ways. Right? Because of that, we want to reciprocate with giving access to our sites, and so we're a little challenged with that part of it right now, but our members are very loyal. We have a pretty high retention rate, and right now our view is that any hiccup will be a trans, will be a question of getting to the mail or it's a technical glitch with the website. It's not a decline in loyalty. So that's what we're counting on. And we're trying to message that accordingly.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for sharing and, Julie, can you talk a little bit about that? The role that you're mission is playing as you build value or create value in your membership.
Julie Knight:
Yeah. I think where we're trying to be and I'm sure that Sewon can attest to this as well. That certainly while we can not have people in our building right now, we very much understand, and it's part of our mission to grasp that. It’s an essential part of people's lives, and so one way that we've been able to do that is by emailing them, and getting them on social media, and providing content on our website, or on their phones or podcasts or recommendations for music or videos or things like that, and I think that just acknowledging that and putting stuff out there. It feels a little altruistically than we're reinforcing that for them. I think it is important to note because I know that a lot of people are asking about content and paywalls and this and that, but for the most part we're just putting it all out there right now. I think that we're very interested in, as the building starts to reopen, perhaps a little adjusting that so it's a little more tiered approach.
I don't know that we would necessarily go with a paywall, but we may go with links, I, then it said we do have already sort of tickets and content that sometimes is available like a week before to members. And it's not that it isn't, it's behind a paywall, but that a link is sent out to new members first, and so they sort of have the opportunity just to discover that first. As much as we can, make them feel special during this time, but, again, eventually the content does roll out to the general public and they realize that we're continually putting out this message of how important art is to all of us.
Dan Sullivan:
Sewon, do you want to talk a little bit about that the mission of Exploratorium and how you're creating value in that sense as Julie was just alluding to?
Sewon Barrera:
Sure. So our mission is to create inquiry based experiences that transform learning world-wide, and I think right at the shelter in place announcement our team actually created a learning page full of resources around virus related science especially at home activities that you can do with readily available materials to learn more about how viruses transmit. How long do they last on surfaces? Questions that people are having about the virus. Being able to answer them through an inquiry based way has been a huge focus for us. And, in terms of messaging to our members, it's just simply reminding them that them continuing to be our members is helping to create a positive impact every day for the Exploratorium and the work that we do and I think similar to a lot of other museums, we started a weekly newsletter series just packed full of free online content or at home learning, especially the virus science, work that our science, scientists are working on and on virtual events as they get rolled out.
And so we've definitely been focused on both providing value to our members and our non-members, as well as really highlighting our impact and our mission and our focus whether or not our doors are open or closed. And we've been focused on making sure that that content is segmented for our audiences as much as we can. And so it feels customized and appropriate for them. And as for paywall content, we haven't experimented with that at all. I think, right now all of our content is free and online and accessible for everyone except for some teachers only virtual workshops and some professional development is part of the work that we do.
Dan Sullivan:
Thank you for sharing and last, but not least. Tim, can you talk a little bit about how you're creating value in your memberships?
Tim O'Connell:
Sure. The big thing is for us is we've always had a commitment to education and being an educational resource. So that's obviously gone into hyper mode with COVID-19. So predominantly that was looking at our school-aged children up into our high school. We have a wonderful educational staff, but this has been a time where we've turned to really looking at how we are educating adults and older adults who want mental stimulation. They're at home, and you can only watch so much Netflix. I've proven that.
So you start looking for other things for entertainment and it, to challenge your brain, and we're fortunate to have some wonderful staff that are very savvy in the digital education world, and they're helping translate that so whether you're taking advantage of that or not, the value proposition is we're all, right now everybody, all these parents have become educators at home whether they wanted to or not. So part of our value proposition is we are helping parents. We're helping educators, and if you believe in those two things, then we're a great place to keep your mind and keep your membership.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Very much appealing to them, the sentiment on the time. Everybody is all of a sudden homeschooling so, I think, that aligns well with where, where many people where they're at. So we have a lot of questions here from the audience. I'm going to try to get to a few of these here before we break. This one is from Mackenzie Merril-Wick. Many of us are planning to extend memberships for the time we're closed. It's pretty clear that many of our members will still not be comfortable visiting once we reopen. What are your plans for messaging the end of the extensions and possible requests for refunds and or even bigger extensions. Tim, do you want to start us off on that one?
Tim O'Connell:
Sure. It's a great question. And a lot of folks have been asking it so right now our policy is that if you renew at this time, we will extend. We've also been doing some extensions if people ask. But right now that's where we are on this. When this first started were we going to be closed for two weeks, or is it going to be two months, or is it going to be four months? Everybody is going to have to answer that differently. So we didn't want to exactly come out with just a packed well here's three months, and that has been two or three. So we're trying to tailor to the moment. But right now we are offering and we're on untested utility for extending the memberships and when you renew you get three additional months.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. Does anybody else want to jump in on this? I'm not going to put anybody on the spot. Julie? Daniel? Either one.
Julie Knight:
Go ahead, Dan.
Daniel Vincent:
Well just to echo what Tim said, we're doing almost exactly the same things is that we've not decided to automatically extend memberships for a lot of the reasons that Tim mentioned, but it's been a rolling opening close or reopening so many of our properties have been open and, again, we think of membership as this, creating this and sustaining a sense of belonging not just free admission so we hope that continues to ring true for our members, but we will accommodate special requests. We use Raiser's Edge so that we can easily change somebody's expiration date and send them a confirmation email. But where it all says, again, as Tim mentioned stressing renewals so we can do that if someone requests, but better yet if they'd like to renew, we can add a month or two to the membership. It just extends and further cements that sense of loyalty. With acquisition we always offer 15 month memberships so no change there.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. And, Julie.
Julie Knight: Yeah. And I'll just chime in here. I have heard that there are museums that have done the extension for their entire base. I know, say Monterey Bay Aquarium, I believe is one of them. We could not get our membership 60,000 plus, we couldn't take that big of a hit to the current year and the future year. But what's been interesting is that we have however been very happy to do it on an as request basis, and we expect that those requests will probably continue to come in for the next year as people's memberships do renew.
The interesting thing is that with that big of a membership base, I'd say we've had less than 5 requests for refunds, which is rather shocking, and the ones, well maybe under 10, but the ones that we are getting in are people that have lost their jobs or, or this and that, or, may have just bought the membership and never had a chance to use it and then lost their job so we have been accommodating for those kinds of reasons. But otherwise extensions have been our go to, and people are, delighted if they want to ask that we can give it, but, again, very much on a one off basis.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. Thank you for sharing. Sewon, do you want to throw anything in there on the extension side of things?
Sewon Barrera:
Sure. In terms of extensions, actually, we automatically applied one for all of our members really because with shelter in place , we haven't been open since then. So that's something that we chose to do as a museum. And our plan is to continue it until we have a reopening date and then communicate, again, with our members about what to expect from there on.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. another question. This one is from Kristen Jennings. Our events are a big membership driver, and we are unlikely to be able to resume them for many months after we're open. Still currently closed. Any suggestions on how to message this to prospective members to still join now instead of waiting until events resume. Sewon, do you want to jump on that one first?
Sewon Barrera:
Sure. So something that I've been reading is Colin Dillonshiner's newsletters very actively. And one thing that comes to mind is what you do to engage your audiences virtually, and online, those are going to be your first visitors, your members, and these really engaged audiences are going to be your first visitors potentially when you reopen, and it feels safe to do so for everyone. And that's definitely on top of mind for me as a digital marketer. Thinking about new and innovative strategies for engaging with our event attendees because that's been a big driving force for the Exploratorium, too. The team is really great at putting on events for the cost of a museum admission, how do you translate that to be online?
I think that's another question, and how do you keep those attendees, so that they don't just only attend one virtual event, but keep coming back. And so two things that have worked really well is, one, thinking about events as series instead of a one off event. So that you're building an audience, and of course really thinking about who your audience is and then if you do have marketing dollars putting that towards your local audience. I think those would be my lessons learned so far.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Anybody else want to throw in that? On the event side of things?
Tim O'Connell:
I think we're looking at doing almost upper level events and part of that would be once we get these going is it something that we could segue into almost like the parlor event. Because we are going to have the same thing as groups of no more than 20. So could we do some events first online that has sort of an intimate feel and then as we come back online can we actually recreate that same experience and even potentially have a live stream feed or, to some of these type of things so those folks that are not ready to be in the building can still participate.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. And Daniel, anything you want to throw in there?
Daniel Vincent:
We've definitely upped our games in terms of online sort of virtual programming since we had to shut down our sites and Trustees actually offer almost 5,000 programs each year. So that's been a real challenge for us. That also would include the children's summer camp, and tours of our farms and things like that so, we're, at present we expect that we'll still be able to offer some camp sessions, but that's a fluid situation too.
So, I think, we're trying to take a long game approach here and hope that members will stay with us through these challenging times so that when we reopen, whatever new normal looks like we'll be first in line. One of them is in the winter we do Winter Lights, which is a time ticket, paid ticket to some of our sites where we have holiday decorations and sort of seasonal decorations. It's been huge for us and already now we're getting questions about whether we will be offering Winter Lights again. And we want to. So we're trying to take a long term approach at how we can bring some of these things back.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. I've got one more question for all the panelists, and that is what is one big takeaway that you would want each person watching to be able to consider and bring back to their respective organizations? Daniel, do you want to kick us off with that one?
Daniel Vincent:
Sure. It is, I think, one of the most valuable pieces of communication that we ever send and that is the line that you use for your support. It is valuable, especially during these challenging times, and it's much appreciated. I say that all the time. When I first started in the membership field a hundred years ago, I thought it was sort of awkward to say thank you for being a member or thank you for your membership. It's not awkward. It's essential. People love hearing that. When you begin or end your email, even the transactional email, even something about our planned opening or something where you're providing visitation information, don't do this. You must wear a face mask, or if all of that. If you can sign off, thank you for being a member, it resonates tremendously.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great advice. Julie.
Julie Knight:
Yeah. I'm just nodding. I'm completely agreeing with that one. Yeah. I mean, we're sending out two basically virtually identical emails each week. One goes to the general public, and one goes to membership, and the main difference is that at the top of the member one, I've taken whatever marketing message just put together, and I have a salutation, and I thank them very much for being a member, and add a little twist, and we've actually gotten a few emails back. “Dear Julie, thank you so much for reaching out to me,” and I think that we want them to feel that it's all about them, and that we are right there with them in this challenging time and that as soon as we can get our doors open for them, we will. And, in the meantime, if they can just hang in there with us, we'll eventually meet up together and have a drink.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. And Tim, what advice would you have?
Tim O'Connell:
We're listening. I think it's just a great time to like, heightened. I mean, we're going into our backyard and staring at bugs, and we're at a time where people call me and they're telemarketing some product that I don't need. I don't need a new bathroom, but I'll stay on the phone and talk to you for 10 minutes because I just want to talk to somebody. So I think it's just a great time to say, we are the museum and we are listening to your feedback and your input.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great advice, as well. And Sewon, last but not least.
Sewon Barrera:
Yeah. I think it's everything that everyone has said already. Something new that we're doing for our members right now is sending them a letter each week from a different staff member. Really just creating that personal connection even though we can't meet you, in person. For example, we’re at the museum right now, we're at our homes, in our living rooms, in our home offices , working and excited to connect with you and learn more about where you are, and what we can do to provide value during this time.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. Thank you for sharing. Okay. A couple of quick things before you all go. A recording of this webinar is going to be available on the Cuseum website later today, as well as a link to our shared Google Document. With some Coronavirus resources and some community ideas. There's a whole Q&A section on there, as well. We've got another webinar coming up this week, exploring the future of museums in the era of Coronavirus. That's this Wednesday at 2:00 eastern time. We also have another new resource. It's a collaboration that Cuseum did on an e-book with Blackbaud and it's called The Ultimate Guide to Surviving and Thriving as a Cultural Organization in the 21st Century. That's available for download. It's on the Cuseum website. There will be a link posted in the chat in a moment, and you can get that for free. And then lastly, stay safe, everybody. Have another great week. Thank you all for being here. All fifteen hundred of you and, again, stay safe. Thank you to our panelists. Incredible advice. Always a pleasure, and just thank you, again.
Looking for more information? Check out our coronavirus resources page.