As museums and cultural organizations begin to reopen, one of the biggest challenges membership professionals may be facing is how to re-engage and re-welcome members again. Organizations are concerned about how they can reconnect with lapsed or nonresponsive members, and are looking for strategies and tips to drive renewals.
Join Dan Sullivan (Head of Growth and Partnerships @ Cuseum), Daniella Cabezas (Associate Director of Special Events & Corporate Relations @ Miami Children’s Museum), Amy Marks (Director, Membership & Development Services @ Space Center Houston) & Ann Meisel (Client Services & Membership Manager @ Poster House) as they discuss strategies and plans for re-engaging with members after a long period of being closed.
Here is the transcript below:
Dan Sullivan:
Hello everyone. My name is Dan Sullivan. I am the Head of Partnerships at Cuseum. And just first of all, just want to thank everybody for being here today. There's going to be over 1,000 of you tuning in. And for those who don't know, just a quick background, Cuseum helps cultural organizations better engage their visitors, members, and donors using digital tools, including digital membership cards and digital. So, to all of our first time watchers, welcome. And to all of our repeat visitors, thank you again for being here.
Couple quick housekeeping items, if you're watching, take a second and introduce yourself in the chat. We'd love to know where you're joining us from. And secondly, if you've got a question, we have three awesome panelists today, use the Q and A functionality. And if you see another question that you're wondering about, hit that little thumbs up doodad, it'll push those questions up to the top for us to review with the panelists. So glad you're all here, I want to wish you all another safe and healthy week.
Cuseum's got another webinar this Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern time, it's called Small but Mighty: Navigating the New Normal as a Small or Mid-Sized Museum. There'll be a registration link right there. It's getting pushed up, but there it is in the chat. so it's going to be a deep dive into some of those unique challenges that small and midsize organizations are faced with. So feel free to tune in, we'd love to have you.
We have a great lineup today, I'm really excited. We have Daniella Cabezas, the Associate Director of Special Events and Corporate Relations at Miami Children's Museum. We have Amy Marks, who's the Director of Membership and Development Services at Space Center Houston. And then we have Ann Meisel, the Client Services and Membership Manager at Poster House.
We’re going to go around the room really quick right now and have all of our panelists introduce themselves. But again, thank you for being here. There will be a recording of this webinar posted later today on the Cuseum website, so you can take a look at that. All right, so without further ado, let's go around the room. Ann, why don't you take a second and give us some background on who you are, your organization, and we'll start there.
Ann Meisel:
Hi, I'm Ann Meisel. As Dan said, I'm a Client Services and Membership Manager at Poster House. We are a brand-new museum; we opened a year ago. We just celebrated our first birthday on June 20th. And we are the first museum, poster museum, dedicated to the art and history of posters in America, finally.
Dan Sullivan:
Happy birthday.
Ann Meisel:
Thank you, thank you. And we did have online birthday celebrations all weekend.
Dan Sullivan:
I love that. That's awesome. Thanks for being here. Daniella.
Daniella Cabezas:
Yes. So hi, I'm Daniella, I'm from the Miami Children's Museum. We have been a children's museum for about 35 years. Typically, our budget before all of this had happened, we were a $9.2 million museum with about 1,700 members. So that's a little bit about us. And our target demographic is zero to eight years old.
Dan Sullivan:
Phenomenal, thanks again for being here. And Amy.
Amy Marks:
Hi, I'm Amy Marks and director of membership and development services at Space Center Houston. Space Center Houston is the official visitor center for NASA Johnson Space Center, and houses a collection of flown aircraft, and what's new and innovative in the field. So, we are about over a million visitors a year now, and a membership of about 18,000. It’s a pretty big task most days, except for today.
Dan Sullivan:
Except for today. Well, let's actually get into that. So let's talk a little bit as a starting point about reopening plans. Amy, can you talk a little bit about that? When are you planning to reopen and what's that looking like?
Amy Marks:
Well, we actually were planning to reopen to the public on July 1 with member exclusive days, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, with the numbers and announcements that came out from our governor and county leaders late Friday, we decided to postpone our reopening indefinitely.
So, but we were really looking forward to having those first three days for members. And we were careful, occasionally there's been a habit to say, let's invite our member family. They're very forgiving. And so we sort of try things out on them. We really wanted to make sure that was not the case with this particular time, and that we really honored them as our family who have stuck by us through all of this. So we had some special things planned for them and we'll do it again.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. and Daniella, what's your reopening plan look like?
Daniella Cabezas:
Yeah. So for us down here in South Florida, it's a little bit unique. Even though museums were in that first phase of being able to reopen, because we are a hands-on children's museum, we did not fall into that category. And of course, the safety of our visitors, as well as our team members, is the highest priority. So, we’re sitting tight and are planning to reopen in the fall.
Also with that in mind, even if we had gotten the permission earlier, those months that we know are the low, the September, October, we figured we're going to be spending more reopening and not really having a lot of people come to the museum versus reopening when they're stronger months. So, we're going to be looking at that fall situation and be doing campaigns to launch. I've always found with memberships, especially with families, that they're looking for savings, right? There are the different levels of philanthropic-minded constituents, and somebody that's looking for that value, and with us, they're looking for the value. So we've always had great success when we've offered a renewal special that we've seen the retention spike up and even new members start to inquire about that.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. For sure. and Ann, what does your reopening plan look like at Poster House, being in New York City?
Ann Meisel:
Well, after being open for only eight months, we suddenly had to pause. We closed on March 10th. We were one of the first museums, I believe, in New York to shut our doors when we saw what was happening. And right now, we don't have an actual date. We're very much dependent on the guidelines of city and state. We are currently, in New York, in what we are calling phase two of the reopening, and museums here are in phase four.
We feel that at this point we do have a benchmark date, possibly mid-August to September 1st is what we think will be our benchmark date. We have to see how things go. Right now, they are planning to do a phase three July 6, but that may be slowed down a bit with what is happening around the country. We're very concerned about that. And also, about any effects that the protests may have had here directly in the city, We still have continual protests and we'll have to just see, it's a wait and we'll have to see how that goes. We've put a lot of our safety and cautionary measures into place and a lot of our plans are made, and we're just going to wait and see what happens, continue with all of our virtual and online programming for now.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. Can you talk a little bit about what you seen as far as renewal trends and general member responsiveness throughout this lockdown? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Ann Meisel:
Sure. I cannot really talk about renewal trends because we were just on the verge of doing renewals, because our founding members, many of our loyal founding members who had joined this even before we opened our doors, were about to be renewed. But we did put an extension on, which I was, also going to talk about. We gave extensions to our members, so all of that has been pushed forward.
So right now, I have a renewal campaign planned, actually it's a series of three planned, probably coming up for around September. And what I've done instead, we have been very low key in any of our membership promotions at this point. For our museum, that felt like the appropriate thing to do. So therefore, with our birthday rollout, just the week before, we did our first renewal campaign that went out, it is actually on our website. And it went out in our email. It's like a newsletter that we send out to members and anyone that signs up for it on our website or at the museum. And I'm happy to say I've had a really nice response to that, which is very exciting for us, considering we're closed, and we have let any new sign ups and all of our members know that your membership will not start until we reopen. And I'll talk a little more about our renewal campaign later.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. And Danielle, can you talk a little bit about what you've seen, as far as just general renewal trends, member responsiveness throughout the last roughly three or so months?
Daniella Cabezas:
Yeah, so we closed on March 14th, and immediately we decided, again, knowing our constituents, they're going to want to be reassured that their memberships are paused, since the majority of them are being members to have that experience in the museum and our exhibits. So we made that decision as soon as we closed, and let everybody know. Again, that mindfulness of knowing that they're looking for a value, we didn't expect to see that many renewals during this time, which is going to play into effect for our budgeting later, and knowing that we have to now do campaigns specifically in certain months to regain those members, to hopefully renew early.
However, we did decide that keeping them engaged during this time will be our best bet. So since about three weeks after we closed, we started hosting weekly membership events. So these are virtual, they're live, and they're completely different than anything the general public could be receiving. So this includes, for us, on Mondays, we were doing story time sessions with different theater troops, and then I've been serving the members every week since then to get their feedback. And they were really vocal about wanting to see art. And since we've had good attendance, we decided to launch the second programming for the week, which is now on Fridays, and that's our guided art workshops. And now we're continuing to add programming to that, because we're seeing that there is a response and a desire for them to participate with us virtually.
Dan Sullivan:
Super interesting. Just while we're quickly on that topic, what do you think is the biggest driver of that engagement amongst your members? Lots of people are asking about virtual events, they're asking about how to activate them, how to get their member community involved. What do you think is the attributing factor to the success that you've had?
Daniella Cabezas:
Yeah. So I think it's not being afraid to communicate with them. I think sometimes you get email shy, that you don't want to overwhelm them with emails. We've been pretty aggressive in making sure that they get that communication. And then also following up with phone calls, to make sure that people are aware of the program that we're having for them, and even how to access that or to get their feedback too, if they're not participating right now, what is it that they're looking for to participate in the future?
So, and from the attendance we have, usually from the signups we have about 77% will actually attend the virtual event. So for us, that's great, because when we would do physical events at the museum, we wouldn't see that high return. So they're definitely looking out for some of their favorite programs that they would have onsite and now transforming that.
Dan Sullivan:
That's fantastic. And I think the biggest point that you hit on it's that communication component. If people don't know them, they're not going to come. So just communicating the fact that those are actually happening is huge. So, and Amy, just going back briefly, what are you seeing over in Texas on the renewal side, what trends in renewals have you seen again over those since the coronavirus pandemic began, but also how are your members responding throughout this lockdown?
Amy Marks:
We had a pretty dramatic drop off in renewals from the beginning. And unfortunately, we had just dropped also an upgrade campaign out into the mail as well as an acquisition. And so those results have been terribly skewed by comparison. I did continue mailing renewals for a couple of months and really condensed, where it was like one letter that was briefly segmented by a renewal date and tried to keep the cost down on those. But for June, we actually didn't do it because it was about June 1st that we extended all the dates coming up. We set a date, we were a little concerned about saying, "Well, let's extend the dates as long as we're closed," because we didn't really know how long that was going to be. And there is a danger there in pushing our renewal revenue, whatever that it is, into a whole another year.
We have had, though, I've been surprised, and June has been interesting, just people who are self-selecting into renewal, and seeing old renewal notice codes and URLs come through. So they haven't forgotten about us, and that's really encouraging. And of course, to Daniella's point, our value-level members are responding very differently than our philanthropic-level members. And our philanthropists have been pretty generous and caring and also communicative with us. "Hey, we're thinking about you guys," they're used to seeing us at events. And so we've been a good community for that group.
I had planned to go with an email in the middle of July, sort of leveraging what we had done for members that participated in the welcome back days, and trying to get an early renewal from all those people that are now September. I haven't found the path yet in my mind of what that message looks like. It would have to be significantly mission-based and we'll get it done, but I want to make sure we come out with the right message.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. and by the way, to everyone who's tuning in, as we're asking these questions and our panelists are talking through these, feel free to share in the chat what you're doing or where your thinking is and how your organization has responded in similar circumstances.
So, Amy, I think that actually lends itself to another interesting segue. So how are you handling expiration dates? Have you done extensions? How did you determine the length of extensions? Generally, how have you gone about doing that, and all of the operational components that go along with that?
Amy Marks:
Right. Well, so like I said, we didn't want it to be indefinite, but then as time was moving on, it was clear that we were going to be at least a few months at this. And so we decided on three months and did that for everybody that was active at the beginning of June. We did go back and pick up our March, April, May expires, reinstated them as members, and extended that date out to three months like we had done for everybody else. And then anybody who was joining a renewal during June, if they had been lapsed or new, we were giving them another extra month beyond what they just signed up for. And then we were able to leverage that actually for our last campaign, to say, "If you come back..." I used a lot of the operational components we had set up for the acquisition mailing. I just reused those URLs. And I'm like, I know these aren't going to be acquisition responses, but I've got the URL to be able to offer a good deal to our lapsed folks. So we did that. That was moderately successful.
The big question we struggle with, now I wonder, is three months going to be enough, for people? We did have at the beginning, by the end of March, beginning of April, we had a number of members who called and requested refunds. There was almost no case in which we agreed to that, largely they were people who lived out of state but had already used the membership at least once or twice. And so we tried to reassure that we were going to extend, there would be a chance to come back this summer or this fall. And that largely worked with a couple of medical exceptions.
the question became, do we send everybody a new card, and how do we do that? We are not on digital membership cards. And so that was a big decision, but we decided to do it. And we did it on paper, card mailing. In this case, we were able to outsource because of the volume. And we kept the message really short and sweet. It was about member welcome back days. It was because we really want you to feel like you're getting the value that you contributed. And we have had so many phone calls since they've gone out from people who've said, "But I didn't renew. Why do I have this new card?" Or really people who were concerned that we had initiated an auto-renewal and that they weren't aware. And so we've now changed some of our auto-response on our email and our phone call outline. The big mistake there I think we did was trying to use the same envelopes we usually do when you join, which on the outside say, welcome. If I'd had more time and more budget, I would have printed a different envelope teaser so that people knew from the beginning what they were getting.
Dan Sullivan:
I guess that's just the cost you pay for being resourceful. So Daniella, can you talk a little bit about how you've handled this at the Miami Children's Museum? How are you doing expirations? Have you extended? How'd you determine how long that would be? How have you operationalized that?
Daniella Cabezas:
Yeah. So we have decided that based on their expiration date and the length of our closure will be how we extend their memberships. So right now, since we are still closed, we haven't done any of that with just a full song and dance. However, we are on an e-membership card system, which is a great time saver because we're not going to, sorry, Amy, have to go through that nightmare of reprinting cards and mailing them out. It's going to be that they will be upgraded. When I used to have physical cards and had to do an extension for a large amount of people, when we would do a special, is I would tell them that on their first visit, when they come back to the museum, that they can let us know if they really need a new membership card, like that if their card didn't have the right date, not to worry, because we're at that museum, we're a little lax. So we were like, you're good in the system. And that helped us on that saving cost of having to reprint everything all over again.
Amy Marks:
I tried to couch it in our crew mentality that it wasn't going to be a nightmare, what I really wanted to do with it was use it as a cultivation opportunity. We so rarely mail our members. We get great email open rates, but even then, you're still only talking to 24% of the people. So we had a nice infographic that covered all the safety measures that the center is implementing, and outlined what the fun things were going to be for our member welcome back days. And so I had really hoped it was more of a cultivation than anything. Of course it doesn't always work that way.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, right. That's right. And Ann, on your side, how have you handled expirations, and how did you determine how long to extend memberships for?
Ann Meisel:
Well, in the first instance, when we saw that things might go on for a while, we gave a two-month extension. And since then, as our pause has continued and we still don't have an end date, we do have a message on our new membership website. During this time, it's been really very fruitful for us in many ways. We've been able to build a membership website, which we had not expected to do for probably another year, and we're building a new membership database. So we'll be really nicely set for a new museum, building our membership at this point.
And we have let our members know the first time when we sent out our email blast to let them know, I got a wonderful response, people being really appreciative, really thankful, and grateful that we were doing that. And now we've just said, everyone is extended until we reopen. We've also let new memberships know that they don't begin until our reopening date. And we are fortunate to have the Cuseum cards. So therefore that, we will take care of all of that when we have that date. We will then update the first extensions, but we'll update everything at that point when we have a set date.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, for sure. When it comes to messaging, how did you articulate those new policies or those changes to your audience? What language did you use to do that, Ann?
Ann Meisel:
Well, we tried to communicate mostly, as we've set everything up to be pretty much digital from the start, we usually do most of our communication, via email. We sent out our welcome package that way, and we did a Mailchimp to our members. And we also have a lot of information on our membership website. To our members, that's our basic form of communication. We do have a few members that are not on computer or still not operating digitally. And we will, when renewals come up, connect with them, I'll actually make personal phone calls during time of renewals, as well as we will send out only one mailing. And that will be a postcard, probably, keeping that really minimal. And hopefully we won't have that many that have to go out, because people will have signed up from my series of renewals that I have planned.
I am also right now in the midst of planning, since we had such a nice response from our June promotion, our birthday promotion in July, I am planning a email blast to our members, letting them know what's happening, letting them know about a lot of the, safety measures and precautions we've set up, letting them know that they have their shop, just special discount that we started on the birth date continues for them. And also they'll be the first to receive my next campaign, which is a gift membership campaign, because now we have a special gift membership button on our website, and I will roll that out to members first, if they wish to purchase any gift memberships for anyone. And then that will go out for June and August to everyone.
And that'll actually be posted not only on our website. It'll also go with a very cute gift thing with a gift box that opens up. And we've been doing a lot of very innovative marketing for that. My background is as an illustrator and a designer, and I work a lot with our marketing team and our very talented design group too, as we're so new, I've been able to set everything up from scratch. And as our base of membership is really very much the creative industries, a lot of artists, designers, the art schools, art students, advertising agencies, poster lovers, and poster collectors, and the poster dealers. We can do a lot of really cool marketing with them that they'll really appreciate. Since I've had to put the renewals on hold and move them forward, I've been working on all of the other membership campaign projects. So we're set for this summer now. Hopefully I'll roll that out in the fall.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. I think something that a lot of people are wondering is like, what are your plans to re engage your members after you close, and Daniella, and maybe you can kick us with this one. What steps are you going to take to capture their attention again, to draw them back inside? Are you going to throw them a party? What does that look like in a post-coronavirus world, and what are some steps that you're taking to, again, capture that attention again?
Daniella Cabezas:
So, us, we know that once we do reopen, our maximum capacity would probably be around 200 people in the building, versus a typical Saturday for us, we would have had 1800 people in the building throughout the day. So keeping in mind the energy and time and money it takes to put on an event might not, depending on your budget, might not be the best thing to do. So we definitely decided to keep doing virtual events, keep changing it up, doing special themes, I know working with your past partners. So I've had a Star Wars troupe that has done a physical event onsite for members that has been overwhelming, like a fandom base there with Star Wars, and the kids like it as much as the parents, and having that conversation with them of how do you do that virtually now? So a lot of your past partners have also had a transition in pivot. So it's not something you have to figure out by yourself. They've figured that out for you.
So those are in line, and then as well, I think what Ann mentioned, having that good relationship with your marketing team, and maybe you didn't pay attention to it in the past, depending on your background, everyone's always juggling a lot of things, but really having those conversations now with marketing of, what are their open rates, can you provide me the list of the bad emails or people that haven't opened the past how many emails as well, and we've been targeting those are the people that are getting phone calls now. Trying to collect their email data information, but some are just more comfortable with getting a phone call than they are providing that email. And then my third step would be direct mail. When I've done campaigns in the past, I've seen a huge return with direct mail, and that it's worth the money using a mail house. However, again, budgets are going to play in mind. So maybe you don't direct mail your full data membership but you're doing the ones that aren't opening the emails, or that provided you bad data from the start and sending them a direct mail piece.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. I love the responsiveness approach, where you're saying, well, if this works, we'll try this, we'll measure, and then we'll break it out into different segments, and then we'll attempt again, again, the idea of calling people who haven't been opening your emails, it's just obviously at scale, it gets more difficult, but those human touch points are really important to go along.
Daniella Cabezas:
And I think that's the beauty of this right now is that none of us really have the answers. We've had things that worked for us in the past, so it's now using that data to do trial and error. That way you're not spinning your wheels, but if something didn't work, finding the learning lessons from it and adapting to move forward.
Dan Sullivan:
Right. So true. and Amy, you're in an interesting situation where you had all these fun things planned for your members, and the plans changed, but let's talk in the theoretical sense. How are you planning to re engage your members after the closure of the last few months?
Amy Marks:
We have the, like Daniella has instituted a number of virtual events that are for members only and they've been well received. And so what has happened is that our, what used to be our monthly e-newsletter has transitioned now to basically a weekly e-newsletter. There's also a video series that marketing communications is putting out that is like a deep dive on a specific aspect of an artifact in our collection.
And so, and members get that first, so we've already gone from a monthly communication to a weekly communication. And then when the re-engagement piece, one of the things I wanted to do for them, we got double discounts on photos and in the gift shop. So like, "Come on in, be the first to get your NASA face mask at 20% off,” which I know would have been a hit and we'll do it again later.
The newest current exhibit happened in sort of a crazy way over the holidays and into the beginning of the year, and we weren't really able to do the sort of public launch for that as we would have liked, which is the SpaceX Falcon 9, rocket booster that is now positioned onsite. And it's elevated so that you can actually, like, walk under it and all the way around it, and it builds a nice sort of park feel. We've actually seen people get their lawn chairs out and sit there under the rocket and have lunch. And so we really were using that as a sort of a reopening, not just the center, but of the exhibit. And opening the exhibit during the reopening of the center, which was really nice because it's outside. And so that allowed us to keep feeling maybe a little, nervous about being inside the building with a couple hundred other people. We had that outside and we actually had a representative from SpaceX, I was going to have him come out like every hour on the hour for 15, 30 minutes and engage members that were out there, and talk in a way about that particular rocket that most people couldn't. So that was going to be cool.
And then, again, to draw people outside to a different part of our facility, we were going to have Kona shaved ice trucks outside, and that was going to be a complimentary thing, it's really inexpensive, but I think would have gone a long way and it's hot outside. So here in Houston, we're consistently 90 every single day. So that was, I think going to go well. We had a really nice uptick on tickets. Our Sunday take, which is largely free, but we had to ask them to claim time reservation passes though. And that became a real primary point of our messaging over the last couple of weeks. Like, I know that you guys are used to showing up and walking in, but that's just not what we're going to be able to do. So we had a good crowd coming for Sunday, and then even Monday, Tuesday, I was pretty impressed, compared with what we were seeing in the uptake for the general public starting on July 1.
Dan Sullivan:
I love the idea of that something special, where you're like, we'll do shaved ice, or something simple, but it's those little things that people remember, especially kids, where they go and they have this experience. It's a little bit outside of what their expectations were. So Daniella, Ann, anything special on your side that you're planning? Obviously there's the idea of getting people back in, and doing a recapture and drawing a backhand, but is there anything really that's going to stand out that they're specifically geared towards surprising them for making them feel super happy? Ann, do you want to start?
Ann Meisel:
Yes. I'll just start by mentioning that our reopening plans, our first week will be for members only. That's one of the things I will let members know in this new upcoming newsletter to them, that we planned time ticketing. Obviously it is a reservation. We will let them know about a lot of the measures that are set in place, and it'll be a special week for them to be able to hopefully come when they're comfortable to do that.
And I think there's a number of museums doing that for a day or two, but we're going to take a week, it's also a good trial week for us, to see all the measures we've set in place are working. And actually our director, Julia did mention to me that we plan to roll out a survey at that time just to see how their visitor experience is. And we want to put that in place when we do reopen.
One of the things that I think has truly been truly important for us is all of the online virtual and digital marketing and programming that we have offered, that, since it's been so popular, and so important for us, will of course continue. That will be an ongoing thing. And that's also great for everyone that's in parts of the country where they can't come, or people may not travel so much for a while. And we've really been living our mission, as posters are so much a part of educating, engaging, and communicating, as well as entertainment. We have worked on a number of campaigns that have been very key to exactly what's going on in the country. And as we all know, posters have such a rich history, health, disease, protests, and this is globally.
We got involved, we partnered with a print magazine to create a campaign, which we talked about. You can go right on our website and have a look at it, called #combatCOVID19. And that was taking all of the advertising space from billboards, these are the digital billboards in Times Square, as well as at the Lincoln Tunnel, and 2000 screens around New York. It eventually went to Boston, to Chicago, and to Miami. And we worked with over 20 artists that gave their time and created wonderful, meaningful images, and they've been posted on that and you can go and have a look at that. That's been a fantastic thing for us, and that's exactly what we as a poster museum should be doing and putting out there. We're also very involved now in collecting for our archive, all of the people involved with the protest, posters and our collection managers working on collecting those for the future.
So I think this has been such an important and fruitful time for us. Also our education department. They have put up home resources for our K-2 kids, our college night, which is a wonderful series, professional development that started in our museum, but had to go online, and has been really exciting, and we plan on working on plans to continue that. We've also hosted four paid remote internships this summer. And we've also launched call-in verbal description tours for low vision and blindness.
We've worked on many, many things, like even today, we have later today an LGBTQ, we have a talk, which is AIDS activism and posters, and that features one of the great AIDS historians, as well as artists that did posters during that period. And we've been doing a lot of Instagram takeovers. We've done that all through Pride month. We've had a whole month of Pride programming.
So I think we've been really living the meaning and message of posters, even though you can't come to the museum and see our posters right now, we have a wonderful series of mini tours, which are very educational, of posters done by our head curator, and every other Wednesday, they host fireside chats with the head of Swan Gallery. And I must say those are really amazing and really, they're entertaining and amazing and very educational and informative. If you're a great lover of beautiful posters, they have fantastic taste. I think all of this programming that we've put together and will continue, we're also in the middle of building a portal on our website that our membership will have private access to certain things that we select that they can always go in and see. So we've had a great time in being able to set up a lot of things during these really challenging times.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And it sounds like you've really made the most of the shifted bandwidth of your team, by focusing on different opportunities or different projects that maybe were on the back burner for a little bit. And I wanted to ask Daniella, like, anything special, because I do, I want to make sure we get to some of the Q and A here as well. Anything special that you've got planned for your members that you're thinking about that you really want to welcome them back with a bang if you will?
Daniella Cabezas:
Yeah. So when we reopen, if we have certain dates that we are going to be open, making sure that our Mondays stay dedicated to one of our favorite programs, which is Many Mondays. So I think, finding what do your members really love about your institution, and how can you keep that alive for them even if capacity is limited, and just communicating that this is an option. I know I saw a lot of people saying, well, if people are not uncomfortable, I think, unfortunately, that's always, you can't please everybody. And we have started the surveys already with members to try to get that feedback and to also identify which ones are not going to feel comfortable, which ones are, which is where that also having virtual events will come into play.
And then our team's also working on getting a new traveling exhibit, because I think that always causes excitement with us. So being able to have aspects that would be special from that. So whether it's a character meet and greet with now socially distanced protocol, or just finding those fun, unique things that they wouldn't be able to get anywhere else.
Dan Sullivan:
Sure. Again, those are those memorable experiences you can, really bring to the table. So let's look at a couple of these Q and A questions here. The first one, this is from Amber Glen. How have you handled the potential for another sudden closure? Amy, have you taken any preparation in regards to that?
Amy Marks:
It's interesting, because I was part of a number of our reopening tiger teams that were dedicated to either operations or guest experience. And I guess we knew all along that July 1 was tentative, but as it got closer, we really started to, at least I did, I didn't really look back at any point. So when Friday happened, it did feel quite sudden. I mean, again, the reasoning behind it was so important that it didn't feel it's too bad for what we had going and for people who really wanted to come visit in the summer. And so it didn't feel catastrophic at the moment, but yes, we sent out a lot of emails.
We did have folks available yesterday, on Sunday, when we had the highest ticket take between like 10 and 11 AM available onsite, to talk with people who arrived that had missed the message. We just felt like talking to a security guard who says, "Sorry, you can't come in," wasn't quite the same experience as talking to our guest services director who could tell them about this, or there's still a photo op available over here and sort of smooth the way for people who had missed out.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. and again, with so much ambiguity around and the fluidity of the entire situation here, so you can plan all you want, but the reality is many of us really just have to follow the lead of our state and local governments. So Daniella, how have you handled this idea of, well, we're reopened or we're reopening, what if we experienced another sudden closure? What are you planning for that?
Daniella Cabezas:
Yeah. I think that's why we're planning with that mindset of, we're not opening until late November or the fall. So I've always, even as dates have gotten thrown out, been like, okay, I can launch my plan if I need to right now, if not, I can extend it. So we're trying to go on that more conservative route of making sure that we don't open too prematurely and trend that better safe than sorry, and hopefully that will work out for us.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Ann, what about on your side? Are you planning for the possibility of another sudden closure? Is that something that you've talked about as a team?
Ann Meisel:
That is not something we talked about, because we're really just hoping to be able to- to reopen. And I think because they've been so cautious in New York, as Cuomo said, we've been through to hell and back. And so I'm hoping that there isn't a big resurgence, I'm hoping we can stay safe enough to open and slowly get back to things.
I'm seeing it all as very much a wait and see. I think there will be some people that have a problem coming back to museums. From some of the surveys we've seen, there were just so many, and a lot of the input we get, there's so many people that just can't wait to get out and get to museums, because a lot of our museums are larger. Ours is maybe not so large, but very manageable in the way that we can handle. Our ticketed and timed reservations have small amounts of people come, have them socially distanced. I am going to encourage people to mingle with posters instead. And I just feel there will be some that may not be comfortable about coming. And I understand that, because particularly in New York City, you are not just hopping in your car and going from your home to your destination. You have to deal with all of the public transport and all the rest of what's out there.
It is starting to get busier. Even as I see in this phase two, there are many more people out and about, and as people slowly get back to work. But I think having had this experience, I think we pretty much know what to do. I feel that very much of our team that is working has been really busier than ever. I mean, I've been setting up all the membership for the year, because as I said, we are new. So for us, it's been really establishing everything from scratch, and it's for every area of our museum, for every department of our museum, and our marketing department has been absolutely brilliant in a lot of the connections it has helped us make. And it's really, I think, given us a wonderful opportunity to get the word out there really for all over the country about us.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, for sure. Another thing that people are wondering about too is virtual events. Daniella, you talked about the success that you've had with virtual events. Ann, have you hosted any virtual events at all? And if so, were they successful?
Ann Meisel:
Yeah, we've had quite a number of them. As I said, we have these takeovers on Instagram and, and all of our mini tours, and our, yeah, we have one planned that's going to be jazz, art, and some people playing jazz, some musicians playing jazz, things like that.
What we're going to do is a lot of these events that we're having, we're making sure now that we get recordings of them, so we can have those especially waiting for people that weren't able to attend. And also for our members to then be able to go into their special portal, and be able to enjoy it at their convenience. because sometimes I find people can't always make all of the events, and that's why we appreciate your recording so much.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure, for sure. And I think, especially now with the craziness of everyone's schedules and trying to wrangle, many people are trying to wrangle children in the mix of all of this, I am one of those people. It's the flexibility to be able to tune in later on your own time. For me, that's like at 10:00 once the dust has settled in the house. Yeah. It's a great thing. Amy, on your side, have you done any virtual events? And if so, like, what do those look like, and how are they received?
Amy Marks:
We started, I guess about three weeks after closure, they're member-specific virtual events, so you had to have the link. And it was actually presentations by our educators. and at first, I think they were really geared towards school age kids, and then we sort of realized that the audience was a little bit bigger than that. And they did an amazing job of being able to present the same topic at a very basic, kid-friendly level, and then also, even for our members, who are longtime members and huge space fans, enough content that they were also interested in and engaged. But we did hear on our survey feedback, to Ann's point, that it is difficult for people to do it as a live event, but we really wanted to stick with that format to really test the channels.
The other thing that happened, we did significant development on our app. We have an app that has virtual tours, and it started with the funniest idea that just had never occurred to me. Somebody said, "Well, how are our photo souvenirs going to look when everybody's wearing these masks? Like, who wants that picture? So this conversation began about how to incorporate the mask into the photo background.
And so I think what they've come up with is really like you're wearing an astronaut helmet, and your face here is taken out so that the mask is covered. But now you have a souvenir photo that you wouldn't have had in any other situation. Boy, they have taken that now. And this is... it's really been a team effort across the organization, and developed a brand-new guest experience that is driven by the app.
The other thing they were trying to solve was creating a one-way path. Our center hadn't really been designed that way. So now there's also a series, you can choose like four or five different roles, like, I would like to visit today as the flight controller. So what is my job like as a flight controller, as I walk through the spacecraft over time. But then you can come back the next time and be the head scientist. And it's unbelievable what they've done in this couple of weeks. And I think it's going to be a great boon for membership because now there's a real reason to come back, even if nothing else were to change, and they've built in badges that you collect along the way. And it's just incredible innovation that I don't know would have come through any other time.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. And this really has been a technology boom, if you will, throughout the last three months, just finding ways to engage people or streamlined processes or whatever it may be. It's been... it's really come to be quite prevalent. Here's another question. I'm not going to put anybody on the spot on this one, but I'd also love to hear from the audience too. What inexpensive low effort and high impact initiatives are you considering for re-engaging your members? Anybody on our panel can jump in here.
Daniella Cabezas:
Targeting Facebook advertising. You can do as big or as little as your budget has. You can use your membership list or expired members and try to target them that way, those Facebook ads that keep popping up for everybody gets on their site.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome, I love that idea.
Amy Marks:
We really were leveraging our SpaceX partners to have somebody who was willing to come onsite and participate and engage with our members was a big one. And I would say to what Daniella was saying, any of the things that we started to do focused on engaging members, all of a sudden, now, like, there's a whole other piece of, how can we use that same content to leverage re-engaging or acquiring new members along the way? Because as we know we're not going to renew everybody, right? So might as well put some time on acquisition too, but definitely digitally as Daniella said.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. And Ann, anything you want to throw in there?
Ann Meisel:
Yeah. As I mentioned, I'm working on this renewal campaign, and originally it was going to be this fun, quirky email that went out from our founding members. But under the circumstances, it's turned into a very poignant message from our director. And it's, of course, a thank you to our founding members who've been there since, before we even opened our doors. And it really gives a complete view of all we've accomplished this past year, and then goes into COVID and how we had to close our doors, and then all what we've done from behind closed doors.
This will probably go out beginning of September, I believe, but it's been really wonderful to work with our creative teams to create this video message. And it's such a great document about our museum that I do want to do a modified version of it, to actually put on our website and send out to people, because I think it really is a great story of what this year has meant to us. Being our first year, what a year.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, absolutely.
Ann Meisel:
So I will be working on that. I will work with our marketing on that as soon as... as soon as that is ready. We're in the midst of fine tuning it.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. For sure. So I've got one last question, and this is for all of our panelists, and Ann, why don't you start us off? What is one big takeaway that you would want each person that's watching to be able to consider and bring back to their organization?
Ann Meisel:
I think I have found my inspiration from putting out this first membership promotion, and the fact that people have actually been joining. And they've been joining a few here and there all along. And that to me is truly a message of hope. It's people that are planning to come. We're not open. They can't even come. Of course they can enjoy a lot of our online things, but it really says that they do want to support us. And even particularly, we've gotten a lot of seniors signing up. And that to me says, well, all they've survived, and they plan to get through this, and they have plans to come in and join us and visit our museum. That to me is truly an inspiration every day and is truly a message of hope for all of us.
Dan Sullivan:
I love that. Amy, what is one big takeaway that you would want everybody watching to take home, consider and bring back to their organization?
Amy Marks:
I guess, to your point, what are the things that you can do that are inexpensive? How can you leverage what you already have onsite and whether it's an exhibits director, who are your experts that can ramp up something may be very ordinary or perhaps taken for granted, and make something sort of new out of it, and then leverage it everywhere. That's it.
Dan Sullivan:
Just to underline that, the need to be resourceful is so huge right now, especially with almost everyone finding themselves, budgets have probably never been as scrutinized as they are now, or at least probably not for 12 years, just being able to utilize the resources that you've got available. And this might be a time now that you find lots of different people on the team have unique skill sets that you can leverage. and especially at smaller organizations, where, I mean, I think everybody knows this example, but you might have a security guard who turns out to be a great, a great social media maven like at the National Cowboy, Hall of Fame. Sorry, our National Cowboy Museum. But either way, yeah, absolutely. Daniella, what do you think is the one huge takeaway that you want everybody watching to be able to bring home?
Ann Meisel:
Yeah, just don't be afraid. I think right now with all the uncertainty, it's easy to get caught up in that anxiety and questioning things. But I think just having confidence in your organization, there's a reason why people have become members, that they love your organization for certain reasons, and just tap into that. And don't be afraid that something doesn't work out, just look for other reasons for what you can do to keep tweaking and keep growing, because none of us know the answer. So it's just adapting and using that data to help you figure it out.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, it's definitely a time for experimentation and trying new things. And again, being iterative, saying, "Let's try this. If it doesn't work, we'll try this." We call that AB testing, where it's like, well, we'll try both things too, see which one works better, and then we'll double down on the one that works a little bit better. So thank you, Ann, Daniella, Amy, amazing insights. This was phenomenal.
And a couple of quick things before you all go. So we are going to post a recording of this webinar on the Cuseum website, probably will be up a little bit later today, but we'll also have a link to our shared Google document with some coronavirus resources, as well as community ideas, so you can take a look at those. Secondly, we are going to have another webinar on Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern time, it's called Small but Mighty: Navigating the New Normal as a Small or Mid-Sized Museum. And that's going to be, again, a deep dive into those unique challenges that small, mid-size organizations are facing. So be sure to tune in if that applies to you, there's a registration link in the chat, get it before it floats away.
And then lastly, we've got another resource too, and we did a little collaboration the Cuseum team did with, Blackbaud. So we've got this eBook, it's called The Ultimate Guide to Surviving and Thriving as a Cultural Organization in the 21st Century. So that's available for download as well. That's also on the Cuseum website and there's a link in the chat as well.
So again, Ann, Danielle, Amy, thank you so much, phenomenal insights, I really appreciate you being here, and thank you everyone for tuning in and sharing your ideas. So, again, everyone has a fantastic, healthy week, a wonderful 4th of July, and we'll see you soon, maybe next week. Take care.
Daniella Cabezas:
Thank you, Dan.
Dan Sullivan:
Thanks, all. Bye bye.
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