We are exploring Auto Membership Renewal and are looking for anyone in the community to share their experiences. We are looking for information around what the member journey/experience has been.
Examples of what we are looking for: What has been the uptake? How responsive they have been? How many opt out? Challenges with expiry or ways you mitigated this.
We do have Memberships as Products but aren't looking for the technical - interested in the experience for the Members as well as the experience for staff who directly interact with the members.
If you are willing to share we would love to connect with you!
Hi Brenda,
We have had a very successful auto-renewal program running for over 20 years. Our memberships are also set up as products. Right now we have almost 50% of members enrolled. The program's success is due to several factors: longevity of the program (we've had a long time to ramp up), we integrate sign up at the point of purchase (the Visitor Services teams are trained in how to talk about it and sell it), we communicate with members to remind them when they are up for renewal and make it easy to cancel (even after they renew we allow them to cancel -- I think knowing we aren't trying to be sneaky about it makes it easier to sell), we offer a 10% discount on renewals for members enrolled in the program. This program has been really helpful in retaining renewal revenue when we have been closed. About 65% of these members successfully renew each year (this factors in those that opt out or where credit cards don't successfully charge or members cancel after renewal).
For communications, we send a letter and email letting them know their renewal is going to be processed and ask them if they need to update their credit card, change their level, add a donation or cancel. If we don't have a card saved correctly or if their charge doesn't go through we send another letter and email.
Our CRM team set up a pricing rule so members can self-serve and renew themselves if they have new credit card or if their charge doesn't go through right away.
Feel free to reach out if you have more questions! Sue
Hi Sue.
Thank you for sharing all of this valuable information with us regarding auto renewals. Do you have your members sign any type of agreement to acknowledge that it will auto renew?
Hi Jessica,
Pre-covid, members signed something when they joined or enrolled at the Box Office and we would keep those slips of paper for 1-2 years.
We did not have members sign anything when they joined by web or phone though. We are very flexible about refunding if we charge members and they want to cancel (this number is pretty low -- about 2%). The only challenge we have is when members follow-up after more than one year of renewing and say they didn't realize they were on an auto-renewal plan and want refunds for multiple years. In some cases, they have not visited but they've received membership cards, magazines, emails, multiple notifications that we would be charging.