Name: High-Level Version: Blackbaud Arts and Cultural Solutions: Membership Best Practices
Uploaded: 2026-01-28T20:02:10.017Z
Duration: 29 min 40 s
Description: High-Level Version: Blackbaud Arts and Cultural Solutions: Membership Best Practices

Transcript for "High-Level Version: Blackbaud Arts and Cultural Solutions: Membership Best Practices": Hello, everyone, and greetings from sunny Maine. I see Jessica is coming to us from Texas. I'm gonna take just a few minutes to get started in here, but just feel free to say hello in the chat. I see people from all over Maryland and Iowa, New York, Green Bay. My neighbors in Bath, Maine. Hello? California, we got everybody on every coast. We're gonna get started in just a second. Today, we'll be talking a little bit about membership best practice. Hopefully, you guys were all in our webinar we had last week. And we're gonna be basically talking about the same thing, but I'm gonna be doing, like, a shorter version of it, and we're gonna just make sure that everyone has a chance to ask some questions about it. Alright. We're gonna get started in just a second. The very first thing I wanna do though is I'm going to go into the chat and I'm going to put in something for you guys. This is a link to the slide deck that I did in the last webinar. We talked about membership best practices. Hopefully, you guys can open that up for you. Can someone confirm you're able to open that up? Just making sure everything is not goofy. It opens. Confirmed. You guys are the best. Thanks so much. Okay. So Here we go. Alright. So this is the slide deck that I just put in there, but I'm gonna talk about it really quick, and we're gonna go through it. Some of the biggest things that we talked about in here, though, I'm gonna get through all that stuff, was we talked about making sure that you guys are have ways to get new members and keep current members. Right? That's everything that you really talk about with a membership. You know, it's getting new people and getting, the people to stick around. And we talked about discounts and things like that, like, access, members only, early access for hot tickets, free admission. And I did share a lot of helpful information, about, like, how you guys can access that. What I wanna do right now is take a minute and use the chat and talk to you guys a little bit and ask you what, you know, more you guys have any questions about discounts, any questions about member only events and things like that. If there's anybody that's really like, I wanna do that, but I'm not sure how to set it up, things like that. I wanna know also what you guys are doing for discounts, if there's things are working for you, things that you might wanna share with your fellow, Blackbaud all trueites, that are in here, and things like that. So go ahead and let's use the chat right now. Let me ask you, like, what are you guys using for your discounts? What are you using to bait members into coming in, and what works for you guys? What doesn't work as well too? It's good to share. Like, hey. We tried this. Nobody liked it. In person discounts, says Katie, and that's good. Can you give me an example, like, of an in person discount you use? Early access, I see to register for summer camps. That's a good one. If you guys have a very popular summer camp, early access is great. 15% off dual membership on Valentine's Day. Oh, yeah. 15% off new members in person only. I like that. Free admission, and they do not have to pay registration fee for classes. Yep. Events discounted. Carolina, that's a great question. I don't know if there's an article about how to query for people who got a discount. I'll look for one real quick. Let me see. 20% off merchandise. That's a good one. Let me see. I'm seeing a lot of stuff in here. Discount on certain events. So this is a great question. She wanted to know if there's a way to query on you can do queries on discounts depending on how you've got it set up. So I'm pulling this up right now to share with you. Somebody's already answering for me. Elizabeth, thank you so much. I just wanted to pull it up. So here is a great one about how to get a list of constituents who used a certain discount. So it's not specific to members, but it'll work. Amanda asked if we could discount 60 plus or military. That would something that you'd really have to only do in person because there's no way to do a verification online that somebody is 60 plus or a military member. There's they they could set up you could set up a form of membership, Amanda, where somebody comes in and you give them that membership of, like, I'm a military person, like a free thing. And then when they log in to the system, it would recognize them and give them that, but they would have to start in house. It would be messy is basically what I'm saying. So if it is in person, you can set up a price type. That's a a better thing to do as well. So if you wanna do a, like, price type for 60 plus or military, that'd be a great way to do it too. Patricia is being honest and saying we just trust them and tell them that this is the code that they need to do to get their discount. That's something that it's up to you guys to do. There's a lot of trust only things you guys could do. So let me ask you guys. How is there anybody that's having an issue where they started the membership and it didn't really end up going bad or something that blew up in your face? And that's okay to share it. I'm just looking to something that you might wanna say that you would do for somebody to avoid. Elizabeth is actually sharing something nice. She says we do an honor system for discounted for, like, seniors, because they don't wanna card people all the time. That is something that can be difficult. Like, if you're saying we give a senior discount, but somebody has to prove it, they might not love giving you their card to prove that they've reached a certain age. Just make sure that you don't have something that could be really taken advantage of in that situation. Yeah. Carolyn's saying, also, we just ask. That's good. Barbara says, no way that kid is under three, but go ahead. Yeah. It is kind of a thing. You can't really ask for a birth certificate if you're saying that, like, young kids are going. I do remember my little brother when he traveled with us, we'd always have to stop before we get on the plane and say, remember, if anybody asks, you're under the age of eight. And that's just the way that is. But modern what if they are on auto renewal? What do you mean if they're on auto renewal for what, Amanda? Something that you've used an auto an honor system for, like a, military or in seniors. So if somebody I mean, if they're in a membership that is like, it should auto renew whatever their current, like, level is, whatever their current thing is. If you've given them a discount that you gave in person, that might not apply in an auto renewal unless they are auto renewal on some kind of level that's like a senior level with a senior cost. So it'll depend on how it was sold to them. The good news is if you create a membership level for seniors on auto renewal, they're not gonna get younger. Yes. The code doesn't work for auto renewals. Yeah. K. We talked a little bit about member perks. Right? We wanna make sure we're setting those up besides just discounts. We've got a lot of you put it in there, make it so the tickets are available to only members or that members have the ability to buy for a certain time to get priority. I find that a lot of good membership programs do offer early access for members. This is something you have to think about when you're creating the event because that's the area where you make that, description. You're at when you're doing the scheduled program or you're doing the on sale information, you can see in the image right here, it's basically setting up a buy tickets in advance. To do that, you have to make sure that you have your on sale period to begin at a specific time, and then you can create the event ahead of time and let members have, like, an immediate time where they're allowed to go in, and everybody else won't be able to get it until you give a specific time. You can also just create the event that only they can go to, and that's always something else that you might wanna consider doing. With these, you should know that if you guys are using login for your online forms, you can have it so that when somebody buys tickets online, if they log in as a member, they will be able to see member only programs and buy them online. Does anyone have any success with that? Yes, Jess. You can also get members only prices. See, Ali, that's good. You guys are doing that. To do the login, Jess, we don't really have a link on, like, how to like, how a member would do it, but you do need to go in and turn on your online registration if that's not something that you have set up for your web forms. Elaine says most of the members don't want to have to log in. If you have an older member base, I actually do see this running in to a lot of people. They're not really a fan of using the Internet, and they don't wanna do any extra steps. What you but the way that works, you asked, like, if there's a thing that shows you how to utilize that. I'm gonna do I'll do a quick show you guys of something here. Yeah. That's a great way to do it, Liz. I am gonna do a quick share of something else. Hold on just with me. I'm gonna show you Altru real quick just to make sure you guys are all understanding what I'm talking about. When you're in the Altru area under web, this is where you have your user registration settings. So you should all make sure that you're in here. And it's gonna take a second to open this up. I'm showing you right now, Jess. So when I went into web and I went on to the user registration, there's this enable registration click. You're gonna click that right here, and then this is your registration URL. You just copy that. Once you've copied that, you go into Altru again, and you go to your page designer area, and you just add a link to your web forms at the top, bottom, wherever you want it that says sign in and register. Once you've done that, people will have the ability to sign in and register. They'll have to do it the first time. Once they do it, though, it should connect them to their account that you have in Altru. And then from that point forward, every time they log in, it'll connect them to that or account in Altru, which will recognize that they are a member and give them any perks or things you've given as members. If the event is live in the web, then it's just something that'll only show up for members or won't show up for members for people nonmembers rather. Or as some other people will put, they create a discount that will only apply to members that can apply online. So that's how that whole area is set up. Does that make sense so far? Not on your web page, Laura, but, like, when they click on, like, the web like, the buy tickets for this, it'll show up to them once they're logged in. Otherwise, if they're not logged in, when they'll get there, they'll see a thing that basically says there's not no tickets available, you know what mean, because they're not a member. They'll to log in first. It doesn't change the way your web forms your pages work. It changes the way the true web forms work, not your website. These are where you do the benefits area. That's pretty easy, but I wanted to make sure that this is something that you guys spend a lot of time thinking about. This is a big high, like, thing I wanna make sure we're all going in, and that's just making it clear and easy. I mean, I can't say this enough. Name your levels something that makes sense. Silver level is some it might you might put a description on your website about what a silver level is, but you have to that means other people are gonna have to remember that if they're not looking at the website. When you walk into the front door and you say, I'm a silver member, that's not always as clear as what what what is the difference between a silver member and a platinum member? I'm a member of the family plan. Oh, so you have you and a couple of kids. That's a lot easier to understand. So try to think about things like that when you're going through it. Sometimes you wanna come up with a creative name. That's fine. But it does have that, like, benefit of clarity. Right? And you should also make sure that you are 100% clear about what comes with which level. If you're buying a membership level that comes with three members and two guests, be clear about what is a member and what is a guest. You don't want people asking that and getting confused coming in, and you're like, well, it says here you can't bring in three members and two guests, but you're bringing in four guests. And they go, isn't that all the same thing? You go, no. It's not. Make sure that you're clear about all that to all your members all the time. Okay? And, of course, make it giving members purchase and renewing, making it easy. Think about as many ways as you can to set up for automatic renewals. Make sure that you're testing your processes. Make sure that it looks the way it's supposed to be, and really, really, really try your best to make sure that everything is just easy. Alright. Let me see. I got some questions here. Constituent event registration for online ticket sales does not link to original member, creates a new constituent which can't be merged. Our member I'm I'm not sure what you're asking about that, Dina. But if you're having an issue where you're you're you're creating too many, I would reach out to support. They might wanna look at that. But I see another one you showed. You said our members, when they buy through online sales, does not recognize them. Even when the information is 90% the same, it creates a new constituent. Okay. You would have to check your duplicate settings to see if that's something you wanna work on, but that might be your issue because that's not something that I see all the time. Is Blackbaud planning to create membership registration pages similar to the new online giving forms, which are much simpler for the patrons? I can't answer that specifically. I know it's something that they're playing with, but they would never tell me anything really important like that because I'm very public facing, and I talk to people all the time. So they keep stuff like that away from me so that I don't make any promises. I do know that they want to make improvements along those lines. I can tell you that this year, you may see something kinda cool come out for group sales, but it still hasn't completely come out yet. It's kinda beta testing, but that's something I hear in the works. And it usually since I'm hearing about it, it usually means it's gonna happen because I don't usually hear about stuff that's just, you know, a pipe dream. I another question is, will there ever be an option to provide a discount for members using auto renewal feature? One of the perks of renewing members is that they get a discount for renewing early, so we don't want to get rid of that feature. Yeah. We do have something you can do for there's a thing you can do for signing up for auto renewal. It's not considered a discount. It's considered a renewal promotion, and there's a I I think there's a KB article about that one. Barbara also said that she gets lots of duplicates during camp registrations. People reregister multiple times. Let me see here. I had a request to try to find an article about early renewal discount. Let's see here. Alright. Here's about here's the article about membership promotions, which isn't the same as a discount, but really kind of is, but isn't because it's a promotion. Totally this is totally different. But, yeah, basically, this is to encourage people to join programs or members to renew or upgrade. You can configure promotions. There are discounts on the cost of memberships. Oh, you're so welcome, Elizabeth. And here's an article about configuring auto renewal promotions. I'm gonna share this one specifically because this is different yet totally the same. Appreciate you guys' patience. I have so many windows open. Takes me a hot minute. Okay. So, you know, we've only got a few minutes left here, and you guys have asked some great questions. I would wanna make sure we talk about, you know, making sure you guys are using your best online conversion things. Those are just, you know, as simple as putting things in, like, headers and footers. Paige is asking if there's something helpful for showing member benefits on a membership record more easily. Currently, I'm not aware of any changes they're trying to make for that, but I do appreciate the feedback. And just so you guys know, I am keeping track of everything you say in here, and I'm going to pass everything up. So I appreciate you letting me know. Make sure you guys are maximizing conversions. That's the big thing. Front desk is the best place. You guys make sure you gotta do something in that front desk to get people who are already in the door to become members, and making sure that you're reaching out to your new members and talking about how much you appreciate them. Okay? To bring them back year after year, we talked about this promotions. Come up with a promotion. Keeping things fresh. New things. Communicate new things. And member involvement is huge, and I don't think enough people will take advantage of it. Reach out to your members and just ask, hey. Are you guys interested in doing something with us? Are you guys interested in sitting down and talking about what you wanna do? You know what I mean? Here at the museum, how you can help out, how the museum could get better, any of these things. They're all great ways that you can reach out. And, of course, I wrote Blackbaud can help, and I showed a picture of a generic man who looks nothing like me. But that's because you have a success manager. It might be me. It might be somebody else. But we're here at Blackbaud. And if you're thinking of revamping or just changing the way you do things or just looking at your overall practice and going, is there anything we can be doing that's better, easier, something else that you guys for have for feedback? Just reach out to us and let us know that you wanna talk about memberships and you wanna know more about, you know, what we've seen, especially for people like me. I've been a black bod for six years now, and I work with a lot of people in the arts and cultural. I've just seen a lot of membership programs. And so I've seen a lot of how you guys do things, and everybody, you know, does it differently. So I've seen a lot, and I've learned a lot. And I love when people share, like Jessica, who's saying that they conduct a member survey last year to get great feedback from the members, and they're moving differently to try to accommodate them. That's the kind of stuff, Jess, that I'm talking about. You wanna make sure you're talking to your customers, talk to your members, make sure that they're happy, and they know what they you're they're getting. You know? And you wanna know what they get out of it. So gotta keep your fingers on that pulse, guys. We're wrapping up in just a hot minute here. This was a short one, and I wanted to say thank you. You should be able to access these resources, which are in the original slideshow from my longer one when you go to that first link I put in there. So that should give you all these fun resources, and you guys can use that to get more out of the system. But if you still find that you're trying to get more and more done, you know, like I said, reach out to Blackbaud, reach out to us, and see what we can do to help you guys do more. It's been really lovely talking with all of you. I really appreciate everything that you've shared in the q and a and in the chat. You guys are great. I have great customers, and Blackbaud is so lucky to have all of you with their arts and cultural. And thank you so much for what you share with your communities. Arts and Cultural forever.