A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR, VISITOR EXPERIENCE
Dear Colleagues,
What is happening?
- Visitor Experience initiatives apply to many sections of the AGO’s strategic plan. Key priorities defined for 2013/14 include service excellence training, sales focus, customer relationship management and membership growth.
- You may recall that I wrote to you about our Service Excellence Plan in April.
- Now I’d like to tell you about another of our priorities: FUND the Experience: Growing our membership base.
How has the AGO’s membership grown in the past year?
- Our membership program has been hugely successful, closing out the 2012/13 fiscal year with 45,098 Membership households at the general membership level (memberships costing less than $2,000). If you add in higher membership levels like Curators’ Circle and Permanent, the overall households are 48,217.
- That translates into 92,000 members – our highest level of membership in the history of the AGO.
What has helped to make this year’s membership growth such a success?
- In 2012/13, members visited the Gallery a total of 288,970 times – exhibitions such as Picasso, Frida & Diego and Evan Penny contributed greatly to our success.
- The new Contact Centre increased our ability to serve existing members, acquire new members, and grow our revenue from members to all business areas.
- Email marketing continued to be the most important way to communicate, followed by Art Matters magazine. Last year the membership department sent 212 email campaigns, including eblasts to all members such as enewsletters, invitations to members’ previews, and announcements of new exhibitions, as well as targeted eblasts to smaller groups such as monthly renewal notices, invitations to new members nights, and targeted emails to drive sales in shopAGO and increase registrations to Education programs.
What are the most popular benefits to being a Member?
- The top four most important benefits are:
- Free admission to major exhibitions
- Free admission to the permanent collection
- The 10% discount in Retail and Food & Beverage
- Members’ Previews
How does membership growth help to FUND the Experience?
- In addition to the almost $5 million in gross revenue earned for operations through membership, AGO Members supported the Gallery by driving revenue directly to shopAGO, FRANK, Members’ Lounge and cafeAGO and Education Programs. In 2012/13, the AGO saw 50% more visits than the previous year (288,970 compared to 192,475).
- We continue to focus on driving membership growth and visits and to encourage members to shop, dine, learn and donate to the AGO.
How does the AGO measure membership success?
- We look at success in a number of different ways – revenue growth, renewal rates, visits, member satisfaction and engagement.
- In the strategic plan, we committed to using market research to amplify membership success. A few highlights from the 2012 Membership survey include:
- REASONS FOR BEING A MEMBER: The number one reason visitors purchase a membership is so they will plan to visit more often. One benefit dominates as important: Free admission to major exhibitions and the permanent collection. The 10% discounts on shopping and dining are the number two reasons.
- SATISFACTION LEVELS: Our members report very high levels of satisfaction with 97% of all Current Members describing themselves as “satisfied”, with 75% “very satisfied” with their Membership. As well almost all would recommend AGO Membership to a friend.
- GIVING: Compared to 10 years ago, members are much more interested in the benefits of membership rather than being motivated by philanthropic reasons. The majority of members are looking for value, however most believe that the AGO is an important part of the cultural community – and this perception has increased since 2001.
What is the biggest prompt for visitors to purchase memberships?
- In 2012/13, we acquired over 13,000 new membership households. Our greatest sources of new members are:
- Visitors who buy a membership during their visit to the AGO: due to strong attendance results for Picasso and Frida & Diego, we achieved excellent results this past year.
- Visitors who purchase tickets online: after their visit to the AGO, over 3,000 advance ticket buyers decided to become members when we contacted them through email or by phone.
- The growing trend towards buying tickets online has proven to be extremely helpful when reaching new audiences – by allowing us to contact them after their ticket purchase, we were able to bring in more than $300,000 in membership revenue just from this group.
What are next steps?
- Our strategic plan for Membership includes improving the renewal rate of first-time members by better engaging them in the first 3-6 months of their membership; convincing more people on the day they visit the AGO to purchase a membership, and increasing the number of visits per membership household.
- To do this, we are using database marketing methods more effectively – that means identifying different segments of visitors and members, and sending them targeted information about programs and products that we think will be of most interest.
- For example, a visitor who purchased children’s tickets to an exhibition might receive an offer for summer camp, while a member who hasn’t visited in six months might receive a special invitation to a members’ event.
- We are working on ways to increase the number of targeted prospects in our database – and one way is to get more visitors to book their tickets online and give us permission to contact them in the future.
Who is on the Membership Team?
- Saundra Dobroski is our Membership & Group Sales Director. She leads the General Membership program, Group Sales for adult social groups and school groups, as well as the Contact Centre and The Grange.
- Nathaniel Whitfield, Assistant Manager, Membership Services and Dominic Yu, Membership Assistant support the data driven strategies that Membership uses.
- Three full-time and 11 part-time membership staff sell and process memberships as well as provide support to members, which includes booking member tickets. Membership staff work at the Membership Desk, sell memberships to visitors in GG Hall, and answer phones and process memberships in the Contact Centre.
If you have any comments or questions about the AGO’s Membership Program, please give me a call at ext. 476.
Best,
Alicia
Alicia Vandermeer
Director, Visitor Experience
AGO – Art Gallery of Ontario
416-979-6660 ext. 476