Being a member of an organization can play an integral role throughout a person’s life. As a child, you may have been a member of a Little League team or a Girl Scout troop. When you were in college, you might have been affiliated with some type fraternity, sorority, or young professional organization. Once you were out of school and further along in your career, you might have found yourself joining a professional association.
In most cases, becoming a member of a professional organization provides you with added benefits and a significant cost-savings that you can’t receive if you weren’t a member. Ultimately, associations thrive when people feel compelled to become fully-fledged members. It’s also in the association’s best interest to always be developing ways to maximize the lifetime value of existing members.
The Value of Member Discounts
Most organizations offer member and non-member prices for a variety of items, ranging from brochures to educational courses to conferences. A challenge that many organizations face is the lack of awareness that there is typically a cost-savings that comes with being a member versus a non-member. There are long-term benefits that you receive that make the purchase a worthwhile investment. The Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) was faced with this challenge, and they needed an effective way to address the price difference and to demonstrate the added value that came when purchasing a membership.
“It was not obvious to customers that adding membership would be a cost-savings to them. And it wasn’t very clear that they were paying for it with the non-member registration,” recalls Hassana Howe, Senior Director, Membership and Chapter Relations, at PDA.
How PDA Increased Membership using the Online Store
PDA tried several different approaches in order to encourage customers to purchase a membership, but their tactics were not resonating with their audience. They tried placing upselling offers in the product details and checkout pages on their site to highlight the price difference between member and non-member. However, it was deduced that customers either seemed to avoid it or chose not to act on it. The team at PDA realized that the only way the customers would acknowledge a membership purchase is if it appeared in a more obvious way.
“Ultimately, we wanted to get to the person during the shopping experience. As they were deciding to purchase a product, we wanted to put a discount right in front of their face,” recalls Josh Carlson, CEO of Perbyte, who helped PDA implement their upselling features.
The other challenge that PDA wanted to address was how to keep track of those individuals who were not selecting a membership during their shopping experience and what they could do to retarget those potential leads.
To find out how PDA generated $43,000 in sales through membership upselling and how they came up with an effective solution to track non-membership purchases, check out our case study.
