Speaking Engagements

Results from Membership Renewal Series Tests

In 2012, we were doing a good deal of head to head testing within clients’ renewal series. The great thing about testing is that something typically wins by either generating more response or cutting costs. This proved to be true in our tests.
Here are some of the results from these recent tests. They are reported as the proportionate change between the test and the control.

• An offer to break up a single annual dues renewal into three installment payments outperformed the control notice by 11 percent.

• A fully redesign renewal notice that significantly economize on printing costs produced the same return as the control notice, but saved 20 percent in costs.

• A renewal postcard tested against the control envelope renewal reduced response by 30 percent.

• An early renewal discount offer outperformed the full price renewal offer by 92 percent.

Each organization’s situation is unique. So use these test results as indicators of things you may want to try. Your results may vary.

3 comments:

Alex McLachlan said...

Hi Tony

A very useful post.

Particularly interesting result for the early renewal discount. I haven't come across any organisations in the UK who do this as yet, maybe some will try it based on this result.

I'd be interesting in the sample size for this if you're able to share.

Alex

Tony Rossell said...

Hi Alex -- Excellent question. The sample size from the early bird discount test was very small. I am re-testing it this month with a larger sample size. So stay tuned and I will report back on the results. Tony

Scott Oser said...

We did this for select renewal groups when I was at AAAS years ago. We didn't want to eat into the revenue we were receiving from our members who "always" renewed and we also wanted to create urgency and not offer the discount all the way through the entire renewal series. What we did was offer the discount only on the first renewal notice (and we told them that) and only to members who had been members for less than 3 years. We tested it first and it turned out that worked very well as our retention rates went up in what was our most at risk group.