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As a member of our Customer Success team here at  the company, and I am working closely with our clients to assist them in advancing their membership businesses. In the coming months, as we work to connect with more customers and help the growth of their membership we'll share some important lessons and results that we're witnessing when it comes to our overall membership strategy.

Recently, a hot topic of discussion for our customers has been price hikes. Customers are asking concerns:

• "How do I know whether I'm capable of successfully increase the price without creating the occurrence of a massive churn?"
• "How do I increase the price?"
• "When is the ideal price to be raised?"

Clearly, there's no one-size-fits-all solution here. Without a clear strategy in place, there's the risk of increasing prices. However I've been on the same process recently with some of our clients, I'm confident in saying there are certain signs that show when prices can be raised with minimal risk. These signals comprise:

A high percentage of people are taking annual plans as compared to. plans that are monthly

Memberships that see strong organic adoption of an annual plan over monthly plans hold major pricing power. When memberships see at minimum 70% of new customers purchasing an annual plan over a period of minimum four months, it is indicative of the membership being valued at a lower level.

In such cases an increase in price between 10% and 20% will get the approval of members.

Continuous expansion of content formats

Memberships that constantly increase their content offerings may increase prices frequently (i.e. every year). Take the case where member benefits are typically focused around newsletters. Expansion of those benefits into new formats , such as videos, podcasts and other formats could increase the worth of member.

Whether it's content that's been reused, or completely new, the expansion of content creates an opportunity for pricing increases that fall in the range of 5%-10% every 12-18 months.

Operating in an under-served market

Memberships in unserved market segments can cost more. In these cases the competition is minimal and there are very limited experts with the qualifications that can compete in the marketplace.

Memberships that provide an in-depth analysis of the subject and top-of-the-line research in a niche topic, will attract high-profile executives, thought leaders and innovators in similar markets. They're eager to shell out a substantial amount to understand the impacts on their industries and customers. Memberships that find themselves serving those in these groups hold significant pricing power.

Information and statistics

Below are some general trends we've noticed through our studies:

• Customers that have experienced the biggest success with price increases do so slow - never an increase of more than every 12-18 months.
• When a pricing plan involves each year's price increase, 10% per year is absorbed well by members.
• Annual memberships that have not raised prices historically (or over a time period of more than one year) and maintain a retention rate minimum 75% can likely raise prices as much as 20% with no adverse impact.
• Customer results indicate that the rate of price increases is more significant than the increase itself when the client is within the 10% to 20% price rise interval.

I hope this is helpful. I'll continue to share the lessons learned in the coming months as we progress forward!