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I'm part of the Customer Success team here at , and I work closely with our customers to support them to grow their membership businesses. In the coming months, as we work to connect with new customers and aid them grow, I'll be sharing some important lessons and results we're seeing in relation to the overall strategy for membership.

The most talked about topic of discussion for our customers is price hikes. Customers are asking inquiries:

• "How do I know whether I'm capable of successfully raise prices without inducing a major churn event?"
• "How much should I raise the price?"
• "When is the best time to raise prices?"

There's not a universal solution in this case. Without a clear plan in place, there's a significant risk in raising prices - however I've been on the same process recently with some of our customers I'm convinced that there are clear signals that suggest when prices are able to increase without risk. These signals are:

A high percentage of people are taking monthly plans over annual ones. monthly plans

Memberships that see strong organic growth of annual plan over monthly plans hold major pricing power. If memberships experience at minimum 70% of new members purchasing an annual membership during a time period of minimum four months, this could be indicative of the membership being undervalued.

In such cases an increase in price between 10% and 20% will be received well by the members.

Continuous expansion of content formats

Memberships that continuously increase their content offerings will increase the cost frequently (i.e. once per year). Consider the situation where members' benefits were traditionally focused on newsletters. Expanding those benefits into new formats , such as videos, podcasts, and more will increase the perceived benefits of membership.

If it's content repurposed or content that's entirely fresh, expanding content can create an opportunity for price increases in the range between 5% and 10% every 12-18 months.

In a market that is not well-served

Members who operate in unserved areas can be more expensive. When this happens, competition is low and there are very only a few experts who are qualified that can compete in the market.

Memberships that provide in-depth analysis and cutting-edge research in a niche subject, is sure to attract prominent executives, thought leaders and other innovators from similar industries. They're willing to pay a lot to understand the impacts on their industries and customers. Memberships that find themselves serving those in these groups hold significant pricing power.

Statisticians and guidelines

These are some of the more general trends that we've observed in our study:

• Customers that have experienced the most success increasing prices slowly - never exceeding the amount of one price hike every 12-18 months.
• If the pricing strategy involved annual price increases, 10% per year is absorbed well by members.
• Annual memberships that have not raised prices historically (or for more than the period of 18 months) and maintain a retention rate minimum 75% could raise rates as high as 20% with no any negative effect.
• Results from customers show that the frequency of price increases is more significant than the increase itself - as long as the client is within the 10% to 20% price rise price range.

I hope that this helps. I'll be sharing more of these learnings as we continue to move ahead!