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I'm part of the Customer Success team here at , and I work closely with our clients to support them to grow their membership businesses. While we're continuing to work with more customers and help to grow their businesses, I'll be sharing some important lessons and results we're seeing in relation to overall membership strategy.

The most talked about topic of conversation for our clients has been the issue of price hikes. Customers are asking inquiries:

• "How do I determine that I'm in a position to increase prices without triggering a major churn event?"
• "How can I boost prices?"
• "When is the best moment to increase prices?"

Clearly, there's no one-size-fits-all solution here. 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 signs to suggest when prices are able to increase without risk. The indicators comprise:

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

The memberships with a strong organic adoption of an annual plan over monthly plans are able to offer significant pricing. If memberships have at minimum 70% of new customers purchasing an annual plan over a period of at least 4 months, it is evidence of the membership being priced at an undervalued.

In such cases an increase in price by 10% to 20% is likely to be received well by the members.

Continuous expansion of content formats

Memberships that continuously expand their content formats will increase the cost frequently (i.e. once per year). For instance, member benefits were traditionally focused on newsletters. Expansion of those benefits into new formats such as podcasts, video and others can increase the perceived worth of membership.

If it's content repurposed or content that's entirely new, content expansion creates an opportunity for cost increases that range from of 5%-10% each 12-18 months.

Operating in an under-served market

Memberships that operate in under-served market segments can cost more. In these cases, competition is low and there are few qualified experts to compete with on the market.

Memberships that provide deep analysis and the latest research, in a niche topic, will attract high-profile executives, thought leaders and innovators in similar markets. It's a market that's ready to spend a significant amount to understand the impacts on their businesses and clients. Memberships that find themselves serving the same groups are able to make significant price changes.

Statisticians and guidelines

Below are some general trends we've noticed during our research:

• Customers who have seen the most success price increases do so slowly - never exceeding the amount of one price hike every 12-18 months.
• If the pricing strategy involved each year's price increase, 10 percent per year are easily absorbed by the members.
• Memberships with annual renewals that haven't previously raised rates (or for more than one year) and maintain a retention rate that is at least 75% are likely to increase the cost by as much as 20% with no adverse impact.
• Results from customers show that the rate of price hikes is more relevant than the price increase itself - as long as the consumer is in the 10% to 20% price rise interval.

I hope this is helpful. I'll share more of these learnings as we continue to move forward!