The Member Motivations Study is an initiative of FIVESEED in collaboration with Cuseum. The study is led by Principal Researcher, Rosie Siemer.

Your organization may participate in one or both phases of the study.

To participate in Phase 1, enroll here.

To participate in Phase 2, you must be a Salesforce Marketing Cloud customer and enroll here.

Enrollment takes less than 10 minutes and is currently open to US-based museums and visitor-serving cultural organizations, including art museums, history museums and historic sites, science centers, natural history and anthropology museums, botanic gardens, arboreta, children’s museums, nature centers, performing arts organizations, zoos, and aquaria.

The Member Motivations Study™ includes two distinct phases of research:

Phase 1 focuses on “message optimization” in which we will test different value propositions, and different ways of expressing those propositions, to meet two objectives:

• Identify ways to strengthen each proposition by examining message elements for effectiveness in terms of attentional capture, memory salience, emotional response, and comprehension.

• Identify which propositions appeal most to which audiences in the context of organization type and discipline.

Phase 2 of the Member Motivations Study™ will focus on an “experimental” approach to test which value proposition is most effective in converting members, with the hypothesis that prospective members who receive a social identity framed appeal will be more likely to join than those who receive the control (transactional) appeal.

The Member Motivations Study™ will provide actionable insights for your organization. By participating, you will help us to deliver leading-edge, national research on member motivations to the broader field.

For Phase 1, the participation fee is $4,850. This fee includes $500 in incentives for survey respondents as well as survey design, programming, hosting, and implementation; fulfillment of incentives; list management services; and analysis and reporting.

For Phase 2, the participation fee is $9,450. This fee includes up to 20 hours of professional Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation services, including study email and Cloud page templates, configuring of study journeys, loading of audiences, and conversion tracking; survey design, programming, hosting, and implementation; and analysis and reporting.

For questions or more information about the study participation fees and billing schedules, please contact Rosie Siemer at rosie@fiveseed.com

Organizations participating in Phase 1 will be responsible for:

• Providing a contact list of nonmembers in Excel format to our data partner;

• Providing the name and email of a contact person at your organization who can verify the authenticity of the survey for any respondent with concerns;

• Providing your organization's logo, high-resolution images, and other background information as requested to support the study;

• Sending out an email to nonmembers announcing the survey;

Organizations participating in Phase 2 will be responsible for:

• Granting access to Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other systems, as needed, to our implementation partner;

• Processing and fulfillment of any memberships sold during the study period;

• Providing the name and email of a contact person at your organization who can verify the authenticity of the study for any respondent with concerns;

• Supplying your organization’s logo, high-resolution images, and other background information as requested to support the study;

• Providing an email contact list of visitors, lapsed members, and other non-members as specified by the Principal Researcher;

• Tagging new members who are acquired via the study in your database with a unique identifier;

• Providing membership sales and revenue results by level and source as specified by the Principal Researcher for analysis.

Timeline for Phase 1:

Now—June 30, 2024: Enrollment of participating organizations.

July 2024: Onboarding and contact list delivery. The Principal Researcher will provide detailed instructions on how to export and transmit your nonmember visitor and lapsed member lists.

August 2024: Phase 1 survey deployed.

September—October 2024: Phase 1 analysis.

Timeline for Phase 2:

Now—June 30, 2024: Enrollment of participating organizations.

October—December 2024: Onboarding and Salesforce Marketing Cloud study implementation.

January—February 2025: Phase 2 field experiment deployed.

March 2025: Phase 2 analysis.

Study Findings

April 2025: Exclusive first look! Study findings shared with all participating organizations.

May 2025: Study findings released to the broader field.

* Timeline is subject to change.

The benefits to your organization include:

• Gain a better understanding of the real reasons why people become members.

• An invitation to participate in a virtual readout to discuss the study findings with Principal Researcher, Rosie Siemer.

• Compare your results alongside peer organizations.

• First-in-line access to the study findings.

Phase 2 participants will also receive up to 20 hours of professional full-service implementation of the study-based Salesforce Marketing Cloud journeys and templates to use and adapt going forward.

We will need some basic information about your organization such as your organization’s discipline(s), number of membership households, the name of your email marketing platform, and non-member/visitor email list size.

Yes, at this time only US-based organizations are eligible to participate.

Phase 1 of the Member Motivations Study™ will utilize a survey of your non-member visitors and lapsed members to explore messaging.

Phase 2 will utilize Salesforce Marketing Cloud to accomplish the goal of implementing a field experiment to test different membership value propositions and will also include a survey.

No. While Phase 2 participants can expect to have new members join due to the nature of the field experiment, the purpose of this study is to test different value propositions and better understand why people become members.

A field experiment uses the scientific method to examine the effect of an intervention in the real world. For this study, we will be using an A/B/n test to determine which membership value proposition produces the highest clickthrough and conversion rates.

Utilizing Salesforce Marketing Cloud, we will apply randomization to observe a difference between a treatment and a control group. By conducting a field experiment, the Member Motivations Study™ will help museum and cultural leaders understand what works in membership marketing, and most importantly, why.

Absolutely! We want to be sure that this research does not disrupt your planned membership/marketing activities. Our research team will work with you to determine deployment dates that fit within the study period and align with your organization’s communications calendar.

Not at this time. Due to the limitations of the study scope, all Phase 2 participating organizations will be required to implement Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Each organization will be required to provide a contact list for non-members, including visitors and lapsed members via an Excel file with (at minimum) first name and email for each contact. This contact list will be transmitted to our data partner via a secure link. Our research team will then distribute the survey.

Yes, we will require a minimum number responses to generate valid findings. For Phase 1, we will require a sample size of 5-10K nonmember emails. For Phase 2, we will require a minimum of 50K nonmember emails.

Yes! As long as your organization is able to meet the minimum requirements for email sample size, we will provide comparisons by discipline, size, and/or admission type.

Our research team will provide all survey design, content, and creative needed for the study.

As this is a scientific study, no changes will be permitted to the survey, content, or creative to maintain consistency in messaging across all participating organizations and ensure the validity of the results.

The survey announcement is an advance notification to your email list alerting them to the upcoming invitation to participate in a survey. This announcement helps to give legitimacy to the survey and will help to boost response rates.

Our survey invitation emails are not apt to be mistaken for a marketing email. Since our emails only have one specific action (i.e., take our survey) it is unlikely a recipient will get distracted with other updates and links. We also do not use images in survey invitations, and invitations are written and formatted as if they are a personally-written email. We also screen the subject line and the body copy using spam reviewers to ensure we are using language and punctuation that will not be perceived as spam by automated spam filters.

Study fees will be invoiced on September 15, 2024 with NET 30 terms.

If you would like to discuss an alternative billing schedule or payment terms, please contact rosie@fiveseed.com.

Yes! We understand that you may have budget constraints that may hinder your ability to participate in the study. Please contact rosie@fiveseed.com to discuss splitting the fee across two fiscal years and/or deferring payment until next fiscal year.