“The whole point of getting away from our old systems was to get away from silos.”

For Laura Schneider, Director of Tessitura CRM at Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS), building bridges was the impetus behind the museum’s search for a new technology platform. Previously, the team used one system for fundraising and another for ticketing and memberships. This setup made cross-departmental collaboration a challenge. Managing their membership programs had become especially difficult.

Laura Schneider

The museum selected Tessitura because of its unified platform for customer relationship management (CRM), admissions, memberships, fundraising and more. Those features were designed specifically to meet the needs of museums and other cultural institutions. HMNS also appreciated the close integrations Tessitura offers to extend its functionality.

Two of those integrated products are Donate2 and Flex2, both created by Tessitura partner L2. Using these tools alongside Tessitura’s robust membership capabilities, the museum made significant improvements to its loyalty programs. Gift memberships help cultivate new museum lovers. Robust data helps target communications more effectively. And automated processes save time that the team can invest in higher-impact projects. The museum's staff are perhaps most excited about the ease and efficiency of automatic membership renewals.

"Truly automatic" renewals

The museum offers an array of loyalty programs to cultivate engagement. Automatically renewing memberships provide two key benefits: They support member retention and provide a steady, predictable income. To incentivize this option, the museum offers a 20% discount on all auto-renewing memberships.

However, these important auto-renewals were cumbersome to manage in the museum’s previous systems. “The ‘auto’ part was very loose,” Laura explained. While it felt automatic to guests because they were charged on a regular cadence, staff spent days creating manual batches and processing stand-in transactions to synchronize their fundraising and ticketing systems. “It took up so much time,” Laura recalled.

With Tessitura alongside Donate2 and Flex2, the museum now enjoys “truly automatic” renewals. Members sign up through a simple Flex2 form, and Tessitura instantly creates the membership. When it’s time to renew, the card on file is automatically charged and Donate2 creates an order in Tessitura for the membership.

“Every year we know at least a certain percentage will be there in our membership file without taking up additional staff time, without our members having to jump through hoops to purchase. It’s just done and out of everybody’s hands,” Laura said. “We don’t have to touch it again. And that’s fantastic.”

The museum’s members also appreciate the new system. “They really like how easy it is,” Laura reported.

Photo of Houston Museum Natural Science's Paleo Hall from above, showcasing multiple paleontology exhibits on display

Houston Museum of Natural Science's Paleo Hall

Saving time and money

The new efficiencies from Tessitura and its partners have saved countless hours of staff time. That, in turn, lowers the management cost for each membership and frees up the team for other, more valuable projects. So far, they’ve reinvested that time in member events and new advertising efforts, among other initiatives.

The museum’s new technology also helps them realize significant savings on transaction fees. They chose to use Donate2’s cover cost feature, which asks customers if they’d like to cover the processing fees of their transactions. The HMNS team didn’t think many people would opt in. However, their members’ willingness to cover transaction costs surprised them.

“You think of people who are joining auto-renew at 20% off as value-based purchasers, as opposed to having a philanthropy mindset. But we’re even seeing cover costs from the value-based mindset. They’re already getting a certain percentage off, so they don’t mind giving a smaller percentage back. They believe in the mission, and it’s really nice to see,” Laura explained.

This cost-saving feature also helps offset general fundraising expenses. Eighty-seven percent of online donors chose to cover transaction fees for one annual fund campaign. That brought the museum’s cost to raise those funds down to a net of $28 — less than .002% of the $18,343 they raised. A similar percentage, 86%, chose to cover costs for the Fun Factvent Calendar fundraiser.

The new efficiencies from Tessitura and its partners have saved countless hours of staff time. The new technology also helps them realize significant savings on transaction fees.

Growing loyalty

While auto-renewals are important, membership acquisition is also vital for the museum’s long-term growth. Box office cashiers are trained to upsell memberships, and signage around the museum encourages visitors to apply their ticket purchase toward a membership. Fortunately, Tessitura makes that easy, too, with native functionality.

All transactions in Tessitura, whether at the box office or online, take place in real time. Membership benefits, such as free admission and discounts on ticketed exhibitions, are available instantaneously. “When you add a membership to the cart, everything reprices. And when you remove it from the cart, everything goes back to regular pricing,” Laura noted.

She shared an example of how this works on-site. “Our cashiers can promote auto-renew at the box office and show the guest a QR code for the auto-renew form,” Laura said. “The moment they complete the form, it’s in Tessitura, and they can use it immediately.”

“That was a huge thing we were looking for when debating between different systems. We were super excited to set that up,” Laura said.

In addition to supporting member discounts, Tessitura’s pricing rules make it easy to manage other offers. Those include free general admission with a special exhibit ticket, corporate partner rates and discounts when purchasing multiple special exhibits. The streamlined transaction process makes it easy for visitors to make their desired purchase and for the museum’s team to manage.

Offering gift memberships is another way the museum cultivates loyalty. With Tessitura, the HMNS team can collect payment and relevant details from the giver, seamlessly create the membership in the recipient’s account and see the connection between giver and recipient. “Everything’s all tied together,” Laura said.

Photo of Houston Museum of Natural Science's indoor Butterfly Center with various trees in foreground

Houston Museum of Natural Science's Butterfly Center

Powerful communication tools

Communications are an important part of building and growing any loyalty program. The museum takes advantage of the powerful email and marketing automation tools integrated with Tessitura.

These tools help the museum manage expiring credit cards or failed payments for recurring memberships. Previously, the team had to reach out individually to any customer whose payment failed. “We were on the phone for a solid week afterward for all of the auto-renew fails,” Laura said.

Now, the museum automatically emails any members whose credit cards are about to expire. If a payment fails, automated messages notify the customer and request updated payment information. “You can tell it how often you want them emailed afterward,” Laura noted. “We’re not having to spend a week of staff time trying to recoup those costs.”

“We could never have done the things we’re doing now in our old email system or our old ticketing system.”

Effective communications rely on accurate targeting, and Laura appreciates being able to build dynamic lists in Tessitura. Since the system captures every purchase, donation and interaction, it holds a rich trove of data the team can use to segment and target their messages. In addition, the team can set up scheduled or triggered sends to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their communications.

“We could never have done the things we’re doing now in our old email system or our old ticketing system,” Laura said.

Growing momentum

In the museum’s first year using Tessitura, staff processed 2,432 recurring monthly and annual memberships. The team built on this success by expanding the use of integrated L2 forms to other departments.

The forms streamline payments for offerings such as education programs and fundraising events. A key benefit is the forms match a customer’s email or mailing address to their account in Tessitura. That means customers don’t have to remember a login, removing a potential barrier to completing a donation or payment. “Anything you can do to remove hurdles is really worthwhile,” Laura noted.

She also appreciates being able to send payment links for unpaid orders. The museum’s new payment forms present key information from Tessitura, such as the order number and amount owed, “in a really digestible format.” They also can be styled to reflect the museum’s visual brand. “These forms are attractive and match our branding. That gives customers confidence about entering their credit card information,” Laura explained.

Screenshot of Houston Museum of Natural Science's annual fund and gift membership forms

Houston Museum of Natural Science's annual fund and gift membership forms

With the increased flexibility to meet business needs and remove barriers, the museum has created 34 integrated forms for membership, fundraising and other areas that have brought in more than $500,000 in revenue.

“There are so many more things we can do [now], in part because of all the things Tessitura can do on its own and in part because of all the things that can integrate into Tessitura,” Laura reflected.

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