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It's my job to be part of the Customer Success team here at  We work closely with our clients to assist them in advancing their membership-based businesses. While we're continuing to work with new customers and aid the growth of their membership, I'll be sharing some significant lessons learned and the results we're seeing in relation to overall membership strategy.

Recently, a hot topic of discussion among our clients has been the issue of price increases. Folks are asking the following questions:

• "How can I tell that I'm in a position to raise prices without inducing an enormous churning event?"
• "How do I increase price?"
• "When is the ideal price to be raised?"

It's clear that there's no universal solution for this. If there isn't a specific plan in place, there's a considerable risk around raising prices - however having been through this journey recently with some of our clients I'm convinced that there are certain signs that suggest when prices are able to increase with little risk. The indicators comprise:

The strong adoption of annual plans vs. monthly plans

The memberships with a strong organic growth of annual plan over monthly plans are able to offer significant pricing. When memberships see at 70 percent of the first-time members purchasing an annual membership during a time period of at least 4 months, this could be indicative of the membership being undervalued.

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

Continuous expansion of content formats

Memberships that constantly develop their content may increase prices frequently (i.e. every year). Take the case where member benefits have historically been newsletter-focused. The expansion of these benefits to new formats such as podcasts, video and others could increase the worth of members.

Whether it's content that's been repurposed or content that's entirely new, content expansion creates an opportunity for price increases in the range of 5%-10% each 12-18 months.

Working in an un-served market

Memberships in unserved markets can charge more. When this happens there is a lack of competition and there are only a few experts who are qualified that can compete in the marketplace.

Memberships that provide deep analysis and the latest research, in a niche subject, is sure to attract prominent CEOs, thought-leaders and other innovators from similar industries. It's a market that's eager to shell out a substantial amount to understand the impacts on their industry and their customers. The memberships serving the same groups have a significant power of pricing.

Statisticians and guidelines

Here are some more general trends we've noticed in our study:

• Customers who have seen the most success raising prices do it gradually - not exceeding more than one price increase each twelve to 18 months.
• If a pricing strategy involves yearly prices increases, 10 percent per year will be accepted by customers.
• Annual memberships that do not have previously raised rates (or for more than the period of 18 months) and have yearly retention minimum 75% are likely to increase prices as much as 20% without negative impact.
• Customer results indicate that the frequency of price hikes is more significant than the increase itself in the event that the customer is operating within the 10%-20% increase range.

I hope this is helpful. I'll share more of these lessons as we move ahead!