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As a member of our Customer Success team here at , and I work closely with our customers to support them to grow their membership-based businesses. As we continue to engage with new customers and aid them grow by sharing important lessons and results we're seeing in relation to the overall strategy for membership.

Recently, a hot topic of discussion among our customers is price increases. Customers are asking questions:

• "How do I know that I'm in a position to raise prices without inducing an enormous churning event?"
• "How do I increase the price?"
• "When is the best time to raise prices?"

There's not a universal solution here. And without a detailed plan in place, there's a the risk of raising prices . But having been through the process with a few of our customers, I'm confident in saying there are clear signs to indicate when prices can successfully increase without risk. These signals are:

The strong adoption of annual plans as compared to. monthly plans

Members that have a high growth in the number of people who subscribe to annual plans over monthly plans have a significant price advantage. If memberships have at 70 percent of the first-time subscribers purchasing an annual plan for minimum four months, it is evidence of the membership being undervalued.

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

Continuous expansion of content formats

Memberships that continually increase their content offerings can raise prices often (i.e. every year). Take the case where member benefits have historically been newsletter-focused. Expanding those benefits into new formats , such as videos, podcasts, and more could increase the value of the membership.

Whether it's content that's been reused, or completely new, content expansion creates the possibility of ongoing pricing increases that fall in the range of 5%-10% each 12-18 months.

In a market that is not well-served

Memberships that operate in under-served market segments can cost more. When this happens there is a lack of competition and there are a only a few experts who are qualified who can compete on the market.

A membership that offers deep analysis and the latest research on a specific topic, will attract high-profile business leaders, thought leaders, and innovators in similar markets. This is an audience who's willing to pay a lot to comprehend the effects on their industry and their customers. Memberships that find themselves serving the same groups hold significant pricing power.

Information and statistics

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

• Customers who have seen the most success price increases do so slow - never an increase of more than each 12-18 months.
• When a pricing plan involves yearly prices increases, 10 percent per year will be absorbed well by members.
• Annual memberships that do not have raised prices historically (or for a period exceeding the period of 18 months) and have yearly retention of at least 75% can likely raise prices as much as 20% without adverse impact.
• Customer results indicate that the frequency of price increases is more important than the actual increase in the event that the client is within the 10% to 20% price rise range.

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