Membership Program

TonyReale

I'm one of the owners at Edge VR Arcade in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Ever since we opened we've had a ton of people ask about a membership program. We've been throwing around multiple ideas on how to integrate this (free time, percentage off, higher discounts on slower days, etc.) but none of them currently integrate with Springboard in any way. We've been doing tests with Synthesis and may consider jumping ship if we can't find a way to integrate a good membership program with Springboard. Has anyone found a membership program that they like and has worked well for them?

matthew

@TonyReale Have you found an online membership program you like? We've been looking at ones to possibly build integrations with in the future but none have jumped out at us as really covering all of the needs of the LBVR space.

TonyReale

matthew

So to give you a little background on us before I layout our plans...we are open Wednesdays through Sundays and we currently charge $30/hr for our standard VR booths and $50/hr for a 2 player package (2 booths).

This is what we are thinking about for a possible Membership program:

Silver Membership - $30/mo.

1 Hour of Free VR per month Wed-Thurs: 20% Off All VR Stations Fri-Sun: 10% Off All VR Stations 10% Off Food & Beverage

Gold Membership - $50/mo.

2 Hours of Free VR per month Wed-Thurs: 40% Off All VR Stations Fri-Sun: 20% Off All VR Stations 10% Off Food & Beverage

I agree with everyone that it's hard to offer ongoing free station playtimes with a membership unless you have a ton of stations. We've shared this pricing with a few of our customers to get their feedback and it's been fairly positive.

Doing the different discounts for different days of the week and having it incorporated into their membership for online booking is all included with Synthesis. Frankly, I'd rather stick with Springboard cause we're already setup with it and our staff are all trained, but at this point I feel like we are losing revenue by not having the membership program available to our customers. So many people are asking for it and I know it would increase our repeat customers.

thevrclub

I'm using Memberspace. It's designed for gated website content, but I just give customers a physical punch card once they're signed up.

It's far from perfect though since it doesn't integrate with Springboard so other than billing the customer I have to do everything else manually.

I'd love if there was a way for my members to make a booking through Springboard using their benefits (I give them 4 free sessions a month). Currently they have to phone or email me, and often they show up when it's busy and get turned away or they 'forget' to bring their punch card and I have to track their free sessions myself.

Even having one-time use coupons from Springboard would help a ton, I could then set up each member's allocated discounts in advance so they can book at any time.

matthew

thevrclub

[quote="thevrclub, post:3, topic:297"] Memberspace [/quote]

Yeah we looked at Memberspace but it just didn't seem flexible enough for something for us to integrate with. Sadly we need something that isn't just Squarespace only.

NickFSVR

I think it very much depends on the size of your Arcade, we have 7 Stations and I honestly don't think a Membership program works so well for us, I've tried one and found the uptake was minimal, people were happy to pay the normal rates and were hesitant to pay a Membership to get access to better rates which was quite surprising.

Doing it like others do where people have free sessions I think requires you to have quite a few Stations, probably closer to 15 and/or a few things to do for people whilst they wait so they can come in and muck around whilst waiting for a station to be free perhaps.

It's definitely a hard juggle and market dependant and in mine it just didn't really take off at all despite pushing and lots of customers being "interested" but just not pulling the trigger.

thevrclub

There are so many benefits to having members...

They become walking talking advocates for your business. It's far better than any 5-star review posted online.

I've had members come back with their friends on multiple occasions to show it off to them and pay for additional sessions.

Members can fill out your off-peak hours (I restrict my members from coming during the day on weekends).

Some members will sign up and rarely use it, that's free money. To be fair you do get the opposite as well, some members will try to find ways to bend the rules to get more than they're allocated.

It's a good topic to bring up when a customer asks how much the equipment cost because they want to get one at home. Suggesting they sign up for a membership is a great way to retain their business (and it's a far smaller cost for the customer in the short term, win-win).

Some customers will buy a membership for someone else, usually parents will buy it for their kids so they can come and play without having to borrow their parent's credit card.

I could go on.

Pricing the membership is the hardest part. I'm still experimenting. Recently switched from monthly to weekly payments so we'll see how effective that is. It sounds nice having it as a lower number compared to the monthly price!

thevrclub

matthew

Yeah agreed, Memberspace is not very flexible. It is nice and simple though, and all I need is one-time use coupons through Springboard to make my membership system complete (and my gift card system too).

matthew

Has anyone looked at https://memberful.com/ or https://smile.io/ ? Anything you like or dislike from them?

Conor

A real membership system doesn't work with ppm licensing.

You either have to price stupidly high (and get no sign ups) to protect yourself from people playing constantly

Or you limit the amount of hours they can play, which is not a real membership system imo

At best the attempts at it that limit play time are basically a bulk discount price

VR-ARRIVAL

Hi Tony, Am completely with you on your thoughts - as only a newbie in the LBVR circles we have still been asked many times about membership/VIP options and, while I don't know how many of them will put their hands in their back pocket to pay a monthly fee, it is still worth pursuing. While I agree that SpringboardVR need to have this as an option, I am also not sure how the payment processing options would work (we use Square). I am guessing you could set up a recurring invoice system and get them to book on-line for their comp sessions without paying (assumption here is that you accept payment in the shop rather than just on-line) and then just enter it in as a 'complementary' booking at the time of use. You could preload a Square gift card each month as another option but that wouldn't expire at the end of the month if it hasn't been used. Either way, there would be a lot of back-end processing to make it work which isn't ideal. Don't have the answers but am mulling over a lot of the potential problems...

TonyReale

VR-ARRIVAL

Synthesis handles the monthly billing through their system. Customers can purchase their membership in-store or online. They also allow you to add whatever you want to the Membership program including:

Discounts based upon day of the week and/or time of day Free time (in minutes) that renews weekly or monthly

Both of these are very important to the way we want to operate our Membership program. The need for an integrated Membership program would be the only reason we would leave Springboard. I frankly don't care about removing Steam from your game library hosting or Mixed Reality stuff. A Membership program is the single most important factor for growth in VR Arcades IMO. I would love to see Springboard implement something in the near future so we don't have to switch, but we will be moving to Synthesis in the next few months if there isn't an option in Springboard.

DigitalWorldsVR

I am about to start my membership program. I opened back in Nov last year and already have a lot of very active repeat customers. I'll be using a card system that works with my Clover POS system. Each card will have a unique number printed on it but when they sign up I'll just keep track of it manually with their name, email, the card number, and I'll keep all this manually entered on a spreadsheet. I'm not too big of a place, just seven stations, so if it becomes a problem to keep up with, then that's a good problem to have.

My normal fees are $30 for an hour and the membership program will be $49.99 per month with $10 off if they get six months at a time and if they get 12 months then we will add a 13th month for free. It will include two free 1-hour stations a month (not rolling over), access to the VR happy hour which will be cheaper hour stations after 6pm weeknights for $20 and weekends for $25, and access to the referral program to get $5 credit added to your account for each friend you bring that gets an hour when you come.

I'll just use the spreadsheet to track their two freebies each month and I'll use the cards themselves to handle the credit that they get.

colincentrevr

Hi Guys, thinking out of the box we went for a membership and loyalty programme and are working with Tapmango to create our membership package, very different from the ordinary system. It might not be for all operators, and we are different in the way we do things. We have shaped Tapmango, with their help to become a great membership option which we will be rolling out soon. Free to have a demo and a chat with them. benefits are you also get an Iphone and Android app, easy access to all your customers and tons of data, and the ability to give back whatever you want. We are using Credits which people can buy anything with (like Disney Dollars) and the exchange rate sets the discount level, creating a membership option. Like I said, wont be for everyone, but I was the same, waiting for Springboard was obviously going to be too long a wait as they have other priorities, which I am glad about, like losing Steam and Mixed Reality.

matthew

colincentrevr

Are you able to share what the pricing is like for Tapmango?

Pitstopgames1

matthew

It varies depending on what you want from $140 - $200 per month

Comes with a tablet, physical membership cards. It’s very adaptable and unique, tons of features. Ppl love reward programs I believe it’s very important to have if you want repeat clientele.

arena.vr

matthew

I'm using Tamango for the month. 249$ cad+0.01$ per text if i'll go over 1000sms per month. 500$ CAD setup fee. Branded mobile apps. Points and all that stuff.

KatePlayItVR

We're looking into this at the moment. I have come across https://poket.com/. I have contacted them as there doesn't seem to be a free trial download... Although it does appear to offer a lot of customisability. We use Square as our POS and can set up recurring invoices through that to take regular membership payments. So all we're looking for is a system that can manage what we give customers in return. The Lite package is 21USD a month or 144USD annually - which in comparision of most is good value, if it does what is needed.

thenexusvr

We use Tapmango because it has given us functionality FAR above and beyond just memberships. It handles our membership program, bulk session card program, loyalty program, "miss you" campaigns, geography based campaigns, and review cultivation.

arena.vr

automatic "miss you" campaigns very nice feature.