I recently took part in a member panel held at an art gallery where I have annual membership. Led by a few staff from the gallery team, groups of members and people from the local community sat around tables and were plied with coffee and cake* in return for our thoughts on their 2027 programming.
I am sworn to secrecy as to the exhibitions but I was struck at what a successful activity it was for the gallery. For a relatively low-cost output, they gained valuable insight into how their marketing was working; where it was too academic in tone, or confusing in title. Where certain lines were hitting the mark and where they were falling completely flat. They also got a lot of insight as to what had prompted membership or repeat visits, our loyalty and, perhaps of even more value, where we felt the reality let the dream down.**
Obviously, we are all VERY good at gathering visitor evaluation once a year…every other year…when the wind is in the east… but this kind of deep dive into the responses, motivations and loyalty of membership is perhaps less regularly done. So, now that our busy seasons are calming down, why not issue the invitation, order in the cakes and see what insights you can get?
A few recommendations for you to take into account when planning this kind of event:
- Make sure you have enough team members to support this kind of activity. Ideally you need 1 for every 10 people. And give them a way to record the session that isn’t on their own phones. Note taking is all very well but once people have warmed up, you will need a method of recording the conversations that can keep up
- Keep the focus of the questions quite tight. A generic, rather dull, “what do you like best about us?” will get you a generic, rather dull answer that won’t have been worth your time. Pick a theme – upcoming exhibitions, families in the museum, visitor experience, etc – and develop your questions around it. Keep them open-ended, rather than prompting yes/no answers. The richness is in the detail
- Be up front about the time it will take and stick to it. No more than 2 hours, ideally
- Offer an incentive for taking part. This gallery offered everyone a shopping voucher. You could offer a year’s free membership, or 50% of event booking for a year, or a free lunch. Can you partner with a local company to offer something as an incentive?
- Remember, this is not evaluation, so you don’t ask for demographic details, nor if they’d recommend you to a friend and you don’t ask them to rate on a scale of 1-5 the cleanliness of the toilets
- Make sure to schedule it at a weekend or during an evening so that as many people as possible can make it. This gallery ran 2 sessions – one during the week and one at a weekend for precisely that reason
- If you can’t hold it on a day when the museum is closed to regular visitors (and the one I went to happened on the same weekend as HODS with all its attendant chaos), then make sure to hold it in a room away from the main action and disturbances
If this is something you are interested in doing, but would like some guidance as to how to proceed, contact me and we’ll get a meeting in the diary to talk it through.
*These cakes went several levels above the tea-and-biscuits scenario I so often see in consultations. Our choices were a rich chocolatey thing or a light lemony thing. We felt properly rewarded for our morning.
** Nowhere is perfect, there will always be something that doesn’t flow right. For me, I’m often alert to how my mobility condition makes the staff act as though I’m causing just a little bit of a problem. If I’m made to feel that, I’m unlikely to visit again.
