Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
This year at the Float Conference, Derek hosted a marketing forum and took questions that he wanted to share with everyone here.
This episode focuses on how Float On handles memberships, including tiered memberships and how to gracefully transition from one type of membership to another.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode not currently available
Greg: So I’ve been using the tiered membership style since I opened two and a half years ago.
Derek: Okay.
Greg: Since about two years ago I’ve been wanting to switch down to the single type of membership, and just wondering if you, especially Derek since you guys did it after six years, can provide ideas on how to do that? I think I have an email from you guys from when you did that.
Derek: Right.
Greg: Yeah, just ideas for switching that.
Derek: Anytime you have to bring news to people, and this wasn’t necessarily bad news. This was news of, you’re not gonna have to pay $110 a month, you’re now gonna have to pay $54 a month. If it was bad news like a price hike or anything like that, that’s different. If you’re raising your membership prices, you really wanna try to spin it into a celebration because you’re gonna get upgrades and stuff like that. But if you’re actually just going to laterally move from breaking down what your lowest package is, let’s say, or maybe picking a price point that benefits the center. We made sure, when we picked our price point, if anybody was going to be paying more at that, we grandfathered them in.
So that was one of the key things that when we did this, it’s like, “Hey, we’re switching up our memberships.” We added some things we never added before, so it created this newness, this excitement. We call it unlock and limited. So it you float six times that month at your membership rate of $54 per float, you can float the rest of the month for free.
And so that was a key thing that people like, it kind of gamified it almost. It kind of made that like, we have a dozen people every month floating unlimited, and they’re loving it, and those are your best floaters and they’re actively talking about it. So creating little extra things is what we did. Again, making sure all of your existing members never pay a cent more. So grandfather the old rates in. Like, there’s some people still paying $35 a float for their membership. But we wanna take care of those people ’cause they’ve taken care of us.
There is some growing pain in it. I’m not gonna lie. You’re gonna watch these numbers, and you’re gonna watch this monthly recurring revenue of X number of dollars, dramatically dropped to if they all floated once a month. And then you’ll watch that grow back up as they continue their habits they’ve already had. And you’re gonna have more people excited. So yeah, some people may float less, but it’s offset by more people floating, and more people floating at your center, as we all know, is great for word of mouth.
Gloria or Cindy, you wanna add anything to what you would do in a situation where you have to go from one structure to another?
Gloria: Yeah, we did, again, fairly early on but we did have a handful of members in each tier. I would just say rip the Band-Aid off and give them grandfathered pricing and really, figure out how many does it affect. Most of the members are probably in the first year anyway, which is gonna be in line with whatever you probably stick with. So does that affect 30 members, 20 members. I mean, if it’s under 50 people, you might want to call every one of them. But if it’s thousands, then yeah, do a mass email. Right? But yeah, I’d say rip the Band-Aid off. It’s so much easier.
Greg: So did you guys just send the same email to your entire mailing list? Or did you have an email towards just your members?
Derek: Right.
Greg: Did you make phone calls to every member?
Derek: Right. We segmented out. So you’re gonna have a different conversation with the people that their lives are changing more, and then those customers who aren’t members, you’re gonna have a new, exciting conversation. Floating’s even more accessible than ever before.
Greg: Okay.
Derek: Right? And again, We did another thing that was actually, If anybody knows Float On culture, it’s super loosey goosey, easy, yeah, you can get whatever you want with us. We actually added a three month commitment to our membership. We’ve never had commitments. And we did the numbers. We’re numbers people. We looked at everything and we looked at a lot of our churn when we were on the tiered memberships, is couples floating that just wanna get a cheaper price so they sign up and cancel like, after their float. Right? They’re just signing up for membership, get the better rate, ’cause there was no commitment, and then they were never coming back. So we had a lot of churn people wanting to save on two floats or on four floats if they’re having a party.
So when we dropped it down to that one price point, we asked for a little bit of commitment. So people did drop off, but they were probably gonna drop off anyways. And then when the three month came around, we’re like, “Oh no.” Those people stayed. It actually did what we wanted to do. We were happily surprised.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Tips on Managing Staff – DSP 179
Float On, for all its quirks, has ended up being very traditionally structured as a business. There are managers, co-managers, and employees who all have different responsibilities and commitments. Graham and Ashkahn break down how they came to structure the company this way, despite aggressively fighting against that mentality of a corporate, top down structure.
What’s the Difference Between Loans and Investments? – DSP 178
The financial cost to opening a float center is huge at the startup, given the high ticket cost of float tanks themselves, as well as the expensive technical construction that comes along with making your rooms sound/water/saltproof. It’s rare for a float center to open entirely self financed, so what are the best options for getting funding? Loans versus investments.
Graham and Ashkahn break down the differences in these two approaches weigh the pros and cons to both for float centers.
What About Vertical Float Tanks? – DSP 177
So for those of us who’ve wanted to float in a vertical tank ever since seeing Luke Skywaker use one in Empire Strikes Back, Graham and Ashkahn dish out what they know about vertical float tanks.
Fortunately, another one of Float On’s owners, Christopher Messer, actually makes vertical float tanks, so the guys have the inside scoop on all things vertical.
What Would Utilities be for a Float Tank Center in Maine? – DSP 176
If you wanna stump the Float On boys, you have to try harder than asking about the cost of utilities for a float center in Maine. They tackled this episode prepared and take the rare opportunity to show specific numbers for utility usage at Float On and what that breakdown would look like in Maine, with help from special guest Jake Marty.
Is it Possible to Float and not get your Hair Wet? – DSP 175
Customers who color or perm their hair might not want to let it get wet while floating. While Graham and Ashkahn are sympathetic to those issues, as far as they know, there isn’t really a great solution for them.
Latest Blog Posts
It’s All the Same Day
The Float Conference has come and gone, but if this last year is any indication, it will come around again in what seems like no time at all. Sometimes, even the last four years seem like they've only been a few months. Other times, I can't remember a life that's not...
How to Monitor a Niche Industry… Like Floating!
A few years ago, if someone published information online about floating, chances are that it would spread quickly. There wasn't much available and what was available only had a small tight-knit circle to disseminate through. As the industry is growing, there are float...
Know Your Market – A Guide to Gathering Data
Have you ever tried to look up market statistics or information for float centers? If so, you’ve probably been left a little disappointed. Mining for float industry data means coming to the unfortunate realization that the internet doesn’t actually have everything on...
The Float Conference Podcast – Talks About Nothing
In the float industry, we believe there is no such thing as too much information. The more salt-filled information "floating" around, the more we are able to educate our customers about the different benefits of spending time in the tank. On August 9th and 10th we...
