How to Price for Members vs. Non-Members

One question that a reader recently submitted was, “How do they price for members versus non-members across their products and services?” 

There are a few things to consider here. 

The first would be the cost of your membership. If your cost of membership is a low amount, let's say under $100, then it's going to be hard to price member versus non-member in a competitive way because you'll more than likely want more than a $100 difference, which will force non-members to effectively become members to get the lower rate. 

That can be a pricing strategy if that's a part of your overall organizational strategy, but it's not always the right answer. 

The second scenario is that your price of membership is a bit healthier, let's say between $300 to $700 per member, and therefore you have a little bit more wiggle room for the price differentiation between member and non-members, so that the difference is not more than the cost of annual membership, but it's close. 

I prefer this situation because it doesn't force anyone to rationalize that they should be a member if they are not. For me that just feels ethical. 

But it does allow for you to have a healthy difference between the member non-member rate so that non-members see that there is a value in being a member through the special pricing that members get. 

As an example, if your membership were $400 per year for an individual, I would recommend, in general, that the differentiation between member and non-member pricing might be between $300 and $350 or 75% to 90%. 

This gives enough of a difference that if an individual is not interested in being a member year-round, and everything that membership entails, such as volunteering, serving on committees voting, etc., then they can justify paying the non-member rate. But if they have the slightest interest in membership, or if they find some level of value in your membership, they'll more than likely be up-sold and converted into a membership in addition to the product that they were already looking at purchasing.

To make this very plain, this could mean that if your membership were $400 per year, and your in-person event for members was $1,795 then the non-member rate would probably be something like $2,095, and therefore the potential buyer is making a justified decision if they would like to spend 100 additional dollars and become a member, or not. 

Another thing to consider in member versus non-member pricing is if you will have the same differential across all products, or if certain products will have a higher differentiation.

Within this example, if your webinars or digital training are normally $79 for non-members, you of course would not add $300 for a non-member rate. You instead might add a percentage so since the event price was about a 15% difference, you might apply that same principle for lower-cost items that have a slightly higher price for non-members. 

This is going to allow for you to have a level of consistency across your products, but it means that you should pick your most valuable product, which is more than likely your conference, and anchor that against the cost of membership annually. And from there, use that percentage to waterfall down to other products.

Remember, all of this is a generalized guidance, and it's not meant to be universally applied to every single association. Your association should have a pricing and Value strategy that dictates pricing boundaries, across all of your products, how decisions are made for new pricing, and how you qualify your pricing against the value that you provide through each product.