The ROI of community or why we have DECADE memberships
by Matthias Zeitler
Our day passes are €18, which most people consider pretty expensive.
But we also offer decade memberships, which is pretty rare in the coworking world, and we offer them at crazy discounts so that a day of membership becomes less than €1.
Is there some master strategy behind this crazy pricing model? And why do some of our members consider it the deal of their life to make such long commitments when the nomad lifestyle is all about flexibility?
Our goal at Coworking Bansko is to develop Bansko into a ecosystem for nomads, freelancers and remote workers. This clearly is a long-term vision and while we have some members here that stay only 1–3 months and have an amazing time here, I believe that only our “long-timers” are the ones that benefit most from being part of our community. And we want to keep them around for a long-time.
Sometimes it is difficult to assign a specific value on advantages of being part of the community, especially when it is unpredictable serendipity and maybe one-time events like finding your soulmate, incubating a business idea, striking a partnership deal, getting this one piece of inspiration that you missed, having Matthias help you out, getting exposure through PR, having a speaking opportunity at an event or making that connection that really moved the needle. And of course membership fees also support many invisible activities that develop the ecosystem in Bansko, grow the nomad population here and improve the whole town.
A lot of members are more aware of the more tangible membership benefits of like having an instant network of interesting people, having a wide range of events & activities every day and having access to our facilities for work & fun.
These more tangible benefits might dimish over time, especially when life moves on, they start building their own circle of friends, buying apartments with home offices and their focus is slowly shifting on raising kids.
To avoid that money is the reason why members leave our community the idea came up to offer a DECADE membership option which is the same price as three annual memberships. Based on our experience the first years are when members are most active in our community and also when they have the biggest drive to explore the world. Afterwards many long time members settle into more of a digital resident lifestyle and the desire to meet new people and explore new places is going down.
And then many question if they really get enough value from their membership if they only want to come to the occasional event at the Coworking Space and otherwise work from home. Maybe hanging out at some of our members favorite spots around town keeps them in the community without payment?
Of course this is a bit of a fallacy it reduces coworking to renting desks and ignores that their circle of friends and life in Bansko is heavily tied to the coworking community. And then it becomes a choice between either grudgingly paying for a very “lightly used” desk rental or being excluded from a lot of the community activities — both outcomes lead to unhappiness.
We even had alumni in the past become so disgruntled with the situation that they start insulting very happy and well integrated members for “their stupidity” to pay for coworking membership when they could equally well work from home. And from that point it is often an uphill battle for the insulted members to explain that membership offers *additional* benefits to everything else that they enjoy in Bansko.
It’s a “Bansko Plus” experience for members, while for no-longer-members it often becomes a “Bansko Minus” life. Too much drama.
Being a decade member avoids this problem as it provides a very favorable membership pricing and our early members are not being left out of our constantly evolving community but rather stay involved. Especially for members that bought an apartment here the price of the decade membership is maybe 5–10% additional investment in in addition to the apartment but significantly improves the Bansko experience for years to come.
And becoming a decade membership is also a great commitment that has tangible benefits for the coworking space. Since it is prepaid we can invest more into constant upgrades and expansion of facilities for our growing community. So decade members are the core of our community and help to build a great future.
And for those that wonder what happens after ten years are up, we will have a great offer in 10 years as the community here evolves.
