How to Manage a Museum
April 25, 2019
From managing the curation process and finances to overseeing visitor flow and staying connected to your guests, successful museum management requires lots of organization and prioritization.
The best way to approach the various challenges that come with running a museum is to develop a management strategy that utilizes all the tools at your disposal. This article is going to look at the array of demands that come with managing a museum and the optimal solutions for dealing with them.
Apply a POS System to Manage Museum Visitor Flow
The line and ticket booth are the first things your guests will see upon arrival to your museum. Friendly staff members, fast moving lines, and simple transaction processes provide a positive first impression to your guests, setting the tone for their visit. Aside from coaching your staff and overseeing guest-employee relations, applying an innovative POS system to your ticket sales will make transactions easier, faster, and more pleasant for both guests and employees.
A flexible Point of Sale (POS) system will allow you to sell tickets and create memberships in seconds. The most current systems allow for several advantages. Not only are they incredibly fast, allowing employees to sell tickets in 3 or less taps/clicks, a modern POS system can be accessed on a tablet or other portable digital device. This means that employees can take their IPads to the lobby to sell tickets, offer discounts, and introduce membership options to guests on the floor. With a simple interface, a POS system will speed up lines, simplify the transaction process, and give you the flexibility to reach out to guests beyond the ticket booth.
CRM for Managing Guest Relationships
It’s not enough to galvanize the public to make a one-time visit to your museum. The long-term goal should be to secure returning visitors and to turn tickets into memberships. This is where you, as a manager or director, have a lot of room to be creative in your guest management strategy.
The one thing every museum needs in order to manage and maintain positive guest relationships is a solid, reliable, and effective tool for tracking and reaching out to former, current, and potential guests. Customer-Relationship Management (CRM) technologies provide simple, all-in-one interfaces for organizations to manage, track, and improve business relationship with guests. CRMs collect contact information, visiting history, membership status, record service issues, and more, providing you with tangible data on what your guests are interested in and how you can best contact them.
Here are some ways to utilize your CRM to reach out to visitors:
- CRMs provide you with the best way to contact your guests so you can inform them of upcoming events, offer membership deals, and remind them to renew their memberships. Keeping in touch with guests about events they’re interested in is key to creating perennial visitors.
- Distinguish and reach out to active vs inactive members. The way you’ll reach out to active and inactive members is very different. With active members, for example, your messages should reinforce the value they already see in your museum. What events have they visited in the past and what new events are coming to their area? Your communication lines should revolve around those events and exhibits.
- Remember to be friendly and personable when reaching out to your guests. Personalize messages when possible, give birthday reminders, and provide the kind of rapport that will leave guests with a positive impression of your organization.
Managing Marketing and Curating for Your Museum
Regardless of what kind of museum you’re running, there are always new and creative ways of reaching out to potential and existing guests and members. Consequently, your marketing and curating team should be in sync when determining what kind of new content you want to introduce to your venu and the best way to inform guests of that content. Utilize your technological resources, hold regular meetings, and create the kind of environment that brings your departments together.
Ways to manage the curating/marketing process:
- Use the information from your CRM to create new exhibition strategies. Your CRM lets you know which events your guests attended and which ones they didn’t. This is tangible information you can relay to your curating team when considering the next gallery installation.
- Your CRM technology also gives you insight into the kind of visitors you’re receiving. Review visitor demographics and other relevant information to create a marketing strategy that best reaches your intended audience.
- Hold workshops and meetings where curators, the marketing team, and tech people can work together to bolster their goals and meet deadlines.
- How can content and new exhibitions enable marketing? Your marketing team can use the material from new curated projects to develop marketing strategies and get more guests in the door at your next opening.
ACME provides advanced museum ticketing software that will help simplify, organize, and innovate the way museums manage their venues. No more outdated on-premise servers, turbulent visitor overflow, or dubious guest insights. With ACME, museums have the ability to manage, market, contact, track, sell, and customize as needed, allowing you to manage your entire venue with a simple and easy-to-use software. Signup for a free ACME demo today.