Question for space owners: Do you offer member perks like AWS or gym discounts? Is your community taking advantage of them? (more in comments)

[mic...@portalsoft.io]

This question boils down to a few key insights I'm trying to take away:

1. Is this an effective marketing tactic to both reduce member attrition and increase marketability/differentiation?

2. Do members use these perks enough that any referral fees might be a substantial second/third rev stream?

3. Is it worth it to pay for a service that provides a pre-negotiated group of business and lifestyle perks?

Cheers! 

[Raghuveer Kovuru]

Hey Mic,

To answer your general question of whether coworking members require such intangible services, it is a straight YES! But it is up to the community manager to determine the exact need and match the appropriate services. And here are short answers to your other questions:

1. Perks are definitely differentiating in nature but can easily be adopted by any of the competitors. Whether there is an exclusivity contract with your partners makes a lot of sense, especially if they can provide both cost advantage and value.

2. This is scale oriented. The more members you have, the more you are driving up the possibility of offering value (a lot of members signing up) to your third party partners. Might not be a large volume initially but might pick up.

3. If you are talking about a package (office space, services, etc..), might be a turnoff due to higher pricing. It always best to bring a new member in first before pitching him any services.

Hope the answers help!

Cheers
Raghu

[Ray Doeksen]

It's not a perk really but ... would you consider DeskPass to be part of that world of benefits?

It's a system that I've run into here in Chicago where a person buys a membership to DeskPass and then they can use a whole network of coworking spaces ... 

I had written it off as not practical or possible for the spaces I'm involved with because of various things like access to the space, supervision  (I didn't have enough to count on, to supervise non-regular-member types) and being different from other spaces enough that I didn't want to support excessive customer support/service for those that weren't a great fit ....

But now I'm thinking I will give it a shot and try it out because it operates on an interesting basis, you can restrict the hours for DeskPass access, conduct most of the prequalifying before the person shows up, I now have an ability to offer door access to "noobs" ... and rather than worrying about the different costs for my spaces vs other spaces, DeskPass pays the 'gaining space' (the one where a person shows up) $10 a day for each person, and that ... might make sense for these spaces I'm dealing with, just for increased awareness and referrals later on. 

[Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking]

Hey Ray,

I'm glad you mentioned DeskPass. It's not really a perk in the same vein as the discussion. However, I run DeskPass in Colorado and we have over 20 spaces on in throughout the Denver metro region. It attracts mostly remote workers that have never tried coworking before. I recommend spaces sign up because we have found it provides lead generation and we get paid for it.

As for the perks to members, we have offered lunch discounts, gym discounts, and promos for local retailers. Most members do not take advantage of it except for a local discount we have for the neighborhood coffee shops where they get 10% off. 

We are instead pushing for disocunts on software they are using. We are in talks with Xero accounting software right now.

[Jeannine van der Linden]

We do, though ours are tightly focused on what the coworkers have expressed a need for.  We have for example a shipping account with FedEx/DHL/GLS for the space, which a number of our members use to send their products.  This is then invoiced through to each.  We have a couple of these kinds of shared accounts for business inteligence, that kind of stuff that can be used by multiple companies on a shared basis.  It is not really that different from a shared desk.

We arrive at these by the extremely scientific method of regularly bringing the subject up every sevral months and then going lookng when enough coworkers chime in that they would like that also.  :-)

We have another class of perks which are offered by the coworkers to the cowowrkers.  These are mostly B2B but also include yoga lessons and Mindfulness and coaching.

For third party perks though, we use included.co.  They have a lot more clout and reach than we have, and they do a better job at it than we ever did.

[Jason McVetta]

Just my $0.02:  As a coworking space member, perks are basically irrelevant to me.  

I chose my current space from among about a dozen in this city for two reasons:  First, the facility.  Nice building, good natural light, good chairs/tables, accessible rooftop.  Second, and much less important, the location.  This space was pretty close to my previous apartment.  Now I live 30 minutes away, but I still prefer this space because of the nice facilities.

When I signed up here the management gave me a little book with a bunch of perks listed in it.  So far I haven't used any of them, and have no idea where I put the little book.  Maybe - maybe - if they offered a good discount at gym located very close to the space, I might use that.  Even then, the perk would have little or no impact on my decision to choose the coworking space.

What I do really value is a good ergonomic office chair.  Afterall that's something I'm going to use all day every day.  So if you're a space operator and thinking about spending money to offer perks, consider spending that same money on better chairs.  Probably I'm not the only member who feels that way.  

Cheers,

J

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[Bernie]

We don't have a gym thing, it is really hard to get that here in London. 

TBH all the 'deals' found in nearby places have taken ages for us to work out and then the effort of advertising them takes up more time than is worth. 

I question if we really add much more value to the local business with the effort of a perk. 

 

The only one that has stayed in five years is the Speedys Cafe one (The cafe in the TV show Sherlock is near @Work Hubs) http://www.sherlockology.com/locations/speedys-cafe 

 

For 'Perks' we use https://included.co/ and we have a white labeled page for our space.

Hector can then find the best deals. 

 

To help get people on board more we are getting members signed up to this Secret Santa https://included.co/secretsanta/

 

Full story on Seats2Meet here

 

Have a remarkable day

Bernie J Mitchell
0777 204 2012
 

www.berniejmitchell.com

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[Hector Kolonas]

Thanks for the glowing recommendation of our service Jeannine! 

I hope you all don't mind if I dive right in and answer OP's original questions based on my experience over the last 3-4 years of helping coworking communities share buying-power. 

1. No. Perks-based marketing is a zero-sum game. Fighting for exclusivities will not only be pointless unless you can scale to 100s of 1000s of members; but will waste hundreds of hours of your teams time. Rather understand that every single space will need to focus on creating long-term business value to differentiate themselves in the future. 

2. I believe that if done correctly, 'solutions' will become one of the coworking sectors strongest revenue sources. We have designed a thorough revenue-share model and technology for our partner coworking communities, but they know just as well as we do, that these things take time to build and should be seen as a powerful new channel that needs to be cultivated without distracting core team members and members away from their actual tasks of running their businesses.

3. If the spaces are paying for the solution, are they not then the customers? Every single one of our 250+ communities are our partners and not our customers in this sense. We'd rather work together to drive up value for members, increase revenue for the space and make coworking even more of a no-brainer. Some spaces are willing to pay for such services though, and we've instead asked them to give breakfasts to their new members with that cash :)

I hope those answers are useful, and I'd be more than happy to elaborate on either of them if anyone finds that useful.

Have an amazing day!

[Alex Hillman]

1. No. Perks-based marketing is a zero-sum game. 

I wish I had another forearm to tattoo this on. Well said - I'd even argue that once you're at the 100s/1000s of members, perks based marketing is a race to the bottom.

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[Hector Kolonas]

Haha sorry there isn't enough space for the new tattoo Alex!

I agree and think that there's actually two ways it could go. Either a race to the bottom as you mention (which includes getting worse deals as vendors 'divide and conquer' different communities to get distribution for even cheaper); or a kind of 'solution utility' emerges who's sole job is to make sure that deals are win-win-win for the operators, members and the vendors themselves. 

We're building the latter and, thanks to comments like those from Bernie &  Jeannine in this thread, I think we're on the right path. :)

(And Bernie, thanks for recommending us, and... from January 2018 your community now has gym savings too! Pinging you via on-site messenger with details.)

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[Bernie J Mitchell]

👍

Have a remarkable day

Bernie J Mitchell
0777 204 2012

www.berniejmitchell.com

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[Aloma Loren]

I was searching to see if anyone had come up with a great way to visually portray their member benefits. 

We have a lot and I feel we don't do a good job letting members know about them.

Members offer each other discounts on services, neighborhood businesses do the same (hotel, restaurant, etc), we have weekly yoga, grocery delivery, ect.

I'm trying to put together a nice PDF to send in our welcome email and a physical binder to have in the space to show incoming members. 

It's not something we pay anything for, except for the time it takes to put this PDF together. We've just asked members and neighboring businesses if they'd be willing to offer an incentive for our members to come to them and many said yes!

We have a sweet boutique hotel across the street that gives our members a great discount, one of our fave lunch spots gives a 10% discount. Our members like having those even if they don't always use them. It's a nice thing to add when giving a tour and telling a potential member about all the amenities and benefits of joining. I wouldn't run promotions on just that but I do think it's a nice - and usually free for you - way to add value. 

[AK]

I have been thinking about this as we plan our opening. We are in a suburban neighborhood and I would like to work with local shops go offer discounts to our members to get traffic in to them.  This community we are building has the opportunity to help other local businesses as well. No only those who are in our space.  I like what Aloma is saying.  --