Forming Two-Way Relationships

    Having explored the entry and visit experience through the lens of personalization, we now turn to a loftier goal: using personalization to develop deeper ongoing relationships with visitors. This is a highly desirable outcome, one that is a natural part of the evolution of interpersonal relationships. The better you know someone, the more personal stories, feelings, and experiences are shared, and the deeper your relationship grows. For visitors who are interested in ongoing engagement with the institution, personalization should serve as a way both to track and support visitors' evolving experiences and interests.

    Museums already do this well with a very small subset of visitors: donors, researchers, and community partners. The more money you give, the more personal attention you get from the development office. The more time you spend digging into the collection and carefully examining artifacts, the more significant a relationship you form with collections staff. And if you are hand-selected for a community advisory board or partner project, you are likely to work very closely with the institution and staff, expressing your interests and needs in response to a sincere desire for your engagement.

    But what about the rest of visitors, the ones without deep pockets, phDs, or programmatic connections? All three of these niche groups are necessarily small and it would not be manageable to scale up the personalized attention that a major donor, researcher, or community advisor receives to every member or visitor walking through the door. Institutional patterns for treating individuals personally are based on a scarcity model, since each requires direct human contact with a staff member, whether in development, collections, or community partnerships. Community advisory boards in particular are often seen as requiring a monumental amount of added staff time, so it is not practical to apply the traditional models for these partnerships broadly.

    But that doesn't mean deeper relationships with regular visitors are not possible. There are a huge number of visitors, mostly members, who visit museums frequently and whose relationships with particular institutions have the potential to evolve and deepen over time. This already happens without institutional support, but it could be heightened and celebrated if institutions got intentionally involved. While this has benefits for visitors, who become more engaged in ways that connect to their intellectual and creative interests, it is not an entirely altruistic endeavor. If visitors feel more connected to institutions and feel that museums are personally responsive to their changing needs and interests, they are more likely to visit again, become members, or renew their memberships. Finding ways to personalize the continued experience of a member (or any multi-visit guest) can deepen the relationship between institution and individual, which benefits both parties.

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