CLIENT
The World Experience Organization (WXO)
INDUSTRY
Professional membership · Global community · Experience economy
SERVICES
Marketing audit, growth marketing roadmap, funnel development
BUILT ON
Marketing audit
Growth roadmap
Funnel development
Membership acquisition
WXO
The WXO is the professional body for the people who design experiences.
Its members are experience designers, strategists and founders working across events, hospitality, retail, attractions and brand, spread across dozens of countries. The organisation runs on membership: applications in, members retained, and the events and content that make joining worth it.
Membership is not an impulse purchase. It is a considered decision made by senior people who want to know who else is in the room before they commit. Growth depends on getting the right people to apply, then carrying them through to joining without losing them on the way.
WHERE WE CAME IN
The WXO had marketing support. It just wasn't pointed at membership growth.
At the start of 2024 there was a mix of help around the organisation, none of it built around a single growth objective. Membership was rising, but incrementally, at a pace that came from the strength of the community rather than anything the marketing was doing.
What was missing was a structured marketing function. Nobody had a clear view of where applications were being lost, there was no agreed order of priorities, and no single plan that connected the activity to the number the organisation cared about.
THE CHALLENGE
Turn interest into members, at the pace the community deserved.
There was no shortage of interest. There was a shortage of structure.
The WXO had reach, reputation and a steady flow of people who liked what it stood for. Interest was never the constraint. The gap sat between somebody deciding they were curious and somebody completing an application.
Our job was to find every point where that ran out of road, fix the ones that mattered most, and leave behind a plan the organisation could keep running without us.
WHAT WE DID
1
Audited what was actually there
We ran a full marketing audit across channels, content, the application funnel and the analytics behind it. Not a channel-by-channel scorecard, but a view of where the effort was going and what it was returning. That gave us a baseline everyone agreed on before anything changed.
2
Found the rate-limiting step
Growth is usually held back by one or two things at a time, not fifty. We identified the friction points sitting between interest and a submitted application and dealt with those first, instead of spreading effort evenly across everything the organisation could theoretically improve.
3
Rebuilt the acquisition funnel
We restructured the path from first contact to completed application so fewer people fell out of it. The aim was simple: more of the right people applying, and more of those applications turning into committed, paying members.
4
Wrote a roadmap they could run
The roadmap was prioritised by leverage rather than by channel. What moves membership and revenue soonest, in what order, and what it takes to do each piece. It was written for the WXO to work through, not for us to sit on top of.
5
Handed over something they could hire against
By the end of the year the WXO knew what its marketing function needed to look like. That made the first internal hire a briefed decision rather than a guess at a job title, and it meant the work carried on compounding after the engagement closed.
THE RESULTS
Twelve months on, applications had tripled and revenue was up by more than half.
+200%
more membership applications, year on year
+60%
increase in revenue over the same period
3
months from audit to a step change in growth
1st
in-house marketing hire, briefed against a working plan
A membership pipeline that finally matched the size of the community
Applications ran at three times the previous year's rate and revenue followed at +60%. The funnel behind it was built to keep working once the engagement ended, which is the part that mattered most to a team about to run it themselves.
3×
the applications
How we measured it. Figures are the WXO's own, comparing full-year 2024 against 2023 on membership applications and revenue. The engagement was strategy, funnel and prioritisation rather than paid media, so these reflect the organisation's total membership performance rather than a single channel's attribution.
WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED
The same organisation, a completely different marketing function
The shift came from structure and sequencing, not from spending more. Here's the setup we found next to the one the WXO ended the year with.
WHAT WORKED
Fixing the step that was actually holding it back
Most growth problems look like a hundred small problems. They rarely are. We narrowed the WXO's down to the friction sitting between interest and a completed application, then put the effort there rather than improving everything a little. Removing one constraint properly moves more than six half-fixes.
One constraint at a time, in order of leverage
A roadmap written to be handed over
The value wasn't the document. It was that the WXO could see what its marketing function needed to do and in what order, which turned the first in-house hire into a straightforward decision. Work that only functions while the consultant is in the room isn't worth much to a membership body playing a long game.
Built for the team that came after us
