Cantarus - How Dynamics 365 Transformed the Design Museum’s Member Experience

Growing Membership at Scale

Growing a membership base isn’t just about reaching more people. It's about making every part of the journey – from joining to renewing and engaging – as simple and rewarding as possible for both members and your team.

That’s exactly what we set out to do with the Design Museum. Working in partnership, we helped them grow their membership from 3,500 to 10,000 – powered by Dynamics 365, smart integrations, and a relentless focus on removing friction from the membership experience.

The Challenge: Manual Processes Blocking Growth

When we first started working with the Museum, their membership team were battling with outdated systems and manual processes at almost every turn. Everyday tasks were eating into valuable time:

Creating memberships by phone meant hopping between four different systems and could take up to 20 minutes per transaction.
Maintaining member discounts in Shopify involved monthly exports and manually tagging thousands of records.
Sending renewal reminders and event invitations required creating lists, importing data, and chasing responses through spreadsheets.
Managing Direct Debits relied on spreadsheets, with the Membership Manager running collections by hand.

The team were spending too much time on admin and not enough time on what really matters – engaging and growing their membership base.

The Solution: Streamlining with Dynamics 365

We migrated the Museum from Dynamics 2015 On-Premise to Dynamics 365, transforming their membership management from the ground up, eliminating headaches and enabling automation at scale.

Key Improvements

Integrated Payments & Membership Creation: Memberships can now be created directly in Dynamics, with records instantly activated in DigiTickets. No more re-keying data or juggling multiple systems.
Automated Member Benefits in Shopify: New members are automatically tagged for discounts, and lapsed members have their benefits removed straight away – no monthly exports, no manual updates.
Smarter, Automated Communications with Dynamics' Rules Engine:
- Automated welcome and renewal reminders, tailored by membership type and payment method.
- Introduced a dedicated win-back campaign to re-engage lapsed members.
- Enabled mailing list updates to flow automatically between DigiTickets and Dynamics, saving hours each week.
Digital Membership Cards: Once a membership is created, the member automatically receives a digital card by email. This has completely removed the need for daily manual processing.
Direct Debit Automation: Over 1,000 memberships previously managed in spreadsheets were migrated into Dynamics via DigiTickets. GoCardless now handles collections automatically, giving the team full visibility without the manual overhead.
Event Invitations & Responses: Invitations, RSVPs, and attendance tracking are now all managed within Dynamics, replacing manual spreadsheets with an end-to-end digital workflow.

The Results: From Administration to Acceleration

By replacing manual processes with automated workflows, the Museum’s membership team have gained back hours every week.

More importantly, these improvements have helped the team create the conditions for long-term growth:

Members enjoy smoother, more personalised experiences
Staff can focus on strategic development – not repetitive admin
Campaigns to retain and win back members are faster to launch and easier to measure

Membership has grown from 3,500 to 10,000, supported by clearer data, more efficient processes, and a platform built to grow with them.

As one team member described it, the automation felt like “a dream come true."

A Platform for What's Next

The Design Museum now has a future-proof membership platform built on Dynamics 365, integrated with DigiTickets and Shopify. As their programme evolves, the system can flex with new membership products, campaigns, and reporting needs, rather than holding them back.

We’re proud to be part of their journey and excited to support whatever comes next.