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I’ve heard from a few membership owners recently feeling overwhelmed about all the things they need to juggle in their membership.

Don’t get me wrong – there is a *lot* to do when you’re running a membership.

From attracting new audiences, to converting them into members, to delivering against the features your membership promised, and innovating on new ways to push the envelope and take your membership to the next level.

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Sometimes it’s easy to find yourself with your head down just focusing on the next thing that needs to get done. The next guest expert that’s going to present, or the next newsletter that needs to be scheduled. And trust me that this is not where you and your team want to be.

You’d be surprised at the number of memberships operating in this way, though (or maybe you wouldn’t be!).

Before they know it, they find themselves in a cycle of attracting members, “doing what they’ve always done,” and losing those members. Then needing to acquire more members. And the cycle continues.

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If you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I’ve been reading Mike Michalowicz’s “Clockwork.” It’s a book focused on helping you run your business – you guessed it – like clockwork.

One framework he shares in the book really resonated with me in how it could be applied to memberships.

I actually talked about it in this week’s free live training in the Facebook Group (Loyalty Growth Lounge). I also gave some tips to help you prioritise your tasks in your membership whether you’re a solopreneur, or have a membership manager in your team.

As they say, it’s easy to get lost in the bushes, but this framework and these tips will help you start to think about how you can keep your eyes on innovation and improving your membership.

Watch the video above for the replay.

When you’re done, I’d love to know what you think! Just hit that comment button below.

What Next?

• Applications are currently open for The Retention Club! Apply now to access the recording of our private workshop: ➡️ The Member Profitability Playbook: Three Elements Every Membership Needs to Increase Member Retention & Average Member Value
• For more tips like this, make sure you’re part of Loyalty Growth Lounge – this is my free Facebook Group for anyone who wants to turbo-boost their membership retention.

The other day I received a push notification from Nike: “A Birthday Gift for You – 10% Off.”

And just like that, birthday campaign season had begun!

Rewind a few months and I’d been talking to a membership owner who had pretty much rolled her eyes at the idea of a birthday campaign. It felt too fluffy and kind of like a waste of time (or so she thought!).

“Why do I care if my dentist wishes me a happy birthday?” she’d asked

But the truth is that there’s a reason why big brands send these birthday messages out – and it’s not only to make their customers feel warm and fuzzy.

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Why should your membership have a birthday campaign in place?

A white paper by Experian spills all the tea about why birthday campaigns are a massive opportunity for your business.

A few of my favourite tidbits:

• Birthday campaign emails see a 235% increase in open rate compared to mass promotional emails
• Birthday campaign emails see a 300% increase in click through rate compared to mass promotional emails
• Birthday campaign emails see a 250% increase in revenue per email compared to mass promotional emails

That last point is an important one. Birthday campaign emails had a 250% increase in revenue per email compared to mass promotional emails – that’s massive! And it shows that people want to treat themselves on their birthday. So if you have a relationship with them through your membership, leverage that to cross-sell to your members in a meaningful way.

Look at your product suite and ask yourself: what do I have that might be relevant to my members?

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Tips for an effective birthday campaign

1. Time the campaign as close to the customer’s birthday as possible

There wasn’t a massive impact on performance comparing customers who received the campaign in the day vs the week of their birthday. That said, there was a 40% increase in transactions when the campaign was sent in the week of the customer’s birthday vs the month.

2. Give your members a dollars off incentive

Instead of doing a % discount, offer them a dollar amount off of either your product suite, or an individual product. You might say, for example, that you’d give them $50 off any purchase in the next five days. Oh and it goes without saying to make sure you exclude anyone who has already purchased!

3. Don’t include a minimum spend requirement

Forcing a minimum spend requirement reduced revenue per email by 70%. Make the offer available to your members regardless of spend (although you could offer it only on specific products). In order to deliver on that limited time offer, Deadline Funnel is a great tool that will start a user-specific countdown once a link is clicked. It’s super convenient and perfect for a campaign like this!

What Next?

• Applications are currently open for The Retention Club! Apply now to access the recording of our private workshop: ➡️ The Member Profitability Playbook: Three Elements Every Membership Needs to Increase Member Retention & Average Member Value

• For more tips like this, make sure you’re part of Loyalty Growth Lounge – this is my free Facebook Group for anyone who wants to turbo-boost their membership retention.

I get asked this question all the time: would you recommend a free membership trial?

Do you know why Costco give away free samples of their products (or at least used to B.C. (Before Covid))? Because they knew that people who tasted that vegetable and chicken wonton (which they definitely didn’t come into the store for) would all of a sudden be more inclined to put a packet in their trolley.

There’s a reason why we take a car for a test drive before buying. There’s a reason why we date before we get married. So we can try before we buy!

Now here comes the real question: do membership trials work for memberships?

The honest answer is that there is no “right” answer to this question.

Every membership is so different – what works for yours might not work for someone else’s.

That caveat aside, I’ve spoken to three membership owners that have tried different variations of a free trial – only one of them said they would do it again.

One ran a trial for $1, and two others gave a free month. Here’s what happened.

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The membership that gave a $1 trial

She was running Facebook ads to attract members in with this offer. Once it came time for the actual price to kick in, though, 95% of members would cancel. Accounting for the cost of the ads, and the cost of running her membership, it wasn’t worth it for her in the end and she soon stopped offering this as a welcome offer.

The free month trial that didn’t work

All seemed well with this trial – after the first month, most people stayed on to their second (and paid!). But this is where the trouble started. After the second month, she saw an influx of members cancelling. Her churn rate increased significantly. And of those members who stayed past their second month? They were more difficult and demanding than the members she was used to. In the short term it felt like a good move, but in the longer term there was a twang of regret.

The free month trial that did work

There was one key difference between the membership owner mentioned above, and the membership owner who ran a successful membership trial: how they attracted people into their trial. One had grown her audience mostly via Facebook Ads. The other had grown organically and were naturally more warm towards her. For the audience that was grown organically, they were much more likely to stick around after their trial. This made it a worthwhile campaign for this membership owner to run every now and then.

Do I recommend membership trials?

As I said, every membership is different. With that in mind, I typically would not recommend running a membership trial. From what I’ve seen, the impact on retention often makes them not worth it. That said, what I do think may be worth exploring is charging for a trial of one element of the membership. For example, if you have a monthly workshop for members, you may charge non-members the value of that workshop to attend and see if they like it. You can then upsell them to join the full membership afterwards.

My personal feeling is that if you give something to someone for free, they’re unlikely to want to pay for it in future, and that’s not the pace you want to set with your membership.

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What do you think?

Have you run a membership trial before? How did it go? Let me know in the comments below – I’d love for somebody to prove me wrong!

What Next?

• For more tips like this, make sure you’re part of Loyalty Growth Lounge – this is my free Facebook Group for anyone who wants to turbo-boost their membership retention.

— Edit —

Following this blog post, I received the following email from a membership:

Super interesting! We started offering free trials last year and have had great results – average 33% conversions since November (anywhere from 20%-44% conversions on a monthly basis – data attached). And that doesn’t actually include all of the people who upgraded to lifetime membership after their trial because Stripe treats that like a cancellation not a conversion. All through offering free trials via bundles, summits, or other collaborations so the audiences who were offered the trials were cold but relatively targeted. Over $160k in trial conversion MRR so far with $0 ad spend (plus we actually earned a separate $30k+ in direct commission last year from the bundles / summits before the trials started converting).
We’re testing a warm audience trial next quarter (subscribers who’ve indicated interest but haven’t joined) but we haven’t tried offering trials to cold audiences via ads yet (have thought about testing it, but not sure if the ROI will be worth it) – but so far offering trials via collabs has worked really well for us!

A question I get asked all the time – and I mean like all the time – is what to put in free vs paid membership content. When it comes to membership content, there are two types of content I’d encourage you to think about:

1. Value content: This is the content where you’re teaching or helping your members on their journey. The objective of this content is to help your members achieve their desired outcome.
2. Engagement content: This is the content where you’re building relationships. This is where you ask the silly questions and run polls for no reason other than to spark a conversation.

When thinking about your free vs paid membership content, there are three pitfalls you’ll want to avoid.

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1. Going live more frequently in the paid group than the free group

Of course, what you don’t want to have happen is for you to be delivering more value to your free customers than your paying ones. Your paying customers are your bread and butter – make sure you’re giving value to them appropriately.

2. Focusing too much on value content and not enough on engagement content in your paid group

There’s a misconception that when people pay to join a membership, they want to learn everything, all the time. That’s not necessarily true. People also want to join a community – so make sure you’re nurturing and engaging them or they’ll get bored and may leave.

3. Panicking about members complaining about the value in your free vs paid membership content

Every now and then you’re bound to have that one customer who doesn’t think that you’re giving enough value. Don’t panic! First, figure out if you are actually giving more value in your free group than your paid group. If you are, great – fix it! If not, take their feedback with a pinch of salt but keep an eye on whether this feedback becomes a repetitive theme for cancelling members.

So now what you know what not to do, what should you do instead? I’ve created a short guide to help you navigate these sometimes difficult waters. Click here to download it for free.

What Next?

• Download the Free vs Paid Membership Content Planning Guide for free
• For more tips like this, make sure you’re part of Loyalty Growth Lounge – this is my free Facebook Group for anyone who wants to turbo-boost their membership retention.

If there’s one thing I get asked all the time, it’s: what are the campaigns I need to be thinking about to make sure my membership is in a good place to launch, or to engage our members?

In this blog post I’m going to be covering, at a high level, the three campaigns every membership should have. It will give you a starting point from which you can launch off of – download the free resource at the bottom of the page for some more campaigns you may want to consider!

Why are relationships important?

When I’ve run customer research in the memberships I’ve worked with, I always ask why people joined the membership. This is a good steer in terms of what their expectations are for being a member. From what I’ve seen, typically people join and stay in a membership for one (or a combination) of three reasons.

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The first is your leadership – they want to learn and be close to you as the membership leader because they know and like you. Not all memberships are in this bracket but if you are, relationships are important because you need to make sure your personal stamp is on everything that you do (within reason – it obviously needs to be scalable)!.

The second reason is the community – members are trying to connect with likeminded individuals who are on the same journey. You may have lurkers, but as much as possible you want to create opportunities for your members to engage in the membership and be part of something bigger than just themselves. Hence, relationships are again important.

Finally, the journey you can take them on – members want a transformation and need to have a strong relationship with you and the the membership to ensure they get it.

These are important to think about at a high level, but also when considering the impact on building relationships.

You Might Also Like: Download the free Membership Campaign Checklist

How do we build good relationships in a sustainable way?

So how do we do build a good relationship with our memberships in a sustainable way? Emphasis on “in a sustainable way.” It’s obviously not going to work to email each individual privately so we need to think about how you can automate this and do it at mass. There are three campaigns that can help you do this:

1. Onboarding

At the most basic level, you want to map out what new members need to know to get the most out of their membership. Let’s say you have a floral arrangement membership with classes, expert interviews, etc. You want to identify the 3-5 things new members needs to know to get the most from their membership. So you may ask them as part of onboarding what skill level they’re at, and then have one learning path for newbies, vs advanced members. If you have a Facebook group, make sure they join it. Make sure they’re getting the quick wins and learning about your key features.

2. Newsletter

So many memberships are afraid of spamming their members – and I get it. But people are paying for a transformation. They’ve joined for a reason and you to help them on their journey. They want to hear from you. Consider how you can enrich your newsletter – maybe ask your members how frequently they want to hear from you. Taking this a step further, if you’re more advanced you could segment your base based on how frequently they want to be contacted. Another thing you should be doing is emailing them before you go live. If they’re paying for your service, they’re going to want that reminder to join the live calls.

3. Cancellations

At the point that someone has asked to cancel their membership, try and create a conversation with that person. In this way you’re not only building a relationship with that person, but you’re going to be a position to either solve their individual challenge or start to build a picture of why people are cancelling and any tweaks you may need to make. You may find that a lot of people are cancelling because you’re missing something, or because you’re offering too much – you may be overwhelming your members.

These are a great starter for ten to get you thinking about how you can build relationships with your members. There’s so much more you can be doing with your members, though, to engage and build relationships with them.

Click here to download the free membership campaign checklist.

Imagine this.

Your name is Pauline. You have a membership for poodle owners and business. Is. Thriving.

The membership is called Pauline’s Poodle Palace.

Every week you share a video for your members with a new tip for their poodles – over three years that’s a lot of membership content that you’ve created.

156 trainings to be exact. On one hand, this is great – it’s a huge asset to your members and a big reason why people feel inclined to join.

On the other hand, it’s a lot. For new members joining Pauline’s Poodle Palace, it can be overwhelming. There’s membership content about how to manage your poodle’s behavioural issues; trainings about potty training; trainings about basic commandments; advanced commandments… I could go on.

Three years is a long time to be building a bank of membership content and while it’s great it can be confusing AF for new members who don’t know where to start.

If you have a membership that’s been running for a while, you’ll likely know exactly what I mean.

So – what’s the solution? Categorising your membership content.

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What do I mean by categorising your membership content?

It is what it says on the tin. Imagine if, instead of presenting all of your content at once, you put yourself in the shoes of your new members and thought about what would make sense for them to make their way through your training. Yes, this may take some time if you have a big backlog, but it’s something that will make your membership much easier for new members to navigate in the future.

What’s the best way to categorise your membership content?

There are two things I recommend you take into account when it comes to categorising your membership content:

1. Understand your members’ key desired outcomes

When I work with established memberships, I always like to start from a place of research. Listening to your members is a powerful thing. One question to ask your members that I think is a great starting point from which to think about your membership content categorisation is this: What outcome were you hoping to achieve by joining the membership?

What you’re really looking for here is the outcomes that new members are after when they sign up. Once you start seeing some patterns, you’ll have a steer on what outcomes new members are after and that’s a great way to categorise your content.

Taking it back to Pauline’s Poodle Palace, having done this research, we may have found that the four key outcomes new members were after were: 1. Puppy training; 2. Fixing behavioural issues; 3. Advanced poodle tricks; 4. Poodle grooming and care.

These would be a great starting point from which to start thinking about categorising the 156 trainings.

2. What content has worked well in the past?

Okay, now you know what people are trying to achieve through your membership. But you have a lot of videos! How are you meant to fit 100+ videos into a handful of categories?

Every case is different but generally I think it works quite nicely to have a learning pathway for the outcome in question. Look at your top performing pieces of content in that category, and then think about how you can link 4 – 7 together in a sequence to help your member with the outcome at hand.

You can then have another button saying “show me all content” which would lead to the wider library. At least this way you’re directing new members’ focus and helping showing them the most relevant content related to what they’re trying to achieve.

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Taking this a step further

Well done – you’re on your way to delivering a more intuitive experience for your members which is less “throw everything at them at once” and more “take them on a journey.” If you wanted to take this a step further, here’s what I suggest.

As part of your member onboarding, ask new members what it is they want to achieve. Then give them a list of the four to five things you identified as key desired outcomes. By selecting one, you can then drip feed them the content via email with one lesson per email. This way you’re nudging your member to achieve what it was they set out to and proactively helping them get to where they want to go.

Summary

At the end of the day, the best way to categorise your content is in the way that makes the most sense for your members. Take your “membership owner” hat off and put yourself in the shoes of your members. Better yet – ask someone who you trust and who hasn’t been into your membership before to take a look for you. What makes sense? What’s a bit confusing?

The tips above are a great starting point to get you going. And if you put them to action, come let me know in the Facebook Group!

What Next?

• For more tips like this, make sure you’re part of Loyalty Growth Lounge – this is my free Facebook Group for anyone who wants to turbo-boost their membership retention in 2021
• To get your hands on my free Onboarding Blueprint and subscribe to the Loyalty Growth Lab newsletter, click here

Starting a membership is a bit like getting married… having never met your partner-to-be 💍 😱

Hear me out.

1️⃣ It’s a long-term time commitment.

You’re taking this step, and who knows how long you’ll be in it? Just like a marriage, people will expect to have their membership for the foreseeable future. It will be tricky to just pack it up and leave.

2️⃣ You might not know if you’re compatible.

Will people like your membership idea? As (if not more) importantly, will you enjoy running a membership?

3️⃣ It’s scary AF.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Starting anything new is terrifying (be it a marriage to someone you’ve never met, or a membership).

Join the Facebook Group: Loyalty Growth Lounge is the free Facebook Group to help you drive member loyalty and retention

Last week I caught up with Stacey from The P.S. Club and she laid down some absolute fire about how she took her membership from idea to revenue-driving business.

More specifically, she shared an approach she used to validate her membership idea with low risk – meaning that (going back to our marriage analogy) when it came time to walking down the aisle, she knew who was at the other end.

There was no scary mystery.

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Stacey’s advice is gold dust for anyone thinking of starting their membership.

Have a watch, take some notes, and drop a comment below if any questions creep up.

I also want to say a huge thank you to Stacey for taking the time to speak with me 🥳

In my experience, there are three drivers that create customer loyalty in a business (especially a high-frequency business like a membership site). Before I share them, let me tell you a bit about my lockdown experience in the UK (it’s related; I promise!).

Let me paint you a picture.

When the first UK lockdown hit, I was staying with my parents in the tiny English town of Hanley Castle. It’s beautiful there.

Imagine where Kate Winslet lived in “The Holiday” – that’s the vibe.

The UK is in another lockdown (the third, I think… but it’s hard to keep track), and while many businesses have suffered there’s one that has seemed relatively unaffected largely because of its loyal customer base: the local pub!

On reflection, I realised that my parents’ local pub excelled in the three key ingredients for increased customer loyalty.

In this blog post, I’m going to break down each one of these loyalty drivers for you as well as provide a description of how my parents’ local pub is getting it right.

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1. The leader

I’m sure you’ll have heard this saying before but people buy from people. When someone knows, likes, and trusts the leader of a membership (or a pub!) they’re more likely to stick around. That’s right: you, as the leader of your membership, will have a direct and powerful impact on your customer loyalty.

My parents’ local pub is run by a town legend. She’s the head of the local council and a friendly face for everyone in the village. Having a relationship directly with her means that the town is more personally invested in the pub. People will go out of their way to stop by at the pub and say hi to its owner – it’s a really remarkable thing.

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2. The community

Community is key – especially when it comes to membership sites. Creating and nurturing strong bonds between your members is what will make a membership go from good to great. It’s what will create stickiness and heightened customer loyalty to make your members never want to leave.

This rule also applies for my parents’ local pub. Each night has its regulars so you’ll know who to expect on which night. The community feel, led by the owner of the pub, is unparalleled. It makes the pub a cornerstone of the town – something the town wouldn’t want to get rid of anytime soon. This is the kind of environment you want to create in your membership (minus the alcohol, of course).

Join the Facebook Group: Loyalty Growth Lounge is the free Facebook Group to help you drive member loyalty and retention

3. The benefit

I like to use the evolution of the donkey to unicorn to outline the journey your membership should take its members on. Most memberships will be helping their members achieve something, whether it’s learning how to knit beautiful scarves or how to negotiate a pay rise. This is the core reason and attraction for people joining your membership: they’re a donkey and they want to be a unicorn.

If you get this wrong, nothing in the world will be able to help your customer loyalty – it all falls down.

In the example of my parents’ local pub, it’s famous for its wide choice of beers, ales, and ciders. They also stock some local goods (like jams, pickles, etc).

By combining good leadership, community, and a strong benefit you’re on track for increased customer loyalty and a winning membership.

What next?

• For more tips like this, make sure you’re part of Loyalty Growth Lounge – this is my free Facebook Group for anyone who wants to turbo-boost their membership retention in 2021
• To get your hands on my free Onboarding Blueprint and subscribe to the Loyalty Growth Lab newsletter, click here

There are a few mistakes I see creeping up time and time again for new membership owners.

There’s one mistake that takes the cake by far, though, and I totally understand how it happens.

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Picture this from a new membership who wants to give all the value in the world.

So you decide you’re going to offer monthly goal setting and accountability, a monthly challenge, fortnightly expert training, a weekly masterclass with accompanying actionable takeaways, access to all of your courses, and a Facebook Group where your community can engage with each other and where you’ll check in every now and then.

All for $49 a month – sounds like a bargain, right?

Now put yourself in the shoes of a prospective member.

That’s a lot of information and a lot of hours you’re asking your members to commit. For some types of memberships this might work, but for most it’s a recipe for disaster. Instead of creating positive change for your members, you’re more likely to inadvertently overwhelm them.

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Now put yourself in your own shoes six months from now.

A membership like the example I provided is going to take hours of your time every week (and probably every day with this level of offering). This isn’t sustainable for you as a business owner.

What I generally recommend instead is based on something called the SAPS framework. It stands for: Stuff, Access, Power, and Status.

By more evenly distributing what you’re offering your members across each of these areas, you’ll not only create increased loyalty and retention but also create a more sustainable membership offering.

If you want to hear more about the pitfalls to avoid as a membership owner or the SAPS framework (which I talk about a *lot* in my workshops and 121 consulting), make sure you’re part of The Loyalty Growth Lounge.

This is my free Facebook Group for anyone who wants to turbo-boost their membership retention in 2021.

Click here to get started >>