If you’ve successfully launched a membership site, the next thing you’ll want to focus on is creating a membership retention strategy.
Membership programs are the envy of many business owners, but they’re not a done deal. Keeping members long-term is the best way to make this offer profitable. This means developing effective membership retention strategies to encourage your members to stick around.
We spoke with several member site experts, including Isis Brianna Woods and Katherine Kanrahan, to determine the most effective membership retention strategies.
Here are their tips for membership retention, including top membership retention strategies and membership retention best practices:
- Why you need membership retention strategies
- How to figure out what your members want – and stop them from leaving
- 24 membership retention strategies to reduce member churn
Why you need membership retention strategies
On average, it costs 5-10 times more to win a new member than to hold on to an existing one. Userpilot found that the average customer acquisition cost for ecommerce businesses was around $70. Industries like B2B and SaaS saw numbers reaching the thousands.
Clearly, customer acquisition is expensive. So, when spending anywhere from $70 to $1,000+ to drive members through a sales funnel, customer churn can quickly make your membership site cost more than it makes in profit.
A reasonable churn rate is around 5%, with concerning rates approaching 20%. If you want to grow your membership, having to replace 20% of members with new ones every month just to maintain your current numbers isn’t sustainable.
All this makes membership retention strategies critical for the health of your business.
Key benefits of membership programs
Despite the challenge of member retention, membership programs are more appealing than ever because they provide members with three key benefits:
- Connection: People value human connection, and they can find it in your communities.
- Low barrier to entry: Paying lower monthly fees for access to a high-value community is much less intimidating than joining high-ticket, time-bound programs—especially in times of economic uncertainty.
- Learning new skills: As people continue to take on side hustles and gigs to boost their income, membership sites will continue to grow in popularity as a resource for these skills.
Every day, a large number of business owners decide to launch membership sites as an entirely new offer (and source of income) or in addition to existing offers.
Technology businesses are very aware of this growing trend. In fact, in a 2020 survey of senior finance executives, more than 50% of respondents said at least 40% of their organizations’ revenues were recurring, sold via a subscription model (CFO).
Thinkific Creator Amanda Schonberg had this to say about memberships: “For me, a membership is more effective than a one-off course because every single month, I can check in with my students and watch them grow.”
Amanda opened her membership community and ended up with five times more revenue than she had in her previous four years. “There was no more compromise,” she says. “I could teach in the style I wanted and on my own time. It really paid off.”
In other words, businesses understand membership models have value, and consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to this model as an offering. So, don’t wait to incorporate this offering in your digital product lineup.
Now you know the value of serving your clients through a membership model, let’s look at how to keep them.
How to figure out what your members want and stop them from leaving
The key to creating a community is to know what your members want.
The easiest way to do that? Ask them.
As Isis Woods explains, if you had a friend who called you all the time just to talk about themselves, you’d stop picking up the phone because it quickly gets really annoying. The same principle applies to your membership.
If you’re going to have a community, you must ask members about themselves. Ask them what they need, ask them what they’re going through, and ask them what they want to hear more about in your community.
You can do this via your community space, including:
- Posting questions
- Using surveys
- Organizing live events
- Setting up one-to-one calls
- Monitoring member activity
You must pay attention to what your audience wants, needs, and responds to. That’s how you can foster a strong community with members who trust you and want to stick around.
24 membership retention strategies you can use to reduce member churn
If you’re looking for membership retention strategies that will help you hold onto your existing members—and win over new members as soon as they walk in the door—here are 24 strategies for you.
Create captivating content
Rule number one of membership retention is optimizing your members’ content.
If you have a monthly membership model, you need monthly content that’s tailor-made for your members. That means fresh content that educates and empowers your audience.
Creating relevant content for your members is essential to showing them the value of your membership and ensuring they keep paying their subscription fees.
Katherine has some great ideas for captivating content that will boost membership retention, including:
- Masterclasses, e.g., a 30-minute live or recorded workshop
- Group coaching calls
- Downloadable resources e.g., templates, guides, tutorials
The content you create depends on your business and the transformation you’re offering to your students. Will they benefit more from masterclasses, live coaching calls, or extra resources? What about something else?
Katherine’s members receive a monthly masterclass that she created with Thinkific as part of her Dream Achievers Academy. Every month, Katherine releases a masterclass with a video and supplementary resources like a template, workbook, or PDF guide.
When creating content for her members, Isis recommends finding the right balance between overwhelming and underwhelming your audience. You need to make sure you’re creating content at a rate that will keep your members engaged but not overwhelm them (and consequently desensitize them to any updates coming from your community).
To avoid this, you need to get to know your members and find the balance that will keep members engaged but not overwhelmed.
Make sure that your content is easy to understand. Avoid arrogance and big words, and just teach people straightforwardly so they can understand, implement, and get results.
This is the number one thing to remember when you’re looking for membership retention strategies.
Find your niche
Almost everything is available online for free if you’re willing to put the time into finding it. That means that to boost your membership retention rates, you need to find your niche.
What people are looking for and will continue to pay for is hyper-relevance. This is why having the type of content subscribers can’t conveniently find or create will encourage members to continue paying for your content.
If a month or two passes and they haven’t found the content, community, or support useful, they’ll question the value and may look for another solution that focuses more on their specific needs.
The people who are getting the most out of your program are the ones who you’ll want to continue to attract in the future, so they should shape your niche and your membership content.
Tiffany Aliche from The Budgetnista is an excellent example of a niche membership site that really works for its members. She teaches personal finance to women, specifically women of color.
I want to help women, especially black women, live richer lives. Because we have been left out of the financial conversation for so long.
TIFFANY ALICHE
Not only is Tiffany’s niche specific and clear, it’s also compelling.
Build a community space
To improve membership retention, create a community area to keep in touch with members and boost their engagement with your brand.
Aim to create a supportive environment that builds an active community around your monthly membership program.
In a Thinkific community space, you can discuss monthly content, post questions, answer members’ questions, set challenges, and help your customers feel like they’re part of a cohesive, collaborative group.
You can use a whole range of engagement ideas to make your community space your own and build a strong community around your brand.
Still trying to figure out where to start? Ask your members what they want!
Offer interactive content
Offering interactive content is a key part of building out your community space. While “Engagement” is an easy buzzword to use, it must be implemented in your community calendar, membership challenges, resource library, and other facets of your community.
Interactive content can include polls, quizzes, surveys, and even challenges (more on those later). The goal is to add variety to your content mix so you aren’t just posting info-heavy updates, answering questions, or leading calls.
Everyone responds to content formats differently, and offering a variety of interactive content will help you appeal to more people and keep member retention up.
Create a membership calendar
When you have a monthly membership program, you must find a way to keep people returning for more. This concept is at the heart of all membership retention strategies.
A monthly membership calendar is a really useful method – especially if you have a dedicated community space set up for your members.
When people start to feel disconnected from your community, when they don’t know what’s going on, or when they’ve lost touch with why they joined your membership in the first place, you start to see them drop off.
A membership calendar keeps people informed about new developments and gives them things to look forward to in the month ahead.
Katherine recommends using a simple tool like Canva to create your monthly membership calendar and list the monthly content that you’ll be posting, including dates and times for live coaching sessions or calls.
This tactic will help you foster relationships with your community and maintain membership numbers. You’re helping your members get what they need out of your membership, making it a top membership retention strategy.
Set membership challenges
As part of your monthly membership calendar, you can also add another membership retention strategy – membership challenges!
Challenges will keep your members engaged while helping you gauge and measure community engagement, learning, and performance.
Here’s an example from Isis: After seeing a constant flow of questions about her morning routine, Isis and her team implemented a morning routine challenge. The morning routine challenge ended with a prize – a relaxing massage for the person who did the challenge every day.
While the challenge had its own reward, it also had the added benefit of giving members something to talk about and something to strive for. You can add extra impact to your challenges by celebrating members’ wins. That means giving shout-outs to successful members in your coaching calls and community space to make members feel appreciated and engaged.
This tactic also helps to foster a sense of community within your membership program, encouraging members to support one another and hit their goals together.
Make a great first impression when onboarding
First impressions matter. Your customers’ first experience as paid members will set the stage for their ongoing engagement with your brand and impact your membership retention rates.
Greet new members warmly and engage them from the very first interaction. This is not the time to have a complex path to signing up. Instead, make it as easy as possible for them to access the tools and resources they need.
You can’t expect people to get results if they’re not even sure how to access the video, find the latest lesson, ask burning questions, or connect with other members. You want to make sure new members can maneuver through your site and use your features from the get-go.
Onboarding guidelines
Though new members might be excited to join your membership site straight away, they might not know where to start. Create ‘getting started’ guidelines to provide direction and boost membership retention.
Katherine has a handy step-by-step guide to how she creates her guidelines:
- Checklist: Create a Thinkific checklist on the site builder. Use this to create a new member to do list. List out the things new members should do before accessing membership content.
- Video: Make a welcome video on how to navigate your membership program and its key features. Sit down and talk with them with a short, personal conversation on what’s in store for them.
- Survey: Add an onboarding survey to learn more about your members and put them to your mailing list. Get to know them in this step. Find out why they joined your membership, what they hope to get out of it and what their goals are.
To use the Dream Achievers Academy as an example, new members each get a video on how to navigate the membership site, what’s in store, a to-do list, and a checklist module that lists out each step members should take to get the best experience from their membership.
If your program is group-oriented, make sure you introduce them to the group or ask them to introduce themselves to get new members active in the community immediately.
Personalize member communication
One sure way to tank your membership retention is to focus on sales. Many online creators see paid membership sites as an easy way to drive recurring revenue and choose to focus on the “$” rather than the student at the other end of the transaction.
Focus on value first, and revenue will follow.
One way to help drive value is by personalizing communication with your members. Because membership sites often drive a large volume of sales, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to set up automated marketing campaigns and email funnels and move on. This is the infamous, set it and forget it mentality.
But while marketing and sales funnels certainly have their rightful place in business, regularly connecting with your members in a way that demonstrates they’re more than a number or a dollar sign will show them you value their time, effort, and presence in your community.
For example, say you challenge new members to share their personal goals on the community forum. Follow up with them after 2 weeks, 4 weeks, or even a few months and check on their progress, citing specific goals they’ve shared in the community.
You don’t have to solve their problems in a single chat, but demonstrating that you’re listening and ready to help can go a long way in improving member retention.
Build a resource library
Regarding membership retention strategies, Katherine’s heavy hitter is a resource library. A resource library houses all previous content for easy access by members, both new and old.
Not only are your members getting fresh content every month, but they’re also getting access to all of your previous monthly content.
Katherine recommends creating a resource library. On Thinkific, the site builder lets you feature the newest content first, so it’s always easy to find fresh resources.
“You want your resource library and essentially every element of your membership to feel like a living, breathing element,” explains Katherine. “You want everything that’s in your membership to be intentional.”
When a new class or course becomes available, let members know you’ve added it to the library so they can access it by clicking one item above the resource library.
Create exclusive content
Paid membership sites are, by nature, exclusive. Often referred to as a “pay wall,” these sites require upfront payment for entry. You might also hear this type of content called “gated.” If this describes your membership community, tiered memberships may work, but you should be wary of one big thing…
…making members feel like they’re being nickel and dimed. A member who pays for access to your community probably won’t be happy if they’re met with even more paywalls after enrollment.
But, for those of you who offer free communities, exclusive, gated content is one way to monetize your community or (as we’ll discuss later on) boost engagement and member retention.
Because your community is free, users will naturally expect a bit more sales-oriented posts, gated content, or event-sponsored content. If you’re looking to drive revenue with exclusive content, you could consider offering exclusive downloads, early access to new courses, access to private coaching classes, and more.
Offering exclusive access to content through your membership community will make the community more valuable, especially if you provide high-value assets like direct access to you or in-depth resources.
Diversify your content with expert highlights
Even the most inspiring leaders can quickly become boring if you have to listen to them all the time. To combat this boredom, we recommend offering a range of perspectives and expertise beyond just your own.
Bringing in noteworthy professionals or experts in your niche will expose your members to more information and fresh perspectives. In addition to benefiting your members, your guest experts will earn exposure and exclusive access to your private community—something many businesses and creators cherish. But that’s not all.
Why not take things a step further and invite your members to speak, too? Chances are, you already have many qualified people in your membership. What better way to keep them engaged and make them feel special by allowing them to show off their expertise as guest coaches?
This membership retention strategy can be really fun and super effective. We especially love it when you’re struggling to come up with fresh ideas, taking a little time off, or just need a break from the constant cycle of engaging your audience.
Provide the transformation members want
Every product or service needs to meet its customers’ goals, especially subscription-based businesses.
Whether it’s to feel good, have more, or spend less, your messaging needs to be clear about what purchasers get when they buy from you.
For infopreneurs, that might include:
- Education: Increasing skills & capabilities through knowledge
- Coaching: Providing access to mentorship and one-to-one sessions
- Community: A space for like-minded people with common interests
Each one of these ideas emphasizes the core benefit a member will receive. It’s a bonus when all three of these are present but they don’t have to be to make a membership site successful.
If you can be clear on the outcomes your members can achieve, it will help you increase customer success and satisfaction.
As Isis says, “I am very big on not only selling fluff and saying that you can do things, but actually getting results for your clients, your students, your members […] So do not hold back on information.”
Map your customer’s journey
When thinking about membership retention strategies, it’s important to recognize that a person who joined your membership program a year ago will not have the same challenges, opportunities, or needs as they did when they first joined.
Staying aware of your customer’s evolving needs lets you create content and features to help them meet their objectives throughout their journey.
When you understand their journey, you can figure out what you need to do for them at each point. This is known as community mapping.
Community mapping also prevents common mistakes that many membership community leaders make, such as over-planning events and over-delivering content, only to discover that members aren’t using most of what you’re creating.
Work smarter, not harder, and map your member journey from day one to increase membership retention.
Celebrate membership milestones
Members can get tired of your membership site without constant challenge (the good kind) and engagement. That’s where celebration and milestones come in.
You can celebrate membership milestones in various ways, including anniversary recognition, milestone announcements, public acknowledgment, exclusive events, and even customized gifts.
These small celebrations let your members know you’re paying attention and value their participation in your community. By positively reinforcing your members’ work, you’re building loyalty and your community, and consequently boosting member retention.
Highlight member success with case studies
Case studies can be a powerful tool for inspiring and encouraging members to keep persevering with your membership program.
Some participants don’t get the full benefit of the programs they join because they don’t know how to apply what they learn or they give up too soon.
Remember, people want to connect with people. If your members can see how other members have grown and succeeded during their time in the group, they’re more likely to see that possibility for themselves.
But don’t just take our word for it. According to Amanda Schonburg, the successful creator from earlier, the most effective way to sell her course was by sharing her students’ success.
For example, in Amanda’s membership community, she features a challenge called “One K A Day.” This challenge encourages her students to make $1,000 in sales in 24 hours. Once they accomplish that, they get to come onto her podcast as guests. “I think it’s one of the best ways for people to see what people in my community have accomplished and what they’ve achieved by being members,” she says.
Membership retention without member success is only a short-term solution. Demonstrate to your members the benefits of staying with your program through concrete case studies and highlights. This one small addition packs a big punch.
Host networking events
Earlier in this article, we said, “People value connection, and they can find it in your communities.”
People are social beings. And whether they’re graduating from your online academy or looking to learn from a community, online memberships are a natural next step for many in their learning journey.
One way you can add to the value of your community is by facilitating networking events.
Before your community takes off in popularity, you may need to galvanize socialization. Some people need that extra boost to engage with others, even online. By organizing a networking event, whether it’s online or offline, you can catalyze deep connections.
Chances are, once you connect your members in meaningful ways, they’ll maintain these connections on their own. That might even mean organizing their own networking events moving forward.
Offer member profiles
Dedicated membership platforms often offer member profiles. Like a profile on Instagram or Facebook, member profiles give members the ability to share more about themselves, learn about others, and more. Here are some of the top profile benefits for members:
- Share achievements and certifications: Members can show off milestones they’ve reached and achievements they’ve earned, encouraging others to not only achieve them but share them too.
- Connect with others: Some platforms allow users to link to other platforms, like LinkedIn or Instagram. This makes it easy (and safer) for people to connect with their fellow members off the platform, helping to drive even deeper engagement and connection.
- Communicate interests, values, and goals: Member profiles give members a central location to share what they like, value, and want to accomplish in the community. This can help others connect with like-minded people quicker.
- Share professional titles: Sharing professional titles allows members to connect with others who share similar backgrounds or have accomplished what they’re looking to achieve.
At its core, membership retention is about helping your members achieve the goals they come to you with, and in this case, it’s about connecting with others online.
Implement loyalty programs and membership rewards
Tip 14 recognized the importance of milestone recognition. Take that concept even further, and you’ll find that implementing loyalty programs and membership rewards is a natural next step.
We see creators use a points system, tiered membership levels, exclusive discounts or offers, and VIP webinars to reward loyal members.
The great thing about points systems, offers, and VIP access is that you can leverage these tools to boost sales or engagement. So, if you’re happy with your membership engagement right now, you can leave these alone. But when you’re entering a low month, dangle an exclusive webinar as a carrot to get your members moving—whether you want them to put their fingers to the keyboard or to log in and finally complete that unfinished course.
Overall, offering rewards and recognizing the work of your members makes them feel appreciated and valued, helping to drive your member retention in a positive direction.
Offer referral incentives
Your community’s biggest supporter will share about your community without you having to ask. But why stop there? Why not drive even more referral traffic?
Boosting referral traffic has two key benefits:
- You’ll be rewarding your loyal supporters. These are the members already sharing about your community with their friends, family, and coworkers. Rewarding them will just encourage them to share even more, and they’ll feel appreciated for it (which helps with member retention).
- You’ll capture additional referral traffic. You may have loyal members who just aren’t that vocal about your community. But put some monetary or social rewards behind new referrals, and you’ll see an increase in the number of referrals rolling in.
Here are a few ways you can offer referral incentives:
- Discounts: Existing members already pay for access to your community, so why not reward them for driving new memberships to the community by discounting next month’s fees? Or, Offer a discount on a popular or high ticket item.
- Exclusive access: Leveraging direct access to you or super valuable resources is a great way to encourage and reward members for their loyalty.
- Bonus points: If you’ve implemented a point system, simply award a set number of points for a certain number of referrals.
- Special achievements: Even something as small as a profile badge can go a long way in making members feel special about their contributions to the community. This incentive is especially valuable if your platform allows for it on member profiles.
And finally, one of the most popular referral incentives: affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs encourage members to share member-specific links with their audience. When a new member joins using that specific link, the referring member receives a commission, and sometimes, the new member even receives a discount.
These programs are more complex than simply offering points or achievements. But they’re incredibly effective at encouraging your active members to enact word-of-mouth marketing, one of the most potent and effective forms of marketing.
Change your membership terms for a longer commitment
If you don’t already have annual membership options, now’s the time to create them.
It’s always worth asking for a longer commitment from your members. We all know that real change doesn’t happen overnight so if members want real growth, they’ll have to commit to the time it takes to achieve significant results.
Longer membership terms give new members more time to get involved in the community without this imaginary pressure to see a return on their investment in the first 30-days. If your online membership site has a robust subscribership and resource library, new members will probably only have scratched the surface by the end of their first enrollment cycle.
That’s why offering a one-year buy-in where members can lock into a lower monthly rate with a full year commitment, can help increase member retention.
Set up regular meetings with members
To improve membership retention for your program, start meeting with your members one-on-one as much as you can.
This doesn’t have to be weekly, it doesn’t even have to be monthly. Isis sets time aside each quarter for customer meetings. She opens her calendar and lets members hop on calls to tell her exactly what they need.
Even if you can’t meet with every single member, meeting with just a few can give you key insights into what your customers want from your membership program and from you.
Meetings like these are also critical for customer satisfaction. Make sure that anyone who’s feeling lost, disgruntled, or thinking about leaving has a clear method to communicate their concerns to you.
Find a time that works for your members by sending them a poll or survey where they can let you know what times are best.. You may find that this adjusts season to season or quarter to quarter, however your membership program is set up.
Isis has an international audience so her team introduced two meeting times for her audience. While most of their meetings are around 6 pm or 7 pm, they also have meetings around 10 am or 11 am Eastern time, which is in the evening for UK members. This small change means everyone can join the meetings and have their say.
Regularly refresh your content
Updating old content is one of the most important things you can do for any online education business. When presented with noticeably old content, members will question whether you’re invested in the community or even present at all.
Worse, outdated and inaccurate info can mislead members, which definitely leads to an increased exit rate (the opposite of solid member retention).
Whether you’re producing regular blog posts, email newsletters, community posts, ebooks, or even webinars, you should have a process for refreshing them.
The content type and platform will impact how you update your content, but overall, you should aim to:
- Update facts and figures: Ensure your factual information and statistics are accurate. If new information becomes available, whether supplemental or contradictory, revise your content to accommodate the change in knowledge.
- Refresh images and graphics: While these may not need to be updated every month or even every quarter, we recommend revisiting your visual content at least every year. Often, your recording or editing style has shifted, you’ve upgraded your equipment, or even changed some of your branding.
- Address common questions: People have questions. That’s part of the business, and especially part of an online community. So, even when you’ve updated your facts and figures, members might have new questions about recent changes, trends, or industry events. Addressing these in refreshes is a great way to show you’re listening and bolster membership retention.
- Optimize for SEO: SEO best practices change constantly. So, when you refresh your content, make sure it aligns with current best practices.
- Update CTAs: Your business goals will change over time, which means what you lead your members to do will also change. Sometimes, you’ll funnel members toward a new course; other times, you’ll want to drive community engagement. Update your CTAs to support whatever your current business goals are.
Contact each member when they cancel
Like we’ve already discussed, member churn is expensive, and membership retention strategies are all about minimizing that cost as much as possible.
If someone cancels, it’s worth contacting them by phone or personalized email to ask why they left. In the business world, this is called offboarding and it’s a part of employee management.
If you were to leave your employer, they’d be interested in what made you leave. Was it the culture? The value of the space? Or something else?
The same is true for online communities.
You won’t always get the chance to interview or make contact with exiting members, but when you can, you can get some valuable insight into what’s going on in your community.
I get it. Calling every member that leaves your community sounds costly! But, if your members are paying anywhere between $350 and $5000 per year, you should certainly consider building the cost of an exit interview into your operating cost. The insights are worth it. We promise.
Continue to show up as the leader
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when it comes to membership retention is setting up their site and forgetting about it (something we briefly mentioned in tip eight in regard to personalized communication).
Many members join membership programs because they’re fans of the founder. When that founder fails to show up regularly in the community, their connection to the entire membership program fizzles out.
As Katherine explains, the biggest goal is to show your members you care about them: “You care about their journey, and they’re not just a dollar sign to you. They are a person, somebody you want to help transform. They’ll remember that.”
If you’re looking for membership retention strategies that work, this is a big one. Put in the work, turn up for your members, and you’ll convince them to stay a part of your community.
Membership retention example: Fitness Protection
MK Fleming, the founder of Fitness Protection, an online coaching program for non-elite runners, is a great example of this membership retention strategy in action.
MK is hugely passionate about changing the lives of people of all fitness levels by giving them the kind of training that won’t lead to burnout and will keep them fit year-round.
Despite the fact that she recruited brilliant coaches to serve all of her individual coaching programs, her job is still to hold the space for inspiration and radical self-acceptance.
When MK got busy in the summer of 2020 as an advocate in her local community, her presence was missed inside Fitness Protection. Her members noticed the absence and some of them began to cancel. It wasn’t normal attrition – she lost tons of members after historically having VERY little churn.
As soon as the effects became clear, she made sure to prioritize showing up for her members and offering her personal insights and guidance. While she doesn’t run every aspect of her subscription program, she always makes sure to be there for her members.
3 Membership retention best practices
We’ve looked at membership retention strategies – but what about membership retention best practices. Here are Isis and Katherine’s top membership retention best practices to make sure your members have no reason to leave you.
Know who your target member is
The key to any good membership retention strategy is to know your target member.
Know who you’re speaking to when you post on your membership site, who you want to help, who your services are catered to and more, that group of people will feel like you are taking the words right out of their mouth.
Retaining members is about giving them the content they need and crave. If you can get clear on who your ideal member is, you can target your content and your marketing to that audience.
Think about the questions they have, their objectives when becoming members and what they want to gain from this experience. This is the number one membership retention best practice to remember.
Automate key membership tasks
As your membership grows, it’s important to automate key membership tasks wherever you can. This will free up your time and give your members the best possible experience – helping to encourage them to stay an active part of your community.
Here are two tools Katherine recommends.
Zapier
Zapier is Katherine’s favorite automation tool to save time and energy in managing her membership program. Zapier has thousands of app integrations you can use, including slack notifications when a new enrollment occurs, so you’ll immediately know when someone’s signed up. You can also automatically subscribe new members to your email list. Zapier even lets you automate community area posts.
By automating these processes, you can free up your time and save money on a virtual assistant. It’s all happening behind the scenes with minimal input or effort from you.
GroupLeads
If you have a Facebook group, Katherine recommends GroupLeads for Facebook group automation. GroupLeads lets you manage everyone who’s coming into your membership space. It also gives you automatic group member approval so you can make sure that everybody who signed up for your membership is granted access to your Facebook group. It also stops you getting people in your group who haven’t paid for the membership.
These tools can help to make your membership program management more efficient – and let you focus on showing up for your members rather than getting bogged down in admin and time-consuming tasks.
Show them love
The best thing you can do for your membership is to care about them.
Listen to their concerns, make an impact in their lives and give them the tools they need to succeed.
As Isis says, “When you’re operating out of love, that means you’re also operating out of respect.”
If you’re going to start a membership or if you have a membership right now, ask yourself how you can do more for your members. Help them feel like more than just a number on a page or dollars in your bank account.
If you can show your members that you genuinely care about them and are rooting for them to succeed, they’re going to stay in your membership program for longer – and probably recommend their friends too.
Find the membership retention strategies that work for you
Growing your membership site without a retention strategy is sort of like filling a bucket with water that has holes in it.
Finding new members is half the battle when it comes to growing your membership site. A solid membership retention strategy will help you grow your bucket of members by keeping the ones you have.
This blog was originally published in June 2020, it’s since been updated in June 2024.
