Why You’re Losing Members And What You Can Do About It

Like it or not, your members won’t stick around forever, losing members is just part and parcel of operating a membership site. However there’s plenty that you can do to make sure that you’re not losing members for the wrong reasons…

How to Increase Engagement within your Membership Site

Getting someone to join your membership site is great, but it’s just the beginning.

Before you have time to celebrate, you really need to figure out how you are going to get that member to stay month after month, year after year.

Hanging on to your paying members is crucial to the long term success of your membership site; so you need to make sure that you have a strategy for keeping members engaged.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I dig into how to craft your member experience in order to develop the habits and interaction that will keep members engaged and subscribed for longer.

Why Membership Site Owners Need to Embrace Change

Great memberships are never truly finished.

That’s actually one of the best things about the membership site model. If you are writing a book, creating a course, programming your piece of software; then there’s a lot of pressure to have a polished completed end product.

But with a membership site, some of that pressure is off because people understand that they are boarding a moving train. That when they join a membership, it’s going to change, it’s going to evolve and that as members they could be a part of shaping it’s future.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I look further into why embracing change is key to the long term success of your membership site, and give examples of how adapting over time has played a role in the progress of 6 and 7 figure memberships.

How to Manage and Increase Annual Membership Renewals

Member retention is key to the long term success of a membership website; however if you offer both monthly and annual billing people often end up so focused on keeping monthly subscribers that they take annual renewals for granted.

Or worse – they assume people joining on annual plans aren’t likely to stick around beyond their first year, so they don’t even try to retain them.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast we’re focusing on how to handle annual renewals in order to increase the chance of members sticking around for years to come.

Carrie Green on Conditioning Yourself for Membership Success

As founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association, Carrie Green credits investing in personal development and conditioning herself for success as the keys to having the right mindset to grow her membership to over 4,000 members.

In this interview, we discuss how FEA came to be and the challenges Carrie faced along the way; and we also dig deeper into the strategies Carrie uses to keep members happy and continue growing her membership.

How to Use Gamification to Improve Member Engagement

Did you know that gamification can help you improve member engagement and retention in your site?

It’s a wonderful, yet often under utilized tool among membership owners…

But in recent years has gained popularity for enhancing user experiences and the effectiveness of eLearning for online courses and membership sites…

And as lifelong geeks, it’s right up our street!

So what is gamification and how can you implement it into your site?

Let’s find out…  

Taking Your Membership Offline for Increased Success

There is a lot of benefit to be had in connecting with your members offline, and you’ll often find that there comes a point in your membership when your members are actually crying out for more in-person connection, either with yourself or with others in your membership.

In this post we take a look at four different ways that you can take your membership offline and connect with your members on a deeper level.

5 Things to Consider When Adding Gamification to Your Membership Site

Gamification, the act of applying game elements and game theory to non-gaming situations, can be a great addition to many membership sites and provides a number of different benefits.

However actually adding gamification to your membership site can be a bit of a balancing act, and successful gamification requires some careful thought and planning in order to be effective for your members long term.

4 Tips For Validating That Your Membership Site Idea Will Work

When inspiration strikes and you come up with an idea for a membership website or some other product or service that you’re convinced is a winner, all too often it’s easy to get carried away in trying to make it a reality without every stopping to really examine whether your idea is actually as solid as you’re convinced it is.

Before you invest countless hours and immeasurable quantities of blood, sweat and tears into your new project, it’s highly worth taking the time to validate your big idea.

Here are my top tips for doing just that…

6 Reasons That Your Membership Website Absolutely Sucks!

Are you worried that your membership website kind of sucks? Hopefully not.

I’m sure you’ve got plenty of happy members who are giving you great feedback and showing you that your hard work is actually making a positive change in their world.

But there are unfortunately a lot of membership sites out there that do – to be frank – completely suck.

So if you’re someone who is running one of those websites, then in this episode I’m going to share some of the reasons why your membership sucks.

Are Your Long-Standing Members Actually Loyal to your Membership?

Is the fact that someone continues subscribing to your membership really a sign of loyalty?

So much of our time as membership site owners is spent trying to attract new members, and worrying about those who cancel, that it’s easy to take for granted the ones who continue paying us month after month.

We tend to assume that those members are happy, content and loyal; but quite often that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Marketing Tactics for Attracting New Members – Part Two

There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to marketing a membership website.

However there are a number of tactics and strategies that are proven to work well, or that take advantage of some of the unique elements that come with running a membership website.

In the concluding episode of a two-part podcast series, I discuss a variety of different marketing tips that you can use for your own membership in order to increase sales and have a steady stream of new members joining your site.

5 Simple Ways to Use Forms to Improve the Member Experience

Whilst you may think about using a contact form plugin such as Gravity Forms to add contact forms on your membership site, it’s actually capable of so much more than this and in fact has a whole host of powerful features and add-ons that can be used to further enhance your membership site.

Gravity Forms is actually a bit of a ‘secret weapon’ of ours when it comes to memberships, as this one plugin can form the base of so many more advanced features that provide a better experience for both you and your members.

So, here’s just a few of the ways that you could use Gravity Forms (or similar options such as Ninja Forms) to improve your membership…

Marketing Tactics for Attracting New Members – Part One

Sales are the lifeblood of a successful membership business.

While being able to hang onto those members is critical to the long term health of your site, the best retention strategy in the world is useless if you’re not bringing in members in the first place.

In the first of a two-part podcast series, I discuss a variety of different marketing tips and tactics that you can use for your own membership in order to increase sales and have a steady stream of new members joining your site.

9 Signs That You Shouldn’t Start a Membership Website

Is starting a membership the right move for you? 

This is probably not a question you’d expect me to ask…

We’re here to guide you on how to plan, build and grow a membership after all…

But we’re also realistic…

A lot of people out there will tell you that every single person can start a membership…

And that’s simply not true… 

Running a membership isn’t for everyone.

Don’t get me wrong, they can thrive in every market and for every business…

But that doesn’t mean that everyone should launch one.

There are a lot of factors to take into consideration that might mean a membership is the wrong move for you.

So if you’re still on the fence on whether or not to launch a membership website…

Or are currently asking yourself “Is this what I should be doing?”

Then we’re going to give you some clarity to help you make that decision.

Here are 9 signs that you shouldn’t start a membership…

10 Most Popular Episodes of The Membership Guys Podcast in 2016

As 2016 draws to a close, we’re in a reflective mood here at The Membership Guys HQ.

It’s been a great year for us and for many within our community; and a particular highlight has been the growth and evolution of The Membership Guys Podcast.

We’ve had the great privilege of being joined by a number of great guests, and it’s been humbling that many of our most popular episodes feature only Mike and, well, a mic!
In this special holiday edition of the show, I’m counting down the 10 most popular episodes according to download numbers during 2016, and revisiting some of the biggest gems and value-bombs from them all.