Using Member Round-Up Emails To Increase Engagement

As a membership site owner it’s easy to tie yourself in knots trying to come up with the best ways to get your members to engage with your site, your content, and your community.

From fancy progress tracking to complex loyalty schemes; laborious member outreach programs through to advanced gamification systems.

However it can be easy to forget that often some of the less glamorous methods of engagement are the most effective.

In this article, we look at one of our favourite tactics for member communication, engagement and retention – the humble “member roundup email”.

Breaking Down the 6 Different Types of Membership Launch

When people think about launching a membership, they think about the day that they finally open their doors for the very first time and welcome their first crop of new members.

It’s a big deal!

However that grand opening isn’t the only opportunity you have to launch…

In fact there are 6 different types of launches that can come into play at various stages of your membership journey…

How To Change Membership Platform After You’ve Launched

Have you launched your membership and then found yourself regretting your choice of technology that runs your website?

Or maybe you haven’t yet launched but you live in fear of that turning out to be your reality.

If you’ve gone through the process of researching membership platforms and plugins, you’ll know how stressful it can be.

Once your membership is already up and running, it can be tricky to switch out to a completely different tech solution.

It’s little wonder that people have a lot of anxiety about deciding on which platform or plugin is right for them.

However if you have found yourself in a position where changing your membership platform is a must – here is everything you need to know to make things go smoothly…

Busting The Most Common Membership Marketing Myths

Can you tell the difference between good marketing advice and bad marketing advice?

There’s a lot of info out there about marketing your membership, but in the world of online business unfortunately a lot of it is unhelpful noise at best, and at worst, could be damaging to your reputation.

Many of us have learnt the hard way to stay away from marketers who try and sell you their secret shortcut or silver bullet, however, some of these myths are so common, they’re almost believed to be the industry standard of membership marketing.

So, how do we avoid the nonsense?

I’ve rounded up the six most common membership marketing myths, and how you can avoid them…

Doubling Your Member Base During a Pandemic with Katie Wardrobe

Katie Wardrobe from Midnight Music, a membership specialising in helping music teachers with technology, is the final guest for season four of Behind the Membership.

Midnight Music has been running for 4 years now and while it has always been successful, Katie has managed to nearly double her member base during the current pandemic, even though she has actually been focused on providing more free content and resources for her audience during this time.

In this episode we talk about how Katie has started providing her previous member only webinars for free each month, attracting thousands of attendees each time, her experiments with creating live courses to keep members engaged and boost sales, and why she reduced her price during the pandemic.

We also talk about the increased challenges involved when schools are paying for a teachers membership, how Katie engages her members by answering forum questions via video, hiring a content manager to keep her free content on track and much, much more!

Advanced Membership Pricing Tips & Tactics

Membership pricing is trickier than it seems.

It’s hard enough just getting the price of your monthly subscription right; but what about more complicated pricing scenarios?

Promotions, discounts, multiple membership tiers – before you know it, you’re banging your head on your desk, desperately trying to figure out what your pricing strategy should be.

Never fear! Here are my top tips and tactics to help you with advanced membership pricing…

Membership Toolkit: Live Streaming Edition [October 2020]

In this installment of the Membership Toolkit, we’re doing things a little differently…

While usually the Toolkit is a roundup of a 3-4 top recommendations for various tools to help you in your membership; we’re dedicating this month’s edition to breaking down the setup we use for live video streaming.

Creating a High Level Coaching Membership with Coach Pamela Mitchell

Pamela Mitchell has been a professional coach since 2003, with a focus on helping people to reinvent their careers so that they can live a life that they love. When demand for her services became too high, she decided to launch a membership offering – the Reinvention Launch Club – in order to help more people.

It wasn’t all plain sailing though and in this episode Coach Pamela discusses the mindset shifts that needed to happen for her to be able to move from creating a more traditional content focused and high volume membership to a smaller, more curated and intimate experience where the focus is on individual and group coaching.

We also talk about how Pamela makes use of associate coaches to provide a more one-to-one experience for her members without needing to spend all of her own time coaching, the challenge of finding your own path and being clear on what you enjoy and what’s going to give your members the best results when creating your membership model, and the quest to find the perfect community solution.

Plus lots more!

5 Ways to Encourage Discussion in Your Membership Community

Is your membership community a ghost town?

Are you constantly banging your head against a wall trying to figure out ways to get your members to actually converse with each other?

It’s been said many times before – people come for the content but they stay for the community.

However, establishing an active, thriving community inside your membership is easier said than done.

Here are our top tips for getting the conversations flowing…

Setting Ambitious Goals for Your Membership with John Michaloudis

John Michaloudis from MyExcelOnline, a membership which helps people to become Excel experts, is this week’s guest on Behind the Membership. 

John started his membership just two years ago after growing tired of running course launches, and with 1600 members is already a third of the way to his goal of making $100,000 per month with the membership. 

In this episode John is talking all about how he is using evergreen webinars with fast action bonuses to make sales every day, and how email marketing and Facebook ads also contribute to his sales. 

John also shares how moving from a Facebook group to a forum for his community is one of the best things he’s done, and how John isn’t actually the person answering members questions in his community. 

Plus we talk all about the benefits of adding things like Trustpilot reviews to a sales process, creating a business you can take 6 months away from and how member success stories make all the work worthwhile.

And of course, much more!

Celebrating the 5th Anniversary of Membership Academy

Wow… 5 years of Membership Academy!

And what a rollercoaster ride our fifth year has been.

Listen in as Callie and I recap the highs and lows of the past 12 months of Membership Academy, and look ahead to what’s in store in the next year and beyond.

Creating a Custom Web App for Your Members with Marisha Mets

Marisha Mets from SLP Now, a membership for speech language practitioners, is this week’s guest on Behind the Membership. 

SLP Now has been running for over four years and over that time has evolved from a simple membership to a full web app offering thousands of practitioners teaching resources and even their own CRM and case tools.

In this episode Marisha talks all about how she went from creating resources for her own use to launching a hugely successful membership and the challenges she’s had along the way, including learning how to manage her time effectively and finding the right developers to create her app.

We also talk about the benefits of starting simple, and how a membership has helped give Marisha more freedom and flexibility, particularly when faced with health challenges. Plus how running a twice yearly online summit works well for attracting new members, and how she utilises tools like Net Promoter Scores and Intercom to get feedback from members and provide additional support. 

Plus much more!

How to Start Building an Audience for Your Membership Site

Building an audience is essential to the success of your membership.

After all if you have no audience to speak of, then who are you going to sell to? Where are your members going to come from?

“Build it and they will come” is, unfortunately, a myth – so you need to invest time in growing your own audience in terms of your email subscribers, website visits, podcast listeners, social followers and, of course, paying members.

But where do you start? How do you actually find your audience?

Adding a Membership to a Successful Manufacturing Business with Felicia Lo

Felicia Lo from School of Sweet Georgia, a membership site for fibre artists, is this week’s guest on Behind the Membership. 

Felicia first started her blog way back in 2004 and her physical business manufacturing beautiful hand dyed yarns, Sweet Georgia Yarns, in 2005. Over the years Felicia has also taught classes for companies like Craftsy, written a book, and run a yarn based subscription box, so by the time she started her membership School of SweetGeorgia in 2017 she already had a huge amount of experience in her market.

In this episode, we’re talking all about how Felicia is able to run the membership site alongside her well established physical business, and how having the two overlapping, but still separate, sides of the business works well for her and gives her more flexibility and stability.

We also talk about how Felicia used Patreon for her initial idea validation, which gave her the incentive and accountability to create her full membership site. And we talk about the team she has helping her to keep both businesses thriving, plus how she focuses on YouTube for attracting new members, her plans for bringing guest teachers to her in-person studio to record courses, and much, much more besides.

How to Set Boundaries with your Members

One of the more challenging changes that comes with moving to the membership model is dealing with the increase in how many people are contacting you and vying for your attention.

Supporting hundreds or thousands of members can certainly take its toll and becoming uncontrollable without procedures and a solid approach for dealing with handling communication.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast I talk about how you can set boundaries and expectations in order to ensure your membership remains manageable.

Staying Consistent as a One-Man Band with Warwick Brown

On today’s episode on Behind the Membership Callie is talking with Warwick Brown who runs the KAM Club, a membership site for key account managers which has been running for around nine months. 

Hear all about how Warwick came to start the KAM Club and how he utilised existing resources, like his previously free blog content, to get him started much quicker – although he still put off launching the membership for a long time!

Warwick also talks about the challenge of consistency, particularly when it comes to content creation, and how finding a way to link his free and paid content together has made his life so much easier.

And discusses finding time to do everything when running a membership site solo, how Warwick provides a lot of personal support in his membership site, from 30-minute welcome calls, to personal videos and check-in messages, despite it being low cost. And how, despite quitting his high salary job, and not yet making the same amount with his membership, he couldn’t be happier. 

Plus, of course, much, much more!