Welcome to the third ‘edition’ of the Membership Toolkit – a monthly round-up of our favourite tools, tech and teachings for online membership owners.
Every month we highlight everything from plugins and platforms to software and services, books and blogs to courses and conferences; giving you our top recommendations for what will help you and your membership business.
This month’s recommendations include a tool that gives you complete control over the look and feel of your WordPress site, a nifty service for repurposing podcast and video content, a very powerful plugin for turning your WordPress admin into a CRM and our favourite tool for creating marketing images.
Read More
On this episode of Behind the Membership, George Reid is talking all about his membership site for Amazon based businesses, the LaunchPod Academy.
George started the membership 15 months ago after originally working for Amazon in the UK and then creating an Amazon agency. Over the last year, the membership has become the main focus of his business though, now accounting for 80% of his revenue.
One of the things George is most passionate about is ensuring he is giving his members the best experience and making his membership as ‘sticky’ as possible, meaning his retention, even for annual renewals, is great.
In this episode, we’re talking all about how George originally started the membership with his brother but is now flying solo, how he is utilising guest experts for creating content, and some of the new strategies he’s trying to improve his retention even further.
Read More
When assessing how engaged their membership community is, most people tend to focus on the number of posts and comments they rack up.
But activity and engagement are not the same thing!
This is what trips people up – they think that more activity (posts, comments, replies, etc.) equate to higher and better engagement.
More often than not, that is not the case.
Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to community engagement.
So you need to think about your Signal v Noise ratio…
Read More
Caryn Liles from the Centre of Canine Education is this weeks guest on Behind the Membership, and while her membership is only a few months old she is a great example of what’s possible with memberships, even when you have to launch quickly and in a market that you may not think is a fit for online training. Because when COVID-19 first hit earlier this year, Caryn could have easily thought the worst when she had to close her brick-and-mortar dog training business down overnight.
Instead, she chose to pivot quickly to an online membership model for both her existing clients and a wider audience as well. And it’s been such a success that she isn’t even sure if she’ll open up her physical business again.
In just a few months having a membership has quite literally been life-changing for Caryn, giving her more time, less stress and a better work-life balance than she ever thought possible.
Listen in to hear all about her journey so far.
Read More
Member retention is critical to the long-term success of your membership website.
It costs 7-10 times more on average to win a new member than it does to hold on to an existing one; and if you’re losing more members than you bring in then your business won’t last long!
In this article, we’re giving you 21 quick tips for improvements you can make to your membership strategy in order to improve your member retention.
Read More
Today’s guest on Behind The Membership is Steve Pavlina, a prolific name in the personal growth space and owner of the Conscious Growth Club.
Steve actually has a bit of a different membership model to most you’ll hear on this podcast, offering a 12-month membership at a price point of $1997. He also only launches the membership once a year, so his membership is small and intimate by design.
Steve shares some great insights into why he picked this model and why it’s worked well for his audience and the kind of results he helps his members to achieve.
Steve has really fine-tuned who his membership is for and isn’t afraid to remove those that aren’t a good fit, realising that alignment and attracting the right members is absolutely key for the kind of community that he is creating.
Listen in to hear how going to Disneyland every day for 30 days was what inspired Steve to first start his membership, how 30-day challenges work for his membership community, and how his low-key five-day launches bring him six figures, allowing him to focus on his members for the other 360 days of the year. Plus, of course, much more!
Read More
Every industry, topic and niche has its fair share of jargon.
And memberships are no different.
There’s already so much to juggle as a membership site owner, so the last thing you want to have to worry about is needing to wrap your head around all of the lingo!
So to make it easier for you, we’ve rounded up the 9 key terms and phrases you need to know if you run a membership.
Read More
Warren McPherson from Piano Lesson with Warren joins Callie for this episode of Behind the Membership.
Warren’s membership focuses entirely on teaching people how to play gospel piano, and he transitioned to a membership model after first selling low-cost courses. As you’ll hear though, the initial transition wasn’t smooth, with Warren quickly realising a successful membership isn’t just about putting everything behind a paywall.
In this episode you’ll hear how Warren made that course to membership transition and how he is working to combat the challenge of retention, including how making one particular change cut his churn rate by an impressive 8%.
We’re also talking about why he wishes he’d grown his team earlier and how he has played the long game when it comes to audience growth, allowing him to now attract 50-100 new members a month just through content marketing.
And even though Warren’s membership is still just a couple of years old it has allowed him to work less and his wife to leave her job so that they can both spend more time with their young son. They’re even moving to a new state, something that didn’t seem like a simple idea for them before the membership.
Listen in for all this and more!
Read More
Facebook remarketing is one of the most exciting developments in online advertising in recent years.
Now, instead of being limited to picking demographics and targeting options that we think relate to our target audience; we can actually leverage actual user behaviour to determine which ads they are shown.
When it comes to membership sites, there are 6 key ways in which you can really leverage Facebook remarketing…
Read More
Running a membership site is a juggling act.
There’s a seemingly never-ending list of things to keep on top of; and with much of the focus revolving around things like producing content and marketing to bring in new members it’s easy to see why some of the basics get missed.
However it’s often the relatively minor day to day activities that have the real impact on how successful a membership site is.
Discover the 4 activities you should make sure you’re doing each and every day in your membership…
Read More
Social proof is a powerful, persuasive factor when it comes to making buying decisions.
If we see others behaving in a particular way, buying a product or, say, joining a membership site; then we’re far more inclined to follow suit.
More and more, customers are basing their buying decisions on what other people recommend, rather than promotions, discounts and other sales tactics.
Check out the 7 ways that you can add social proof to your membership sales page.
Read More
Welcome to the second ‘edition’ of the Membership Toolkit – a monthly round-up of our favourite tools, tech and teachings for online membership owners.
Every month we’re highlighting everything from plugins and platforms to software and services, books and blogs to courses and conferences; giving you our top recommendations for what will help you and your membership business.
This month’s recommendations include our new podcast hosting provider, a fast and reliable transcription service, a nifty tool for adding filtering options to your content, and a very cool way of getting feedback from your members.
Read More
Memberships are a marathon, not a sprint.
Unlike other products where the sale is the end of the journey, with memberships it’s just the beginning.
That “journey” – the Member Lifeycle – typically breaks down into 5 key stages: acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention and reactivation.
In this article, we’re looking at each of these 5 stages and what they mean for you as a membership website owner.
Read More
Choosing the right membership plugin is a task that’s easier said than done.
There is no “one size fits all” best membership plugin for every situation, and so the process of deciding which to go with involves identifying your specific needs and then narrowing down the options; however making the final choice often requires you to dive deeper.
To help you be sure you’re making the right choice, here are 8 questions you should ask before you purchase your membership plugin.
Read More
Email automation can massively power up the marketing of your membership site or online course; enabling you to trigger various different actions and email sequences according to how your leads and your customers behave.
Here are 4 automation sequences that will help beef up your email marketing.
Read More
Live content is a great way of delivering ongoing value to your membership without the level of upfront work and other hassles that typically go into producing courses, tutorials or other types of “pre-made” content.
However including this type of content in your membership does add a new wrinkle to worry about – member attendance.
If the turnout for your live membership calls is low, this can directly affect the quality of what you’re producing; not to mention being demoralizing to you and possibly even be discouraging for other members who may interpret poor attendance as a sign of a disengaged community.
In this article, I look at the top 9 ways that you can increase live call attendance…
Read More
