21 Quick Tips For Improving Member Retention

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.

Aligning Your Members to Your Vision with Steve Pavlina

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!

9 Key Terms Every Membership Site Owner Should Know

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.

More Time, More Freedom, More Income with Warren Mcpherson

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!

Facebook Remarketing Strategies for Membership Websites

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…

4 Things Membership Site Owners Should Be Doing Every Day

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…

7 Ways to Add Social Proof to Your Membership Sales Page

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.

Membership Toolkit: Rev, Captivate, FacetWP and VideoAsk [July 2020]

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.

The 5 Key Stages of the Member Lifecycle

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.

8 Questions to Ask Before Purchasing Your Membership Plugin

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.

4 Essential Email Automations Every Membership Website Needs

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.

9 Ways to Increase Attendance for your Live Membership Calls

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…

Membership Toolkit: Descript, WP Fusion, Ecamm Live and The Forever Transaction [June 2020]

Welcome to the first ‘edition’ of the Membership Toolkit – a monthly round-up of our favourite tools, tech and teachings for online membership owners.

Each and every month we’ll be 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.

So, let’s dive in with the very first Membership Toolkit recommendations for June 2020…

Why Every Membership Owner Needs to Focus on Improving their Content

Members join for the content, but they stay for the community.

While anecdotal, this trend can often be observed in memberships of all shapes and sizes.

However while the community aspect of most memberships is the glue that holds things together, that certainly doesn’t mean you can slouch when it comes to creating content.

Tips and Tricks for Increasing your Membership Sales

Sales is not a dirty word – it’s the lifeblood of membership sites! If you want to have a successful membership, you’re going to need to recruit some members.

How do you recruit members?

By selling your product to them. It’s as simple as that!

Even if you hate the idea of selling, it’s essential if you want to grow your membership.

So, we’ve put together some tips and tricks that will help you boost your membership sales in a way that even the most sales-shy people can stomach.

Read on for five of our favorite tactics and strategies that can push your membership sales upwards.

6 Areas to Focus on When Scaling Your Membership Business

In the early days of running your membership, you’ll find yourself preoccupied with the day to day, short-term stuff.

How many new members did we get this week? Have we had any cancellations? Do I have enough time to get this new piece of content out to members?

However once things have settled and stabilised then it’s time to think bigger in terms of how you’re going to scale and grow your membership over the long term.

When that time inevitably arrives, here are the 6 key areas you’ll need to focus on…