6 Best Practices for Membership Retention |
Anyone who has set up a membership-based business, and they will say that attracting more members can be something that they consider... A lot! It's not easy to convince people to show up, spend their hard-earned cash each month, and commit themselves to learning and growing.
Do you know what can be soul-destroying? Doing the hard work required to build your community, cultivating leads, and increasing the value of your business, then signing those members, and then watching them go a short time later.
There is no need to make it as this! It is possible to create an environment that continues to provide advantages to members in order that they stick around long term. In this article, we'll talk about various best practices for member retention that you can put to work this week.
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The article
1. The truth about keeping members
2.6 membership retention best practices
2.1. Make sure you know your ideal participant first
2.2. Build on the right platform
2.3. Make connections between members
2.4. Offer a membership for a pause
2.6. Request feedback
Truth about membership retention
What you need to know before we talk about how to keep your membership in good shape is that some turnover is something that happens regularly. Don't be surprised when some members leave your group, and do not take it as a personal attack. There will some who will leave. They might not be ready to embark on the adventure that you're providing. It might not be the best option for them right now. Maybe they can't afford it. Perhaps they found somewhere else to spend their time.
It's really hard as a creator not to take this personally. It's tough to not feel the rejection of members leaving. However, it does not have to be all solely about the person who is leaving. It's partially about their own personal circumstances. It's inevitable that there are people in any community who get to the point that they realize, "This is not for me right now." That's okay.
Indeed, some turnover can be a good aspect. Your community should have a clear focus, you want to choose an ideal member (which we'll talk about in the next section). If you're surrounded by a group of members who do not want the services you offer and do not engage, it can be extremely demotivating. It's probably better to let they just move on.
Therefore, the objective of retention of members is likely not to reduce your turnover (that's a fancy word for member turnover) to zero. But still, when your company is built upon monthly recurring revenues and member retention is a priority, increasing it reduces your turnover and improve your business.
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6 membership retention best practices
Make sure you know your ideal user first
One of the most effective strategies to retain members is to start before you have any members in your community. (If there are already members, it's still possible to try this! )
If you can get a razor-sharp picture of who you really want to include within your group, and communicate this vision well, the right people will sign up in the first instance. This will be a huge help to making sure that you have a long-lasting membership.
The process we teach here at that we call Community Design(tm). One of the steps in your design process is to conduct interviews with 15 to 20 potential members to find out the reasons they are struggling and the benefits they can gain from being in an online community. Even if you've started your own community, it's not too late to do the interviews, and gain more information about the type of person you want to join.
After you've completed this work, you can turn it into the kind of thing we refer to as a huge goal statement:
While the majority of suggestions for retention of members below concentrate on the next steps after you have members but doing it early will yield dividends.
Create on the correct platform
There are a ton of choices for software that can help you build your community of members; it can be a little intimidating to choose. But picking the right software is an important part of membership retention. Really good community software will be your ally in serving your members. It can make the process easier, it will let you do it at scale but most important of all, your members will be engaged!
Too many community builders have stitched the pieces of a shady technology, trying to blend a course on their website together with an Group on Facebook together with other social media sites.
Let's stop this. Select a community-oriented software program you are able to master, and adaptable enough to allow you to achieve anything you wish to do for your members.
We love online communities that are great, and we directed our passion towards creating the platform. From live streaming to the ability to download apps on every device and amazing courses, to brand-name subgroups, it's everything you require to keep members interested and, in the end, retain your members!
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Create connections between members
One of the lessons we've learned from thousands online communities is that members might sign up to attend a course or master some skill, but they nearly remain for the long haul because of the relationships. When your community becomes the spot where people gather for social connections and friendships in the event that they cannot go more than for a whole week without stopping by to meet people and when they are able to interact frequently with members of the community, you have a formula for maintaining members over time.
Although you cannot fake it, you can manufacture the conditions necessary to make it happen! Create lots of opportunities for your members to connect with each other. It can be accomplished through informal drop-in sessions, break-out rooms, group training or even by putting together content like "member spotlights. "
The more you are able to build your community, and the friendships within it one that people cannot live without and the greater chance you'll have your retention rise and your churn go down.
Give a member to pause
Have you ever thought about an extended vacation and then asked your gym if you can put your membership on hold? They're happy to allow this. Because they know that, if you cancel your membership, it will be way harder to get you back as a customer.
A strategic membership pause or hold could be an ideal solution for people who need to be out of the community for a while, however, they would like to be a part of the community for a longer period. There are plenty of different reasons why members may need to pull away from their membership it could be anything from major life events to needing to focus on an endeavor for a while, offering the option of a membership hold will allow them to stay in touch and not have to pay.
And it's so much better to ask "Would you prefer to place your membership in hold?" than to say, "Ok, bye. "
Create membership tiers
Creating different kinds of Membership bundles, or membership tiers can help in keeping your customers loyal which is an extremely well-known membership retention best practices. This is due to the fact that members can easily choose to go with the more or less they want, based on how they're feeling. If you've got an extensive package that includes daily coaching as well as a class, and someone decides it's too much, it's much wise to provide a second level of membership that they could drop to, rather than being able to cancel their membership.
Get feedback
Not the least, but certainly not the last, you should find methods to continuously seek feedback from your customers. These could include:
- 1:1 interviews
- Questionnaires or surveys
- Polls (the feature is built into every Mighty Network! )
- Interviews at the exit (offer something worthwhile to individuals who are leaving, in exchange for their candid honest)
Feedback is extremely useful in helping establish which elements are effective and what's not.
Pro tip: Take any feedback or ideas with a grain salt. It's acceptable for people to state things such as "We need to have a group or course for x" or "I'd love to see more of." Be sure to filter the comments by looking at it through your Community Design(tm) work , and then determine if this is actually an idea you should follow.
Conclusion
If you implement these member retention strategies into action and implement them, you'll be in a excellent position to not just attract members but also keep them! When your community is an essential element of your members' lives, they will stick around for a long time.
If you're not yet launching your community, or if you're in search of an alternative location for it to live, do take a look at our platform! This is the best location to create an active online community that can stand over time. You can try it free for 14 days. No need for a credit card.