5 Membership Retention Strategies For Online Coaches
Losing members from your membership site sucks! When this happens, you must look at your membership retention strategies or lack of them!
Hi Trish Davies, to talk about membership sites and how to implement membership retention strategies. The membership site and subscription business model is somewhat of a holy grail for online business owners.
You can pretty well run a membership site for any niche. Membership sites are incredibly attractive because they set themselves apart from more traditional business models. If your business relies on one time transactions it means that you start the month off at zero.
Nothing is guaranteed, particularly sales coming into your business. This means you must be on point with your marketing and advertising to constantly bring in new customers to your business.
Membership sites however work differently. The marketing and advertising you did to bring the customer in is a one time task that keeps generating revenue. Therefore, however members you have that pay a specific amount is guaranteed income from the first of the month.
For example, if you have 100 members paying you $97 per month you know your revenue will be at least $9700. That’s why membership sites work so well. I say that with one caveat though which is that your objective is to keep those members onboard.
This is called retention and here is sometimes where the problems lay and what you want to address. Members do leave at some point, that is life, but you want to keep them for as long as possible. This is called churn rate and you want to keep that to a minimum.
Membership Retention Strategies To Reduce The Churn Rate
Before I reveal 5 powerful membership retention strategies I want to focus a bit more on this churn rate. Keeping the metric of 100 members let’s look at how this works. I have done some research and the common acceptable churn rate is between 5% – 20%.
That means a range of 5 – 20 members leaving that you will have to relace to keep to that magic 100. Now these are just example figures, you want to get as many members as you can, but this number is easier for example purposes.
As I have said before your marketing expense is gaining the customer in the first place. Therefore, you should expect that you will need to continue with that marketing to cover any people who jump ship.
If you are running at the 5% mark then you are already doing very well retaining your members. With that said there is still room for improvement. If you are running near the 20% mark then it means you are constantly working hard to replace those leaving members. Time and money that could be spent elsewhere if the problem weren’t there. Either scenario will benefit from the membership retention strategies that I am about to share.
Membership Retention Strategies Starts With Providing Transformation
I talk about the transformational process you want to give members within my Build Your AU programs. More details can be found here. Most of my members are creating highly valuable online coaching programs that gives a transformational experience for the customer. The customer has a goal in mind and that is what you must deliver on.
Your membership program must deliver that buyer goal and then go on further to offer additional support. Now that additional support comes in a number of different ways that I encourage you to incorporate into your membership program. They are a follows.
- Education
- Coaching
- Community
The education comes from your initial course or program structure that is always there for reference. However, you continually want to add educational resources for your members to keep things fresh and up to date.
Coaching gives them access to real time mentorship with you. For example, a weekly mastermind where members can have direct access with you in a group environment.
The community aspect speaks for itself. If you provide a community forum within your membership site it gives your members a place to hang out and interact with other members.
Drill Down On Your Niche
At first your niche may be quite broad but by drilling down it becomes more relevant. I have been involved with the online business education niche for many years so I will use this niche as an example.
The online business education and home business industry appeals to a wide spectrum of people. I have seen anything from teenagers to people in their twilight years looking for education on how to work from home. They are looking for solutions to become financially self-sufficient.
Now for example say you were a from the baby boomer generation who were born between 1946 & 1964. You could easily drill down and attract people of that generation to help generate more income to enjoy their own twilight years. The content you could create would be hyper specific and targeted to that audience.
Another example could be if you were a person who has just graduated from university. You could address the pain points of student debt and the lack of career opportunities as a reason to maybe look at working from home.
You can see the point I am making in both examples and the benefits in drilling down on your audience and niche.
Make Your Onboarding Experience Memorable
You have one chance to make a great first impression! How you welcome people into your membership site will set the landscape and dynamics for the future. I recommend you have a welcome video on the home page of their membership portal.
Also give them clear instructions on how to find and how to use the material within your membership program. There is nothing worse than making it hard for your members to understand what is going on. You don’t want them scratching around and trying to work out just what to do.
Ultimately you want to deliver a great user experience!
Provide A Roadmap
A roadmap or customer journey is what you must create. Everything must make sense and be up to date. You want people to stay members for years so you must create content that keeps delivering on the promise you made initially.
You must get in the mind of your members to gain clarity on what they want and when. Then create and deliver, it is a simple as that.
Always Show Up
Many course and program creators treat their membership sites as a set and forget platform. That may have worked a few years ago but not anymore. To retain members, you must be front of house yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Make sure you keep showing up and lead your membership community. This is something that I constantly do with my Build Your AU program. Each week I host a live mastermind and during the week I am constantly in the community groups that I have created.
You must create regular content, videos, blogs and share that content within your groups and membership site. Interact and engage with what your members are posting so they know you are with them and you have their back.
Whatever kind of membership site you have these 5 membership retention strategies will work. Implement all of them to make sure that your members stay with you as long as possible. Every customer has a lifetime value, but your objective is to make that value as large as possible. The more you give the more your will receive!
Helping you build your authenticity, authority and audience.
Trish Davies
Build Your AU
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