6 Best Practices in Membership Retention |
Anyone who has established a membership company and they will admit that recruiting the new customers is something they think about... often! It can be intimidating trying to get individuals to come in to spend their hard-earned dollars every month, and actually take the time to learn and expanding.
What really causes soul damage? Doing the hard work required in building your community creating leads and increasing their worth, only to sign up the members you want to join, only to watch them leave just a few minutes later.
There is no need to make it like this! There is a way to build a community that keeps giving benefits to the members so that they stick around long term. In this article we'll go over some of the best methods to retain members 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. Created on the correct platform
2.3. Make connections between members
2.6. Get feedback
The truth about membership retention
The truth that you MUST understand prior to discussing membership retention best practices is that there will be some turnover. a normal thing. Be prepared for when people leave your community, and avoid taking it personal. There are going to some who will quit. They might not be ready to take on the challenge the offer. It might not be the best option suitable for them at the moment. Maybe they can't afford it. And yes, maybe they have found a better way to enjoy their time.
It's hard for an artist to not be a victim. It's hard not to feel the rejection of the members who leave. But ultimately, turnover does not have to be all just about the person who is leaving. It's in part about them. It's inevitable that there are individuals in every community that come to the point where they realize, "This is not for me right now." That's okay.
Indeed, some turnover can be a good factor. You want your community to have a clear focus, you want to choose an ideal person (which we'll discuss in the next section). If you're dealing with a lot of members who do not want the services you offer and do not take part, it's really discouraging. The best thing to do is let those people just go elsewhere.
Therefore, the objective of member retention may not be to bring your turnover (that's a fancy word for turnover among members) to zero. But still, when your business's success is dependent on monthly revenue recurring, increasing your member retention will lower your churn and help improve the performance of your business.
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6 membership retention best practices
Clarify your ideal member first
One of the best strategies for member retention can start even before you've had any members in your community. (If there are already members, it's still possible to try this! )
If you can get an accurate idea of what you really want to include in your community, and effectively communicate that vision, the right people will join in the first place. This will go a long way towards maintaining a high level of membership.
We offer a method of instruction which we refer to as Community Design(tm). One of the steps in your design process will be to interview 15 to 20 potential members in order to discover what their pain points are and the benefits they can get from joining a community. Even if you've established your community, it's never too late to do these interviews and get a clearer picture of who your ideal member is.
Once you have done this work, you can transform it into what we call a big goal statement:
While the majority of strategies for retention of your members here focus on the process after the members are enrolled, doing this in the beginning will reap dividends.
Build on the right platform
There are a ton of software options for building your community of members and it's a little intimidating to choose. However, choosing the best software is an important part of membership retention. Really good community software is your best friend in serving your members. It will make it easier to manage your community, let you manage it in a way that is scalable and, most is that your members will be engaged!
Many community builders are stitching with five bits of an obscure technology to try and blend a course on their website along with the Facebook group together with other social media networks.
Stop this. Choose community software which you're able to use and that's flexible enough to let you do anything you could ever need to offer your membership.
We love online communities that are great We channeled this love into creating the platform. From live streaming to the ability to download apps on every device and amazing courses, to brand-name subgroups, it's got everything you need to keep members interested and, in the end, keep them!
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Make connections between members
One thing we've learned from thousands online communities is that people may sign up to take an online course or learn some skill, but they nearly remain for the long haul because of the relationships. When your community is the one which people turn to 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 interact regularly with other members and have an established formula for maintaining members over time.
Although you cannot fake it however, you can create the conditions to make it take place! Provide plenty of occasions for your employees to meet each other. You can do this via informal drop-in sessions groups coaching, breakout spaces, or even by putting together content like "member spotlights. "
The more you are able to create a community that makes the relationships within it one that people cannot live without and the greater chance you'll see your retention go up and your churn drop.
Give a member for a pause
Did you think of planning a long-term vacation and asked your gym if you would be able to put your membership hold? They're happy to allow the thing. Since they are aware that if you cancel your subscription, it'll make it much more difficult to bring your back as a client.
The option of offering a strategically-planned membership pause or hold could be an ideal solution for those who have to get out of the club for a period of time however, they would like to stay long-term. Although there are lots of different reasons why people might need to step off their memberships, it could be anything from major life events to having to work on a project for a while, offering a membership pause will allow them to stay in touch without paying.
And it's so much better to inquire "Would you like to put your membership in hold?" rather than saying, "Ok, bye. "
Create membership tiers
Creating different kinds of membership bundles or membership tiers can help in keeping your customers loyal and make it an extremely recognized methods for retention of members. The reason for this is that the members are able to opt for more or less, depending the way they feel. If you're offering a comprehensive package that includes regular coaching sessions and courses that someone finds too much, it's much better to have a different level of membership that they could drop to, rather than being able to cancel their membership.
Get feedback
Last, but definitely not last, you should find methods to continuously get feedback from your members. These could include:
- 1:1 interviews
- Questionnaires or surveys
- Polls (the function is integrated into each Mighty Network! )
- Exit interviews (offer something of value to people leaving in exchange for candid honest)
Feedback can be super useful in helping determine what's working and what isn't.
Tips: Treat any feedback or ideas with a grain salt. It's normal to hear things such as "We should have a course/group to do X" or "I'd love to see more of." You should filter your comments using the lens of your community Design(tm) project and figure out if it's actually an idea you should be following.
Conclusion
If you put these membership retention tips into practice, you'll be in a good position to not only gain members, but to keep them! And once your community becomes an integral part for your members They'll stay for quite a while.
If you've not yet started your online community, or you're in search of an alternative location for it to live, do take a look at our platform! This is the ideal platform to develop an interactive online community that stands the test of the test of time. You can try it free for 14 days with no credit card needed.