6 Best Practices in Membership Retention |
If you ask anyone who has established a membership company and they'll tell you that getting new members is something that they think about... often! It can be intimidating trying to get members to attend to spend their hard-earned dollars every month, and actually engage in learning and growing.
But do you know what can be soul-destroying? Working hard to create your community, nurturing leads and growing value, and signing up for members but then seeing them depart within a matter of minutes.
There is no need to make it such a thing! There is a way to build an organization that continually offers rewards to its members to ensure they remain loyal for the in the long run. In this article, we'll talk about some of the best practices for member retention that you could implement this week.
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This 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. Built on the appropriate platform
2.3. Make connections between members
2.4. Give a member pause
2.6. Get feedback
Truth about member retention
The fact that you must be aware of prior to discussing the best ways to retain members is that some turnover is an inevitable thing. Do not be shocked when people leave your community, and definitely don't take it personally. There are going to some who will quit. Perhaps they're not prepared to take on the challenge that you're providing. It might not be the best option appropriate for them now. Maybe they can't afford it. And yes, maybe they found somewhere else to spend their time.
It's extremely difficult as a creator not to be a victim. It's difficult not to get a sense of the disappointment that comes from people leaving. In the end, however, turnover isn't always just about the person who is leaving. It's partially about them. There will be those in any society who get to the point that they realize, "This is not for me at this moment." That's okay.
Actually, some changes can be a great aspect. If you want your group to focus on a single focus, you want to choose an ideal member (which we'll discuss further down). If you're dealing with a lot of people who don't want the services you offer and do not engage, it can be very demotivating. It's probably better to let these people simply move elsewhere.
So the goal with member retention may not be to bring your turnover (that's an abbreviation for turnover among members) to zero. However, if your business's success is dependent upon monthly recurring revenues growing your retention of members can lower your churn rate and improve your business.
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6 membership retention best practices
Find out your ideal member first
One of the best methods for retaining members can begin even before you've had any community members. (If there are already members, it's still possible to try this! )
If you can get an accurate picture of the people you actually want to be in your community and effectively communicate that vision and effectively, then the people you want to attract will join in the first place. It can be a huge help to maintaining a high level of membership.
We offer a method of instruction in our school that we refer to as Community Design(tm). One of the steps in your design process involves a series of interviews with up or 20 prospective members in order to find out the reasons they are struggling and what they could gain from being in a community. Even if you have already established your community, it's never too late to do these kinds of interviews to get a clearer picture of what your ideal members are.
After you've completed this work, you can transform it into the kind of thing we refer to as a huge purpose statement:
Though the majority of suggestions for retention of members below concentrate on the process after the members are enrolled making this decision in the beginning will reap dividends.
Create on the correct platform
There's an abundance of choices for software that can help you build your membership community; it can be an overwhelming task to select. But picking the right software is essential to keeping members. The best community software will be your ally in serving your members. It can make the process easier, it will let you achieve it on a larger scale, and most importantly of all, your customers will take part in it!
Too many community builders stitch together five pieces of obscure technology and are trying to combine an online course along with an Facebook group with other social media platforms.
Let's stop this. Select a community-oriented software program you are able to master, and capable of letting you achieve anything you 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 everything you need to keep your members engaged and, ultimately, to retain your members!
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Make connections between members
One of the lessons we've learned from thousands online communities is that members might sign up to attend courses or to master something, but they almost remain for the long haul due to the connections. If your community becomes the spot that people go to for friendships and connections, in the event that they cannot go more than for a whole week without stopping by to meet people and they regularly interact with other members it's a formula for maintaining members over time.
While you can't fake this but you can make conditions that will allow it to happen! Make sure you provide plenty of opportunities for your members to get together. You can do this via informal drop-in sessions break-out rooms, group training, or even by putting together content like "member spotlights. "
The more you are able to create a community that makes the relationships within it an essential part of life for people The more you'll see your retention go up and your churn go down.
Provide a membership to pause
Have you ever thought about a long-term vacation and have you asked your gym if they can put your membership on hold? They're delighted to grant this. Because they know that, when you decide to cancel your subscription, it'll be way harder to get you back as a customer.
The option of offering a deliberate membership pause could be an ideal solution for people who need to be out of the community for a time, but would ultimately like to be a part of the community for a longer period. Although there are lots of different reasons why individuals might have to take a step away from their membership it could be anything from major life events to having to work on an endeavor for a while, offering an opportunity to pause their membership allows them to remain connected, without paying.
It's much more effective to simply ask "Would you prefer to place your membership in hold?" rather than saying, "Ok, bye. "
Create membership tiers
Creating different kinds of membership packages or membership tiers could help in making sure your members stay loyal, making it among the top recognizable ways to retain members. This is because it means that members can easily choose to go with more or less, depending on how they're feeling. If you have an extensive program that offers weekly coaching and a course that someone finds too much, it's much more beneficial to offer a lower member tier that they can go down to instead of simply losing them as a member.
Get feedback
Last, but definitely not least, find ways to continually solicit feedback from your members. These could include:
- 1:1 interviews
- Questionnaires or surveys
- Polls (the feature is built in to each Mighty Network! )
- Exit interviews (offer something of value to individuals who are leaving, to be honest in exchange for their honest)
Feedback can be super useful in helping determine which elements are effective and what's not.
Tips: Treat comments and ideas with a grain salt. It's totally normal to hear things such as "We need to have a group or course to do X" or "I'd love to see more of." Make sure you filter feedback by looking at it through your Community Design(tm) work , and then figure out if it's actually the right advice to follow.
Conclusion
If you implement these member retention strategies into action and implement them, you'll be in a great position to not only gain members, but to keep members! When your community is an essential element for your members They'll stay for a long time.
If you're not yet launching your own community or you are looking for the perfect place to go, make sure to take a look at our platform! It's the perfect platform to develop an interactive online community that can stand over the test of time. You can try it free for 14 days. No credit card required.