Get your membership site right, and you’re well on the way to building a highly profitable business. Get it wrong, and you’ll lose those vital members before you’ve even begun. We take a look at some of the most common mistakes.
Not Being Sufficiently Accessible
Members want to feel that they can get to you personally. This offers perceived high value, so be active – reply personally to contacts and offer conference calls or webinars as the expert.
Not Understanding What Your Members Want
A lot of membership management systems forget to create content around what their members actually are interested in and want to learn – focusing on pushing out their own messages instead. Really get to know your members and work out why they have joined you. Then create content, tools and products that help them achieve their goals.
Not Engaging on Multiple Fronts
Older membership platforms tend to focus on a single media communication form. However, today’s members want videos, written content, audio options and more. Investing in a membership management system such as http://www.ofec.co.uk/Membership-Management-Systems.aspx or similar may make this easier.
Drip Feeding Content
Make your content available and stop drip feeding it, unless you have a certain end date. Some members won’t want to pay and wait.
Not Setting Member Milestones
Give members an incentive to stay around and retention will soar. You could offer a sixty day membership bonus for example – whether that’s access to a value added extra product, a gizmo, a consulting call or something else, make it relevant to the reason for their membership and repeat again at a year’s membership and so forth.
Making Entry Barriers Too High
Make the price for your membership offer affordable. Offer a low test drive price or a free trial period of access to that a potential customer can try out the features and see if it works for them.
Failing to Re-Activate Lapsed Members
It’s easy to sell to existing customers, and also easy to sell to former customers. Make sure you have list of lapsed members and actively follow them up with discounts, bonuses and special personal access to you, just for giving the membership another go.
Trial these approaches and you’ll rapidly see an upturn in customer acquisition and retention alike!