HSH 099: What I’ve Learned From 6 Months of Running a Membership Site
I’m really excited about this week’s episode, because I’ll be talking about my membership site, The Monthly Marketing Playbook. I’ve already learned so much since launching it, and today I’ll be revealing what’s worked, what hasn’t and what we’re doing to make it better, every single day.
Take a screenshot on your device of you listening to this podcast, and add it to your Instagram Stories while tagging me, @heartsoulhustle. Tell me what you’re loving about this episode, and I will personally reply and answer a question that you have about Facebook ads!
Lesson #1: Retention
I’ve learned that retention is so important when it comes to membership sites, and we want to maximize how long people are sticking around and minimizing members dropping off, or “churn.” This is for two reasons: the longer people are members, the more results they’ll get, as well as increasing the amount of revenue that we generate on a monthly basis.
To be honest, our retention isn’t quite where I’d like it to be at this point in time. We offer our members a private Facebook group and increasing engagement there will be vital. The community is what gets people to stay, which is why we need to leverage the value of it.
Right now we’re working on figuring out how to get people more actively involved in using their playbooks, as we’re hearing from some people leaving that they’re just not using the content provided.
Lesson #2: Community matters!
Originally I resisted having a private Facebook group for my membership site, because I really wanted to focus on the content, but I’ve learned how important having this space can be. Just because you have great content, it doesn’t mean people will stick around!
Having a community for paying members creates a premium atmosphere, and we’ll be using a dedicated community manger to do regular postings and engage with members, so I won’t have to be there 24/7.
Offering pop-up support on special days to answer questions from the community on topics they want to discuss will also be a big part of our strategy moving forward.
Lesson #3: Create content in advance
Since launching I’ve been creating the content on a monthly basis, but we’ll be planning how to make this process easier for me. One way to do it would be to batch content in advance, so I’m not on a “hamster wheel” each month.
Working with a designer to help with the final product has been working really well. Also I’ve been polling the community to ask what they’d like to learn more about, and I’ve been teasing the content by talking about what’s coming in the following month. This gets the community excited about staying on for another month, and is a strategy that works well.
Lesson #4: Have a dedicated inbox and support person
It’s important to know why people are cancelling their memberships, but I don’t need to see everybody that cancels. A gatekeeper in between myself and my customers allows me to focus on the current members and not worry about cancellations.
As you can see, I’ve learned a lot in just six months of running a membership site, and my hope is that you’ll get value from what I’ve shared and the ways we’re working on making The Monthly Marketing Playbook and its community the best it can be.
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