Episode #069: Behind The Scenes of our $300k Membership
What does it take to make $300,000 - $49 at a time?
In this episode, we're taking you behind the scenes of a membership that's been 2 years in the making.
I’ll share the nitty-gritty details, successes, and challenges of running the Not Your Average membership for over two years.
From revenue to member retention strategies, this episode provides a candid look at the inner workings of a successful membership program.
Tune in for an in-depth exploration of the lessons learned and valuable insights gained from running a thriving membership site.
Timestamped Key Moments:
01:59 Behind the scenes of Not Your Average Membership. What it consists of, and how long it to generate over $304,000 in sales.
05:01 Why you MUST monitor churn rate to retain memberships, and grow.
07:59 How we reduced churn rate to 7.5% by focusing on content consumption and audience preference for Facebook groups over external networks.
11:25 Upgrading to a Facebook group decreased churn. integration of wins sharing boosted engagement.
15:14 While we saw increase in top line membership growth, revenue increases - we overlooked customer experience, and that cost us money.
17:53 What we did when our Instagram account blocked during major promotion, then our FB account was blocked, and fail safes we put in place after.
20:35 Struggling with Facebook ads direct to offers, focusing on building an engaged listener.
23:36 A recap on the importance of customer retention, keeping customers happy, and understanding their needs.
Links Mentioned:
Not Your Average Membership (Use Code: PODCAST to save $19 on your first month)
Full Transcript:
Zach Spuckler [00:00:01]:
Online marketing podcast episode number 69. And in this episode, we're taking you behind the scenes of a membership that's been 2 years in the making. So let's get into it. Hey. Hey. Hey. Not so average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast.
Zach Spuckler [00:00:19]:
Now I'm really stoked for today's episode because anytime I can take you guys behind the scenes and kind of give you the nitty gritty and the play by play and, like, what's actually going down in our business. I love to do that. You know? I think Transparency is one of our core values. And I love being able to just share with you what we're seeing, what we're not seeing, what's going great, what's not going great, and be able to take you into our business and show you kind of what works well and what doesn't work well for us. And so What I want to share with you today is lessons that we've learned from running a membership site for just over 2 years. Okay? So to set the stage, we have been running our membership program, Not Your Average membership, since September mid September of 2021. It's now November of 2023. So that puts us at just over a couple years.
Zach Spuckler [00:01:11]:
Right? Just over a couple years by, like, a month or two. And we've seen some really interesting things over the years. And my goal with today's episode is not necessarily to, like, get you to run a membership or think about a membership. It's just to share with you, if you have been looking at our membership and you're What is that actually about? Like, how how's that actually going for them? Right? Or if you have been thinking about doing your own membership or your own membership program or any continuity program, and you want to know, like, the good, the bad, the ugly. That's what this is about. I just love taking you behind the scenes and sharing with you the things that we're seeing, because I know, firsthand, it can be really like sirens call when we see someone doing something. Maybe you've seen me doing a membership. I know I've seen this within our membership.
Zach Spuckler [00:01:59]:
People say, should I do a membership? Should I do this? And My goal with this episode is just to demystify some of the mystification around memberships and show you what's been working really well for us. So our membership is called Not Your Average Membership, and it is a membership that is built up of 4 key components. And the key components are, a content live call that we do on Zoom, bonus action plans that kind of teach you how to activate what you learn in our action calls. We also have 2 coaching calls, Also, one for, US, UK, and one for, more of our West Coast and Australia side of the world. And then we also have, a component of a community, a Facebook group that we run and engage with, all of the members of the program. So first things first, I wanna talk about one of the biggest questions that people get, which is, like, how much Has that actually made you and how many people are in the membership? Right? So right now, our membership, to date, has made about about $304,000. To be super exact, as of the time that I'm recording this, which is, like, mid week of November 6th like, November I even know what day it is most days. But the week of November 6th, our running total is $303,966 that we've generated in sales from our membership.
Zach Spuckler [00:03:22]:
Okay? I share that with you not to be like, oh, wow, look at how much money he's made. But because The reality is we've been doing this for 2 years. Okay? And in our 1st year, which was actually 3 months, we did about 32,000. The 2nd year we ran the membership, we did about a 136,000 over the full year. And this year, we're at a 130 five thousand before the end of the year, so we'll probably end the year right around $150,000 in revenue. So from 2022 to 2023, we actually didn't see, like a huge spike in revenue, to be completely honest. In fact, we saw more spike in revenue in 2023 from people going annual than we did from people recurring month to month, and that's one of the things that we'll we'll talk about today. Now In terms of, like, number of members, that's always a big question too.
Zach Spuckler [00:04:16]:
At the end of 2021, we had a 147 members. At the end of 2022, we had 254 members, so we grew by about a 100 people. And then as of right now in 2023, we're at, 367. So we actually have some other promotions we're doing before the end of the year to maybe bring that up a little higher. So we'll probably add about, you know, a 100 and 50 to 200 new members, in the year 2023. So the big question or the big thing to consider that I think a lot of people don't talk about When they talk about memberships, it's what we call churn rate. And I want to just start this episode or kind of kick off this episode by sharing some of, like, The numbers. The fun stuff.
Zach Spuckler [00:05:01]:
But there's this unsung hero of memberships that doesn't get enough airtime from all the research that I did before we launched ours and what we've seen just doing this. And that's what's called churn rate. And churn rate is essentially what percentage of your membership leaves month over month. Right? And your goal is to get this number as low as possible. Right? So if you have a 100 people and your churn rate is 10%, that means at the End of the month, you start with a 100, you end with 90 of those original people. Okay? So the 1st year that we ran our membership this is, like, It's kind of embarrassing to share, but we'd churned 17.81%. So the 1st 3 months we had the membership, 1st 4 months, September, October, November, December, we churned around 17%. So at the end of every month, like, 17 out of a 100 people would leave.
Zach Spuckler [00:05:54]:
In 2022, we started getting our bearings, getting better at our content, and we got that churn down to 12.45%. That's still pretty high. Our goal is to get it under 7%. Well, in 2023, year to date, We got it down to 9.33%. But I will tell you that back in July. We started making a really concerted effort to bring down our churn rate even more, and we've got it down to an average of 7.5% in the second half of the year. So one cool thing about memberships that, you know, we've learned or are learning is that The churn rate tends to go down over time as you start learning what your people want. Right? We started paying attention to what are people really driving with, a lot of Facebook ads content.
Zach Spuckler [00:06:45]:
We started paying attention to where are people getting stuck, our portal, and I'll talk about that. But here's the thing. If you don't and I actually met with my coach who has a really profitable membership, and I was saying, you know, I just need to get more people, more people, more people. If we could just get more people into the membership, that's the secret. And she said, Zach, I want you to look at your numbers, And I want you to be really honest. How many people have actually joined the membership? Right? And in reality, we've had, like, a thousand ish, maybe closer to 1100 people actually, like, join the membership at one point or another. That does include some double joins. People leave and come back.
Zach Spuckler [00:07:22]:
But in essence, we've had about 1100 people come to the membership. And right now, we have 367 in there. So that means we've had over 700 people cancel their membership. Right now, that's over 2 years. That is part of the membership game. We know that. But she kind of said to me, Zach, if you keep throwing people in to a membership that has a big hole in the bottom with a churn rate of 10, 12%, you're not going to see good results. You're just going to be filling up, literally filling up a cup with a hole in the bottom.
Zach Spuckler [00:07:59]:
And so I share that with you because I want you to realize that the churn rate, number 1, we've gotten it down. In the last this year, we got it down to 7 a half percent, which I'm so excited about. But we've been able to bring it down because we started focusing on a few different things, and I wanna share those with you today. So first thing we did was we started paying attention to how people were consuming the content. And if you're thinking about running a membership, it really helps to know who your ideal customer is, because a lot of people are really, like, praising a lot of these external Networks right now, you know, you've heard of them like Mighty Networks, Circle, Heartbeat, like, which are if you haven't, that's okay. These are where your entire membership and community lives off Facebook. Okay? We basically did a bunch of research and polling of our audience after about a year and a half of our membership, and we found out people would rather be in a Facebook group. Like, people would just straight rather be in a Facebook group to engage with the content.
Zach Spuckler [00:09:00]:
And so what we found out is that a big reason we were losing people is because they weren't logging into the community to comment and engage. And with memberships, people like the ability to ask questions and have community and connect with each other. And because we had chosen, you know, one of these external portals, we weren't seeing as much engagement. We saw a direct drop in churn when we went from an external portal to Facebook group and a content portal. Right? So if you're thinking about doing This is not me saying external portals don't work. I know people who are getting way better results with external portals. What I am saying is, if your people are already on Facebook, They clearly don't want to have to go to another platform to join a community. And that's just what we found.
Zach Spuckler [00:09:46]:
Right? The other thing that we found is that people were finding our portal very hard to use. And we had a portal that was more community focused, even though we have a very content heavy membership. So we were using Circle. Again, I'm not saying anything bad about Circle. It was really great. It actually did a lot of the features that I thought I wanted. But what we found was that people were saying, I can't find stuff. I can't find stuff.
Zach Spuckler [00:10:14]:
It's hard to navigate the portal. And so what we did was we moved over from Circle to Searchie. And Searchie is a another tool. It's like Kajabi or, you know, something like that. But it's really about more customizable, specifically for membership experiences. And that's what I really liked about it was that it was memberships experience specific. And so now when you Log in to our portal. It's, like, very beautiful, I think.
Zach Spuckler [00:10:46]:
But at the top, it's like, click here to go to the group. Click here to see the upcoming calls. Click here to access your bonuses. Click here if it's your 1st 90 days so you know what to focus on. Right? It's, like, it's very clear what people are accessing and how they're accessing it. So the other thing was, like, we found that as soon as we simplified the portal, but we also saw a decrease in churn. Right? So the other thing is, like, if people feel like they can't use what they're getting access to or it's too overwhelming or daunting or there's too much happening, that also affects your churn rate. So when you're looking at a membership, whether you're thinking about starting 1 or, you know, a continuity program.
Zach Spuckler [00:11:25]:
You've got to be asking these questions. Is it usable? Is it navigatable? And are people both using and navigating it? Right? So for us, that was one of our biggest wins was that we upgraded our portal, we moved over to a Facebook group, and we saw our churn rate decline as a result of all of these changes that we've been making. I wanted to also share that one thing that I think has really helped our churn rate and our success of members is that when we switched to a Facebook group, we found that people were sharing their wins more frequently. And that's something that we're looking to integrate more into the membership. It's not something we've done a good job of so far, I don't think. But we really wanna start highlighting members who are, like, doing a great job. Right? Because when people leave feedback that they're winning, we're finding that these are some of the highest engaged posts. Like, people love seeing and celebrating with people who are winning.
Zach Spuckler [00:12:21]:
So the other you know, in addition to, like, you know, our churn rate has gone down and we've done 300 k on this membership in just over 2 years, We're also getting results for people. And I think that that's something that's been really understated in the industry as a whole. Right? Because it's, like, we'll just do a membership, or just do this, or just do that, and just give people great content. But people don't just want great content. They want results. Right? They wanna actually see that if they take action, they're gonna get results. And so, For us, that was really, like, this light bulb moment of, like, when people get results, Other people like to see them win. And when they're winning, more people post about winning.
Zach Spuckler [00:13:06]:
And the more people post about winning, the more wins we're seeing. It also helps Us find testimonials and feedback and what people like and what people are using. So I just want to say, like, if you're thinking about doing this, membership or not, in your business. Encourage people to share their wins because that has been an absolute game changer for us. Couple other things that have been really, really good for us is our boot camp funnel. So We have an evergreen Facebook ads boot camp, that we promote all the time. It's $25 to join our boot camp. You can check it out at the ads boot camp .com.
Zach Spuckler [00:13:42]:
And we also run it live 3 to 4 times a year. And both live and on Evergreen, it converts pretty darn well into the membership. But what's great is that in our membership, your 1st 90 days is about growing your email list, creating your simple sales funnel, putting a product in your sales funnel. And the the boot camp that we run is essentially like a very condensed accelerated version of the 1st 30 days of the membership. And so we're finding that people who come to our boot camp, they, like, Stick around because they've done the 1st month's work. So they kind of come in at this advantage. Right? And you don't have to do that. You can go into the membership, and the first thing we do is give you a recording of the boot camp.
Zach Spuckler [00:14:30]:
But we're finding that people that do the boot camp first, they get they get a taste of what it's like to work with me, they get to hang out, they get to, you know especially when it's live, they get to ask questions, be in a community. When it's evergreen, they get to see what it's like when I serve a community. Right? But it's still really working super well. The other thing that's been working great is that when we do launch, we have a really good annual take rate. We've really locked in our annual take rate bonuses, and that has just been a total win for us. We give away, when we launch live, a couple of bonuses for people who go annual, and that's just been a game changer for us. Just getting more people to go annual. It increases the average order value of a customer for the membership, like how much a customer is worth.
Zach Spuckler [00:15:14]:
And that has also helped us make more cash that we can put back into the membership. Right? So I've talked about, you know, a few things, like the the revenue and how the membership has grown and how we reduced our churn and how people are seeing great wins and results. And we've upgraded the portal, and we've moved to a Facebook group. And and it's all good and well, but I I didn't wanna record this episode and just talk about how glamorous everything was in this membership. I wanted to talk to you about some of the stuff that has not been so great with the membership, and some of the things that we maybe didn't think about And the first thing is we were not thoughtful enough about the customer experience in years 12. We can look at our churn rate and see, like, people just They weren't enjoying it the way they should have. There was a high churn rate. People were leaving.
Zach Spuckler [00:16:10]:
People weren't engaging. And what that ultimately means A lot of the work, like, if I'm just really honest, I don't want to say it was wasted. Right? It's not like the 1st 2 years were a waste. We learned so much. But we had nearly 7 no. Over over 700 people join the membership in the 1st 2 years. But at the end of 2 years, we only had a third of those people still in there. And that kind of comes back to what I was talking about with my coaches.
Zach Spuckler [00:16:35]:
Like, if you Keep filling up that bucket with the hole in the bottom, not glass with the hole in the bottom, you're just gonna lose people. So if you're thinking about something where you want to retain people, be thinking about of the importance and the value of that retention before you start. Right? You've gotta be thinking about that first. The other thing that we hadn't really thought about was Facebook and Instagram jail. Okay? Like, just point blank. It was great when we had full control over the portal with, like, Circle or Heartbeat or Mighty Networks, because you can't get blocked. Right? In essence, as long as you follow the terms of service and You have a direct contact. Like, your website's not gonna get shut down.
Zach Spuckler [00:17:22]:
That's just the reality. Right? However, the other reality is that if you're on Facebook and Facebook doesn't like what you've done or somebody reports you or something bad happens, you can get blocked. And there was actually this period for a week in here where we were in Facebook jail. And my team, this was when we first opened the Facebook group. They weren't administrators yet. We didn't think about it. It's just something that we hadn't thought about. And because they weren't administrators, we couldn't actually do anything in the Facebook group.
Zach Spuckler [00:17:53]:
We couldn't, like, I comment to people. I was blocked out of commenting. It was a nightmare, to be completely honest. Right? My Instagram got shut down during a major promotion. Like, we started to promote our our boot camp live and our whole Instagram was deleted. So one of the other things that, like, You know, you hear it all the time from people who are like, Facebook can shut your account down at any time or lock your account or lock you out or, you know, do these things. And the reality is, like, that happened to us, and it was a nightmare. So just something to be aware of is, like, if you're going to have a Facebook group, have a backup, not necessarily profile, but, like, a backup Page, whether it's a team page or a team member or a family member, if you're just getting started, like, have a way to get into that page so that you're not completely locked out when something like what happens to us happens.
Zach Spuckler [00:18:42]:
The other thing that I think we overlooked was a content production flow. So we've gotten much better over the years. But, like, when we were first starting, I'd be like, oh my gosh. Tomorrow is the day content drops in the membership. I've got to get on it. I've got to do it right now. And we've gotten better at that. But I think it's easy, especially in the marketing world, where we're like, get more customers, sell more products, get more people.
Zach Spuckler [00:19:04]:
It's easy to, like, market and then forget that there is fulfillment. Right? So we have, like if I'm just completely candid, like, yes. This is embarrassing, but I wanna be completely with you, like, I have missed content drop dates, not so much in the last couple years or the the last year, but, like, in the 1st couple years. I'd be like, oh my gosh. That was yesterday. Oh my gosh. That's today. Oh my gosh, it's supposed to drop at noon.
Zach Spuckler [00:19:24]:
And I have calls until 1 PM. And now I've got to stay up late and record this stuff. That happens. So if you're going to do something with continuity, be thinking about content production flow. The other thing that I did not take into account when I first started this membership that we're doing better at in twenty 24, is planning around travel. So, like, I've done membership calls from, you know, California and the UK. Because the reality of the membership is, like, it leans or hinders. I shouldn't say hinders.
Zach Spuckler [00:19:56]:
It it, leans is the word I'm looking for on me because I provide all the content right now. Right? And we brought in some guest experts, and that's helped. But, like, we need to time it out a little more efficiently so that even if I'm not, available, I'm not on the hook for something in the membership. Right? So that's gonna mean I need to plan my travel in 2024 around my membership drop dates. Right? Or plan my drop dates around my travel. Right? Either or. But, really, I need to be mindful about when it makes sense to not be kind of in the office and out of the office. And that's just something that I didn't take into account in the 1st couple years.
Zach Spuckler [00:20:35]:
And so I've done membership calls from literally all over the world. The last thing that I will say is that we have never really cracked, like, a great, perfect funnel. We do really well with our Facebook ads boot camp. But getting people to buy the boot camp, has been a has been a struggle because Facebook ad costs kind of ebb and flow. Don't really have order bumps or upsells on the, boot camp other than the membership itself, and so that has affected what we can paid to acquire a customer. So that being said, we get great lead cost. And so I talk about this in my membership and in in my boot camps, but We've kind of changed the way that we think about advertising more as, like, we're just always building. We're just always building the email list.
Zach Spuckler [00:21:20]:
So, like, right now, I think we started on, I wanna say, October 30th. No. October 27th. I'm actually pulling it up to give you some insight. We started promoting one of our most recent freebies on October 27th. And, as of November 8th. We have over 620 leads that have signed up for it at, like, a dollar 76 apiece. So We think about it as like, okay, even if the funnel is not great because it's it's not, like, we've we've had 647 leads, and I think had 5 people join the membership, so it's converting very low.
Zach Spuckler [00:21:57]:
But we are getting membership joins. And the other thing that we tell ourselves is, like, we're growing the list for big promotions, right, for big promotions 4 times a year. But for us, like, getting a good solid membership funnel humming along, that's been harder than we anticipated. And we have systems. We have processes. Like, we're not not promoting the membership at all, but it could definitely be being promoted better, I think. So it's something that we're always working on, and that just requires copywriting. And one of the things that people don't really talk about is, like, you don't just set up a funnel and make a ton of money.
Zach Spuckler [00:22:31]:
Right? Like, that's the dream we get sold, but the reality is we're always working on this funnel, we're always revising this funnel, we're always changing this funnel, and we're always just trying to get the best results possible. So I hope that this episode just gives you some insight into, like, the life of a membership, program and how we've really leaned into our membership program in 2023. And into 2024, it's gonna be our primary offer. Like, that is where we're focusing all of our efforts. So all that being said, If you want a copy of the show notes or you'd like to review anything that we said here in the full transcript, you can head over to heart soulhustle.comforward/nyap069. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.comforward/ n y a p 069 for Not Your Average podcast, episode number 69. We'll have the show notes, the transcripts, links to everything that we talked about so you can check it out. But I wanna end with this.
Zach Spuckler [00:23:36]:
If a membership is in your future, great. I just hope that with this episode, you go in with your eyes a little more open. And if a membership is not in your future, I hope that, at least, you can listen to this and hear little things that matter, like, how to retain customers, how to keep people happy, how to think about where your customer wants to be, the value of Facebook Groups over, you know, something external maybe for your audience. Like, my goal is that regardless of what your goals are, you take something away from this and that you get to see behind the curtain. You get to hear the real numbers. You get to see, you know, you see the big launches and the big boot camps and the sexy numbers, but, like, what does it actually shake out to? And now you know. So I hope you really enjoyed this episode. As always, if you want to let me know, you can always come over to Instagram at zacksbuckler.
Zach Spuckler [00:24:21]:
Tell me what your favorite part was. I love hearing from you guys. Last week, I got a few DMs, and it was amazing. I just love hearing from you guys. So don't hesitate to DM me over on Insta. I love hearing from you. I hope you have an incredible rest of your week. And until next time, stay not so average.
