Three Proven Membership Acquisition Strategies
Selling memberships is different than selling physical products. You see, membership is unique because it delivers a product over and over again. It requires an ongoing relationship beyond the initial purchase.
And because membership is unique in this way, your sales process also needs to be unique.
This guide will cover the most effective acquisition frameworks and strategies that will deliver the results you’re looking for.
The Big Picture:
The essence of membership commands its own sales process. It’s time to rethink the traditional sales approach for your membership product.
The Statistics:
Over 80% of membership operators always have their product for sale at the same price - all the time.
Non-traditional acquisition models can increase your new member acquisition by up to 60% over the course of a year.
The Action Plan:
Limit your sign up period or implement a promotional framework to create scarcity of your membership product and drive your membership sales higher
Your Sales Process is Uninspiring.
And that’s a problem we can easily fix.
Let me ask you a few questions:
Has your membership product been available for purchase every day over the past 30 days?
How about the past six months?
How about the past year?
If you’re like 80% of all other membership operators, you answered yes to all three questions.
And that’s a big problem.
It’s an even bigger problem if the purchase price of your product hasn’t changed at all during that time.
Why?
Because membership consumers need an immediate reason to purchase now. If you’re giving your potential members the option to wait, I promise you that the majority will do just that - wait.
This means that the members who have signed up for your product represent only a fraction of those who would sign up when given the right reason.
As a membership operator, you have an obligation to yourself to craft and communicate compelling reasons for customers to purchase your product. And if your product is always for sale, always at the same price and always just sitting there, then your sales process is uninspiring.
Below, I’m giving you three proven acquisition strategies that I’ve implemented with several other membership founders that exploded their acquisition and created successful frameworks for them to operate within.
Strategy #1: The Closed Sign-up Model
Scarcity is king of membership marketing. When your product is scarce, your audience will respond favorably (i.e. buy more from you).
So how do you create scarcity with a membership product? By limiting your sign-up period.
In practice, this means that you only allow people to sign up during short time windows over the course of a year. When executed and messaged correctly, these limited sign-up periods expose most would-be purchasers who haven’t taken action yet and give them a reason to join now.
A closed sign-up model allows you to:
Focus more on creating great content
Market your product from a position of scarcity
Establish member cohorts that build a sense of community
Pull forward the demand for your product while providing consumers an incentive to purchase now
How To Structure and Execute a Closed Sign-up Model
Closed sign-up models perform best when they’re structured with regularly spaced intervals that leave sufficient time between them. If your sign-up periods are too close together, then acquisition will quickly dwindle with each successive sign-up period.
Below is my recommendation for how to structure a closed sign-up model that will deliver optimal results for your membership.
Recommended Structure for Closed Sign-up Model:
1. Sign-up Periods Should be Held Quarterly
The duration of your sign-up period should be approximately one week with high-touch, targeted email marketing done over the duration of that week
2. Create a Waitlist That’s Accessible Between Sign-up Periods Give site visitors an easy way to provide their email to be on a waitlist so you can market to them between sign-up periods.
3. Showcase Previews of Your Best Membership Content Between Sign-up Periods This is your secret weapon for building interest between sign-up periods. Showcase what’s happening inside your membership to the public: share on social, send bi-weekly emails to those on your waitlist, etc. This gives potential customers a direct view into what they’re missing and allows you to create a narrative around the member experience you’re delivering.
If your membership is news-based or offers real-time coverage of events, then I don’t recommend this strategy.
Closed Sign-up models also work incredibly well when you incorporate a quarterly-annual pricing structure.
Do not sell monthly plans with a closed sign-up model. Doing so can make your membership vulnerable to excessive revenue churn. Monthly plans do not provide enough secured cash flows up front, which is a requirement since you won’t have another acquisition event for another three months.
Strategy #2: The Inbox Model
Email is still the best conversion channel for membership. Membership conversion rates via email are 15x higher than that of conversion rates from sales pages.
That simply cannot be ignored.
The Inbox Model is an acquisition strategy where you completely ditch your sales page and conduct your entire sales process by email. This model allows you to get extremely personal with leads and educate them on the value of your membership through a series of emails before presenting them with a unique offer to purchase. Where closed sign-up models create scarcity, the Inbox Model creates exclusivity.
The Inbox Model’s value truly shines for memberships that:
Carry a high price
Require educating before consumers feel confident about purchasing
Have a compelling story behind them
Are administered by a founder
The value that lies within memberships of this nature cannot be successfully communicated concisely on a sales page. And attempting to do so would likely detract from the perceived value and confuse potential customers.
So why would one ditch their sales page completely for an email-only sales process?
Because it allows you (the membership operator) to set the table and create space for dialogue - something that’s not possible with a sales page.
This is why you should work to get your leads on an email list where you can control the conversation and deliver the grand vision of your membership in bite-size chunks over time.
How to Implement The Inbox Model
Below is my recommendation for a simple, yet effective email series that you can use to sell more memberships to your leads.
Recommended Email Sequence for the Inbox Model
The “Handshake” Email
This email welcomes your new lead onto your list. It should provide:
A personal, warm welcome
A sincere “thank you” for joining your list
Sets expectations on what the reader can expect to receive from you (and when)
2. The “Operator” Email
This email “sets the table” and creates buy-in from your leads. It should be story-driven and answer the following questions:
How did I get here?
Why does this work matter to me?
What am I working on right now?
Why am I worth listening to?
What do I want you to do next?
3. The “Action” Email
This email is designed to showcase a piece of great content. It should include:
An invitation to engage with a single piece of content that you feel is “showcase worthy”. (i.e. an article, podcast, digital download, etc.)
4. The “Showcase” Email
This email email is meant to showcase 3-5 pieces of your best content to your lead. It should include:
A link to 3-5 pieces of your best content
A subtle call-to-action for your paid product
5. The “Sales” Email
This email is where you explicitly ask for the sale. It’s a direct invitation to join your membership. This email should include:
An exclusive, time-limited discount that incentivizes your lead to purchase now
An explanation of what the lead will “miss out on” if they don’t take action
The major benefit of the Inbox Model is that you can craft your email series once and then automate it. Once you’ve developed your email copy, this approach becomes completely hands-off and allows you to focus more on marketing and delivering on member benefits.
If you want to learn even more about the Inbox Model and converting your leads, you can check out the below webinar I hosted on the topic:
Strategy #3: The Freemium Model
If you have a way to split your product into a basic version and premium version, then you can remove all purchase barriers for potential members and deliver an experience for your entire audience - not just the ones ready to pay.
This is where the Freemium Model comes in.
Finding the Right Balance between Free Benefits and Premium Benefits
Using a Freemium model means you’ll have to segment your product. Regardless of your product type, whether you offer a newsletter, podcast or something else, this model can easily be applied to just about any program.
Below are my recommendations on how you can think about the balance between free benefits and premium benefits.
Creating Free and Premium Benefits
Free Benefits only need to involve content that can be curated and/or summarized.
Think of it like this: Your membership is an outdoor concert. Outside the gates, anyone can hear the music that originates from within the facility. But only those who bought a ticket get to see the music being performed.
Premium Benefits are those that involve some sort required action on your part to generate content that goes deeper than what’s obvious. This includes:
In-depth analysis
Expert commentary
Expert instruction
Answering questions
VIP access
Solving problems
And more…
The Freemium Model is perfect for memberships that have audiences whose tendencies and needs change frequently. This model always leaves an open avenue to purchase a premium version of your product.
If you feel that the overall needs of your audience aren’t easily understood, then a Freemium model is a great solution.
At the end of the day, your Premium benefits are what allow your audience to go deeper with your product.
The Takeaway
Regardless of what industry you operate within, having a consistent and defined acquisition strategy is the only way to win in the long-term.
Consistent application of strategy is the only way you can continuously refine, adjust and respond to what your audience is telling you.
Membership operators that are consistent can make adjustments that are appropriate and in-line with audience needs. Operators that have no acquisition process in place are always “guessing” at best with each adjustment they make.
