Today, we’re continuing our membership series here on the podcast. We’re going to have a Q & A to answer many of the top questions asked about memberships.

These questions come up on a pretty consistent basis in my Accelerator coaching program. About half of the members there have a membership program for their business. They either come into the Accelerator program with a successful membership already in place, or they’re adding one to their business.

I’m going to be covering a lot of points here in today’s episode. If you’re thinking about adding a membership to your business, or you already have one, this show is going to be super helpful for you.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Should you use lanches for your business?
• How to get more membership customers
• When and how often to email your members
• How to measure your launches success
• How to keep members once they’ve signed up
• Should you use grandfather pricing in your membership?
• The best platform for running your membership
• What metrics to use to track your membership

Links & Resources

• The Art of Online Business Podcast #539
• Jason Brown: The Brown Report
• SpeakPipe
• Ali Manning’s Handmade Book Club
• 10XPRO
• Rickmulready.com/10XPRO
• The Art of Online Business Podcast: Jeff Harry episode
• support@theartofonlinebusiness.com
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business website
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

Got A Question You Want Answered On the Podcast?

Ask your questions or let me know if there is a topic or guest you’d like to hear from in the comments below or click here to visit my contact page and submit your question there for a chance to be featured on one of my upcoming Q&A episodes.

Follow The Art of Online Business on iTunes and/or Stitcher

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Right-click here to download this episode

Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

Jason Brown’s #1 Secret for Selling His Membership

Evergreen Funnels: Q&A

Membership Case Study: How Hallie Sherman Added $10K/mo With a New Membership

[00:00:00] Rick:
What’s up, my friends. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in today. I hope all is going well, whatever you were up to right now.

Today, we’re going to continue our membership series here on the podcast, and we’re going to do a Q & A answering your membership questions.

[00:01:05]
A lot of these questions have been coming up on a fairly consistent basis in my Accelerator coaching program. A lot of our members have, well, let’s say about half have memberships. They either have come into Accelerator with really successful memberships, or they’re adding a membership to their already successful business.

[00:01:27]
A lot of great questions have been coming up, ones that I see on a consistent basis, even outside of Accelerator. So, I wanted to take an episode here and answer these questions for you. Because whether you are adding a membership to your business, or you’ve already got one going.

[00:01:51]
I’m going to be talking through different points here. They’re going to be super helpful for you. I want to start off the Q & A here with the million dollar question, and I addressed it a few episodes ago, back in episode 539.

[00:02:08]
When I talked about why launching is doing you and your potential customers more harm than good, that episode ruffled a few feathers, shall we say. I like that. That’s good. I’m glad that people are on both sides of the fence. They either agree really strongly, and they were like, “Oh, thank you for finally saying it, Rick!”

[00:02:29]
Then there’s other people, like, “What are you talking about, Rick? You built your business on launches, and why are you coming out and saying this? We do launches in our business. They’re really successful, blah, blah, blah.” I address all of that in that episode. So, this first question is around, “Is it better to be doing launches

[00:02:48]
for your membership?” Meaning you have a closed membership, and it opens up at various points throughout the year. As opposed to evergreen, meaning it’s always open. So, the easy answer here is, if your membership is something that people can actually use year-round, why not give people the opportunity to enroll in your membership or join your membership?

[00:03:19]
If your membership is cohort-style, meaning you’ve got a group of people who are starting at the same time and then ending at the same time, I would recommend absolutely doing launches. The launch can look any way you want it to. You can do your traditional webinar launches, or you can do just a straight up email launch.

[00:03:41]
You can do whatever in we’re actually going to talk about here that in the next question here, but this is completely up to you. I am on the side very much so of if your membership is something that can be beneficial to somebody in February, let’s just say, and you only open it in July. Well, what about all those people, you know, outside of that launch period that really want what you have to offer.

[00:04:10]
So what I recommend you do is evergreen. So it’s always available for people. then you can add in promotions throughout the year You can do flash sales, you can do special promos to certain segments of your list or your social media, whatever it might be. that is what I recommend, unless you are, unless you have a cohort-style program in your membership, then I recommend doing evergreen plus doing special promotes throughout the year.

[00:04:41]
If that promo looks like a launch for you, if you’re like, I love launching, go for it. Okay. But it really is. What is the best? What makes sense for you and your business, also obviously for your customers, what are they looking for that aligns with. How you want to run your business. And again, I go into all this really in depth in episode number 539, just from a few weeks ago, why launching is doing you and your potential customers more harm than good.

[00:05:13]
Okay. So that is the first question. And the second question, it is all about, you know, people always want to know what are some offers that we can test out to get more people into my membership. offers, meaning do I do a trial? Do I do a free offer? Whatever it might be. And so I like to look at this in two different ways.

[00:05:39]
Number one, I like to look at it from what I like to call front doors, what are different front doors you can use to get people into your membership? then the second part of it is the actual offers you can be testing out. And I want to break down each one of those here in just a second.

[00:06:00]
In that first question, I mentioned my Accelerator coaching program, you know, like half of them have, memberships and actually whether they just started them or they came into, into Accelerator with a membership they’re all super successful. and so if you’re wondering what my Accelerator coaching program is, this is, for established online course creators and online coaches.

[00:06:23]
And you’re more advanced in your business minimum. You’re doing seven to eight K at least per month in revenue from your online business. And this is all the way up. If you’re doing multiple millions. Okay. We’ve got the wide spectrum of people inside of the Accelerator. I got a, we got an application at the time recording that’s just yesterday.

[00:06:45]
Somebody is doing seven figures and they were like, I’m just wondering if I’m too, too far ahead. If you will, for Accelerator. Absolutely not. We’ve got people doing multiple millions in there. and then obviously, you know, I get to mentor you and coach you as well. So everybody in between, but this is more for established online course creators and coaches who are looking to take their business to the next level.

[00:07:12]
Right. You want to scale. But without adding more hours to your schedule, right? This is, and you’re in, you’re likely not really sure what next steps to be taking in your business in order to accomplish that. you’re likely feeling overwhelmed maybe towards burnout. Maybe you’re, you’re burning out right now, which is very, very common.

[00:07:32]
Looking to grow your team, looking to systematize your business with better systems and processes, stronger sales and marketing. That’s exactly what we all, what we help you do inside of Accelerator. This is a one-on-one coaching group, coaching and mastermind experience.

[00:07:50]
Okay. So if you want to learn more and apply it’s application only go to Rick mulready.com port slash Accelerator. All right. So going back to those front doors, right. Again, this question is what are some offers to test out, to get more people into my membership?

[00:08:06]
So the first part of it is, again, what I like to call front doors front door is basically how are we getting people into, how are we making that offer into your membership? it all starts with your traffic source or traffic sources. It could be Facebook ads it could be Instagram ads it could be organic, meaning, you know, whatever.

[00:08:27]
TikTok it could be your YouTube channel It could be your podcast, whatever it might be, It could be your blog. it starts with your traffic source and then you’re sending people to a lead magnet, So a free, opt-in the really key thing here when it comes to your lead magnet. And I covered this, I’ve covered this before in a previous episode here in the show is you want to make sure that lead magnet checks a few boxes.

[00:08:51]
What I mean by that is number one, you absolutely want it to, well, hopefully be relevant to helping your target customer solve a very specific problem. hopefully the lead magnet is a logical first step towards the membership The lead magnet should give them a quick win, which is going to create some momentum.

[00:09:14]
And then they’re like, holy cow, this was awesome. I want more, the more is your membership in this case here. so the front door could be traffic source to lead magnet. Once they opt in for your lead magnet, they implement that lead magnet. And then you do an email follow-up series where you’re continuing to build value, continuing to build rapport, build that relationship and trust with that person.

[00:09:39]
You’re offering your membership With a special offer, in that email series. Okay. So that’s the first front door. The second, that’s just one example that you can do. Another example is the exact same thing. However, we move that offer for the membership up to the thank you page. Right? So traffic source to lead magnet, same kind of thing on the lead magnet.

[00:10:03]
And then once they opt in for the lead magnet, you make your offer the, your special membership offer on the thank you page. So it’s right there. Okay. and then if they don’t take you up on that special offer, then they go into that follow-up email series. Okay. another front door, very standard traffic source into a free webinar.

[00:10:25]
And then on that webinar, you make your, your membership special offer that webinar. could be a. Training series live training series could be a challenge, could be, you know, a mini train mini video training series. It could be literally a single video training. That’s 12 minutes long, for example, that again, that is you blow their mind and then you make an offer off of that video into a special offer for your membership.

[00:10:54]
One trend that I’m seeing right now, some of our Accelerators, some of our Accelerators are doing it with a lot of success. And I’ve done this in the past with, with success as well is they’re almost doing kind of like a micro webinar and the webinar. What that means, what I mean by that is the webinar is down to like 25 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes.

[00:11:17]
And that’s the total length of your, of your webinar, right? Because people’s attention span, show up rates have been down. Webinar don’t get me wrong. Webinars are still very, very, very effective. But testing that shorter method of, or shorter length, I should say, of your, of a webinar is something I would absolutely, look at depending on the success or lack of success that you’ve had, with a webinar.

[00:11:45]
So again, the front door there is, you’re very straightforward standard kind of, webinar or again, video training series or what have you, front door, if you will. Okay. So traffic source, let’s just say webinar, membership special offer there’s three examples for different front doors. Tons of examples that you can do.

[00:12:05]
There are tons of things that you can test out there. There’s three really solid ones. that absolutely work. Okay. Now with that said, let’s add on to that. We’ve got our front door example right now. Let’s look at some different offers that you can test out. And that’s really the key, right? We’re testing this out to see what works and what doesn’t, hopefully you find things that work and you do more of it.

[00:12:30]
Right? I’m always talking about that. So we do more of what’s working. If it’s not working super well, you look at okay, what exactly isn’t working and you start optimizing that journey, right? That campaign. one example of an offer, this is more so if you’re doing launches is just a straight up monthly.

[00:12:47]
Okay. So my membership is $47, or you can do an annual option. Usually when it comes to, getting people into an annual option, most people do like two months free. So they’re getting 12 months for the price of 10. and you as the membership owner, that’s really good for you because that’s one way to increase your lifetime customer value, which we’ll talk more about here in a couple of minutes.

[00:13:15]
So that’s one thing you can do very straightforward standard. Join my membership. This is the rate, you know, this is the monthly fee, or you can do an annual option doors, close enrollment closes on this day. What have you, another offer that you can do. And I really liked this one a lot because most people have.

[00:13:37]
Courses inside of their membership. Right? So they have a whole course on this isn’t I don’t know, whatever hiring, for example. And then they have a course on. whatever Facebook ads, let’s just say, okay, so they have all these courses, but what if you sell each of these courses individually? So let’s just say your membership is just for simple sake, $47 a month, and you sell a course for 97.

[00:14:05]
You sell that hiring course for $97. So you say, Hey, you can buy this $97 course on hiring, or you can get that course inside of our membership, along with all this other training and amazing community for this $47 a month. So you can jump in there right now and get all these things for just $47. And then obviously $47 a month, thereafter.

[00:14:27]
So you’re basically using the course and the course price to anchor the price of the membership. So the membership is a much better deal because they’re getting that course that they want for a. Reduce price, if you will, a lesser price and all this other amazing stuff. Okay. So you can use your individual courses as an anchor for the price of your membership.

[00:14:56]
Now, if you one person, by the way, who does this really, really well, and I’ve had him on the podcast a couple of times is my good buddy Jason Brown from the brown report. So he has individual courses on stock trading, et cetera, that you can buy straight up that just individual. You can go buy the individual core.

[00:15:14]
Or you can join his membership and get all of his courses for a much reduced price and you can get access to, to Jason’s weekly where he does, you know, look over his shoulder, basically doing trades and stuff like that. So anyway, use a course price, you know, individual course. And if you don’t have an individual course, you just have other trainings inside of your membership.

[00:15:38]
You can pull those out, not pull them out, but you can use those courses that are inside there, start selling them individually. And for, you know, and then again, use that as an anchor price against the membership. another offer that you can test out is just very straightforward. You can do an expiring bonus, right?

[00:15:56]
So if you join now, you get this whatever amazing bonus that you’ve got. but that bonus goes away, you know, whatever Thursday, right? Very straightforward. I don’t love that one, but it can be effective. Another offer example that you can test out is that you can do like a dollar trial or a $7 trial, right?

[00:16:18]
So you can do a dollar trial for, you know, 14 days or a dollar trial for seven days, or maybe a dollar trial for 30 days. You just play around with it, the key here and the key here, frankly, with all these different offers that you can be testing out is knowing your numbers. You’ve got to know your numbers.

[00:16:38]
And one of the questions I’ve got coming up here for you, where I’ll dive into it is what metrics, what numbers do you want to make sure that you’re tracking if you have a membership. And so if you do like a dollar trial, for example, it’s like, okay, how many people took you up on the dollar trial? And then of those dollar trial people, how many converted into, continuing on in the.

[00:17:03]
Then I want you to take it a step further and look at, okay, what is, how long do those people generally stay in the membership? So what is my lifetime customer value of the people who are coming in at different, at different offer levels, like let’s say a dollar trial or a $7 trial or a free trial, right?

[00:17:25]
So you want to be looking at which offer is performing the best, obviously, but then also looking at even further out and looking at what is the lifetime customer value. Is there a difference? Maybe there’s no difference, but tracking it is really, really important so that you can know, and be able to answer those types of questions by the way, when you’re doing these kinds of offers and you’re doing these kind of front doors, if you will, it’s I really, really encourage you to look at the traffic source, where you are sending people from and.

[00:17:58]
When they get into the membership. Right? So for example, if I’m making an offer here on the podcast, for example, I want to make sure for my, for a membership, I don’t have a membership right now, but if I’m making a special offer for a membership here on the podcast, I want to know, okay, how many people are joining from the podcast and then how long are they staying?

[00:18:18]
Right. So it’s a good idea for you to be tracking the number one, the traffic source, where are those people coming from, who joined the membership and then how long they stay in the membership. That way you can start tracking the effectiveness of your traffic sources into your membership. The. Last example here and again, this is, this is one of those things where there’s tons of different things that you can do to, you know, offers that you can test out.

[00:18:43]
I’m giving you five right here that are really effective. The last one here, very much something you want to test, right? So you can do a free option. You can do a free trial. now keep in mind when you do a free trial, you’re going to get those. Freebie seekers, right? We all know those freebie seekers, nothing wrong.

[00:19:00]
Right. But we want buyers coming in because when people actually pay to get a result, they’re going to take things more seriously. And we’re in business to make an impact we’re in business to, create a transformation for the people that we want to be helping. Right. And so you can do a free trial, but again, be tracking everything.

[00:19:22]
1 thing I would absolutely test against is maybe you do a $7 trial or a $1 trial track. How many of those people convert into paying customers in, you know, after the trial versus I do a free trial, how many of those people go on to continue on in the membership? Right? but again, all of this, all of this, you’ve got to be knowing your numbers.

[00:19:45]
You gotta be tracking your numbers and track. The effectiveness, all the, of all these different front doors, if you will, and the offers. Okay. All right. The third question is how might I improve my wait list conversion into my membership? if your membership is closed and you have a wait list, how do you improve the percentage of people who are on your wait list, to actually join your membership when you open enrollment for the membership?

[00:20:19]
Let’s just say that there are a hundred people on your wait list. when you open enrollment, 10 of those people join your membership. Okay. that’s 10% conversion, Good. But the wait list, those people have raised their hand, They’re like, yeah. I want to be the first to know when enrollment opens, I’m very interested in this.

[00:20:41]
Let me know. Okay. So how can we nurture those people in a very special way? Because they have taken time they’ve, you know, they’ve raised their hand and said I’m very interested. Okay. So they are, they are very, very warm potential buyers of your membership. So what are some things you could do to get more of those people into your membership?

[00:21:02]
Well, they’re on your wait list for a reason side note here, by the way, a little bit of a soap box here. If somebody signs up for your wait list. Okay. And they’re just coming in, they’ve just signed up for your wait list. They didn’t sign up for your like weekly newsletter. Don’t send them your weekly newsletter.

[00:21:20]
They didn’t sign up for that. They signed up for your wait list. You’re weightless. You want to treat that differently than your weekly newsletter, each kind of email, right? So side note there. Now with the With people on the wait list, I want to encourage you and suggest to you to create an experience for them of what it will look like inside of your membership.

[00:21:47]
What are some things you can do to give them a glimpse into the wonderful world of your membership once they’re in there? Right? Because the idea here is when they’re on your wait list, you want them, you want them waiting impatiently to, for when your membership opens. They’re like, I can’t wait.

[00:22:08]
Oh my holy cow, look at this. I got this I got this and I’m seeing this. I can’t wait to get into the membership and experience all of this. create an experience of what it could look like in, or what it will look like I should say inside of your membership. one thing you could do is you could simply send them helpful content, take some content from your membership on say every few weeks, and give them that into, you know, people on your, on your wait list. You don’t have to give them the whole thing necessarily, but can you give them, a really helpful piece of value from something that’s in your membership send that to them on people on your wait list.

[00:22:53]
Right? Another thing that you could do in terms of helpful content is if you have a podcast or if you have, a YouTube channel, if you do Facebook lives or what have you on, really specific topics. You could send people, you could refer people to those specific episodes or videos, right. That is specific obviously to the topic of your membership and what your, what, the problem that you’re solving with them, for them.

[00:23:24]
Again, we’re creating an amazing experience for them while they’re on, your wait list. Another thing that you could do is if you do like a live training inside of your membership, one month, you could take that training. Maybe you cut it up a little bit or something like that and give them a version of that training.

[00:23:44]
That’s not the full on training with the Q and a and so forth, but give them a version of that, training that again, super valuable to them, but they’re like, man, they’re getting that inside of the membership. Yes. I want more of this. Another thing that you could do is. If you answer people’s questions inside of your membership, maybe you could make it possible for people on your wait lists to submit questions to you.

[00:24:11]
And maybe you answer them like once a month or something like that. Right. You set up like, maybe you set up like a SpeakPipe or you set up, you know, a simple Google form or something like that, where they can submit a question and you’ll answer it. Right. It’s about creating, creating an experience. So that, that, that that’s almost mirroring the, the experience of what they’ll have in the membership.

[00:24:35]
But obviously the membership is way more, they all the commute, they get the community aspects, et cetera. Okay. That my friend right there will increase your conversion rate for the people on your wait list. Again, you want them almost waiting impatiently, for when your membership opens. Okay. Okay, this is a big question here.

[00:24:57]
And one of Uber importance and I, I alluded to it earlier, but this is about what metrics should you be tracking when it comes to your membership? There’s definitely some key metrics that you want to, that you want to be tracking. And I’m also going to throw in an additional one that you might not be thinking about when it comes to a metric that you want to be tracking.

[00:25:24]
And that first metric is your cost to acquire a customer. How much is it costing you to get a new member of your membership? Now, this is a really, obviously most relevant if you are advertising, right? So you can be looking at in a very simplistic way. You’re looking at, okay, how much did I spend on advertising over a certain period of time?

[00:25:49]
Let’s just say over a month time or over a quarters time. and then how many customers, how many new members join new people, join your membership as a result of that advertising. Okay. And so just as a super simple example, if you spend a thousand dollars on ads over a month time, and you got a hundred new members, well, it costs you $10 to acquire each of those customer.

[00:26:21]
Right. Very simplistic terms. There’s, you know, there’s more that can go into it, but I want you to think about this. If you’re not tracking this absolutely tracking it, but think about it from a high level. Okay. What does it cost to acquire each of my, new members of my membership? Now, again, this is for if you’re running advertising, so cut number one cost to acquire a customer.

[00:26:43]
Because as I always say here on the show, it’s all math. My friend is all just about numbers and I’m not putting, I’m not saying your members are a number. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying from a business perspective, like, what are the stats. What numbers do I need to know in order to have a healthy membership?

[00:27:06]
Okay. So cost to acquire a customer. The second stat that you want to know is your churn rate. And then the third stat that you want to know is your lifetime customer value. Okay. So the churn rate. Sure. You’ve heard that term before. It’s basically, how often are people leaving your membership? How long are they staying in your membership?

[00:27:25]
And it comes out as a percentage, right? If you are less than 5%, you’re doing well with your membership churn. If you’re in that like 7, 8, 9, 10% churn rate. You’ve got some, you’ve got some challenges there, right? If you’re on the higher level there, the membership is you’re, you’re losing people, more quickly than you’re gaining people into the membership.

[00:27:52]
And so that’s a problem, obviously. And so to calculate that churn, the real simple way to look at is, okay. How long on average are people staying in? the membership is a three months is a 10 months. Is it a year? Is it seven months? Whatever that might be from a calculation standpoint. Let’s just say that you had a hundred members at the start of the previous month, the last month right now, not counting new members that you added.

[00:28:22]
How many of those 100 people canceled the members? So let’s just say that 10 people canceled out of those a hundred members. Your churn rate is 10%, which is very high, right. Turn rates, 10% or in a decimal, decimal standpoint. It’s 0.1. Okay. So the churn rate is really very, very important for you to understand, because it informs the lifetime customer value.

[00:28:51]
What I mean by that is okay. If your, if people stay in your membership on average, let’s just say six months and your membership is $50 a month. Simplistically speaking here, your lifetime customer value is for your membership anyway, is $300 right now. What I’m, I’m not counting if they purchase something else that you might have or whatever, I’m just straight up simplistically looking.

[00:29:21]
How long is somebody staying in the membership or how long are people staying in the membership? On average, and then you’re calculating that. Okay. So you can actually do a calculation for determining what your lifetime customer value is. And that is the number one divided by that churn rate that we just calculated, as a percentage, right times the cost of your monthly membership.

[00:29:47]
So as an example to calculate what we just went through, an example would be, one divided by 0.1, and that equals 10. Again, keeping things super simple here. One divided by 0.1 is 10. And so we’re saying 10 months, times, your monthly fee for the membership in this case here, let’s just use it super, super simple $50 a month.

[00:30:16]
So your average lifetime customer value is $500. Why is this important? This is important because it’s all math, right? If you know that it costs you $30 to acquire a new member into your membership. And the lifetime value of your membership is $500, all day long, right? You’re paying $30 to acquire a lifetime customer value of 500.

[00:30:46]
This is also super helpful, too. very important data when you’re doing different offers, right? So if you’re doing a dollar trial or you’re doing a $7 trial, or what have you, again, super, super important to understand what your lifetime customer value is. And again, please don’t get me wrong. I am not equating.

[00:31:08]
A member of your membership as a number or as a dollar figure. It’s not how we roll here, in, in my world and my business. And in the, on this podcast here, I’m just merely saying from a business perspective and the overall financial health of your membership, these are the types of metrics that you want to be looking at.

[00:31:28]
Okay. Now I’m going to throw one more metric that would encourage you to, start tracking and not a lot of people. talk about this. I wanna encourage you to start tracking a net promoter score. Net promoter score is simply getting people’s feedback about their experience. You’ve seen it before. I’m sure like for us, right?

[00:31:51]
If you email, our support support@theartofonlinebusiness.com, if you email that you’re going to hear back from Gretchen. Gretchen is a huge. of our team. And she’s amazing when she responds back at the bottom of that email, it says something to the effect of, customer experience is one of our top values here in the business, which it is.

[00:32:16]
Would you mind us please letting us know how this experience was for you or something like that. And it gives you a smiley face, like one of those faces with the straight mouth and then one with a unhappy face and you just click whichever one it was. And that’s it. So that is an example of a net promoter score.

[00:32:35]
Now you can do all different types of, net promoter score, type of measuring, but I would encourage you to include, include that in your membership because your membership is about your members, right? You are there to serve your members. You’re there to create amazing community for your members. And so.

[00:32:57]
Hearing back from them getting feedback from them on a regular basis about how they’re enjoying it, how they’re getting, you know, what’s the experience like super, super important. Right. and so I would encourage you to include, getting a net promoter score from your membership on a consistent basis.

[00:33:15]
You don’t have to do this like weekly, but I would say, and the minimum quarterly, probably, maybe like even monthly, right. It’s a good idea to, be up on that. All right. The next question, if you happen to do launches for your membership, how do you calculate revenue from the launch? Right? Because when often, oftentimes people are just paying for the first month.

[00:33:43]
So if you’re a membership is $10 a month and you get a thousand people, let’s just say as a number then You’re you you just generated $10,000. But what if you spent $15,000 on ads, I’m just throwing this out there as a number you’re like, holy cow, I just lost 5,000 $5,000 on this launch.

[00:34:09]
Did you, did you really lose that again? It goes back to the lifetime customer value. So cause if you brought in a thousand people and your lifetime customer value is whatever $500 then that’s $500 times a thousand. That is the type of revenue you want to be looking at. yeah. You want to take the revenue from your first month payments.

[00:34:35]
Absolutely. this here by the way, this is an example of where you really want to be careful from a cashflow perspective. If you are running ads to a launch for your membership, because again, Facebook wants their money, in the, not so distant future from when you run ads, So if you are not taking in enough money from your launch to pay your ads, you’re going to have to float that difference.

[00:35:03]
Again, this comes back to though your lifetime customer value of people in your membership. yeah, you want to count the revenue from that first month payment, but you also want to look at what’s my lifetime customer value and include that in the measuring of how successful that launch was for your membership.

[00:35:26]
From a revenue perspective if you’re just new to the membership, if you’re just starting this membership and you’re adding it to your existing successful business, if you don’t know what your lifetime customer value is yet, that’s cool. Start, measuring that and start collecting that data as soon as you can.

[00:35:44]
You’re simply going to have to go on that first-month revenue collection. it makes things a little bit more, I don’t want to say complicated, but there are more things you need to be thinking about when you are doing a launch for a membership, especially if you’re running ads.

[00:35:59]
Okay. The next question. This is, so we’re going to be doing actually, episodes coming up here on the podcast, all about. Retention and how to increase retention. But right now I’m going to give you six different ways to increase your lifetime customer value. So one of the questions that always comes up what are some ways to increase lifetime customer value?

[00:36:27]
If your lifetime customer value is, or if your churn is three months, what are some things you can do to get that three months up? how do we encourage people to stay longer in your membership to continue to get value from it and be part of the amazing community you have created?

[00:36:44]
We’ve got to remember what are the two reasons why most often, why people leave a membership, They say, I don’t have time. I’m not taking advantage of it, or there’s just too much content in there. And I am just completely overwhelmed. See you later, I’m out. Right. And so. The first thing is to increase in your lifetime customer value is remembering that the answer to this question is not necessarily more, more is not always better.

[00:37:19]
Welcome to the theme of this, of my business and what we talk so much about here in the podcast. It’s about simplicity. People don’t want more people are there for results. The quickest way. I should say the easiest way to get from point a to point B. You’re filling that gap from where they are to where they want to get to and then community.

[00:37:41]
So they’re there for results and the community. When you can create just an amazing community experience, people aren’t going anywhere. I’ve got an episode coming up here pretty soon from one of our Accelerator members. Her audience for her membership is women who are 65 and older, and her. average length of time that people stay in there is at least two years or something like it’s very, is longer than a year.

[00:38:11]
And it’s, she’s in a very specific art niche. her name is Allie, Manny, I’m going to be sharing her, her story and her recommendations for you for increasing retention, she’s got 0% churn. Nobody leaves her membership, and they just love being a part of it. anyway, that’s just an example of one type of episode.

[00:38:33]
I’ve got coming up here for you all about retention. remember more is not always better. People are there for the results and the community. The second thing that you can do, or that you definitely want to do when it comes to increasing your lifetime customer value is really paying a lot of tension.

[00:38:51]
And being very, very, very intentional about your onboarding process. So what is that experience like when somebody joins your membership? So they sign up for the membership, what happens next? Right? Oftentimes people, when they join your membership or they buy a course or what have you, they’re like, Ooh, I don’t know.

[00:39:13]
Did I make the right decision in investing that money? Right. They might have a little bit of remorse there. They got some fear. Did I make I, did I just make the right decision? Well, you want to make sure to show them that they’re in the right place. Right. They made the best decision for themselves, whether it’s for their business or for, you know, their, you know, self care, whatever kind of niche that you’re in.

[00:39:38]
You want to make sure that you are letting them know, Hey, you’re in the right place. You just made a great decision. You’re in good hands now. And you’re also part of this amazing community of other people, just like you. So how, what are some ways that you can do that? Give them a quick win. Right? The first thing that people do that we have people do when they join Accelerator, for example, is they do a time audit, right?

[00:40:04]
You’ve heard time audit, Sophie people have actually done it because it’s kind of a pain in the butt, but you know, that’s the first thing we had people do track your time track for three to five normal quote, unquote business days, track everything that you’re doing in your business day. What are you doing?

[00:40:22]
And then how long has each thing. I can’t tell you how many people finish that time off. They’re like, holy cow, just one exercise so far. And I’m already seeing how much time I’m wasting or all the things that I’m doing that I need to get off my plate, or I need to stop doing et cetera. Right? So give people a quick win when they join your membership.

[00:40:45]
The next thing is, can you give them the opportunity to self assess where they are in their journey with regard to your membership or whatever the, you know, whatever you’re teaching in the membership. Can you give them some sort of self-assessment so that at the end of that self-assessment, you can send them down a specific path within your membership, so that it’s tailored specifically to where they are at, what their specific needs.

[00:41:19]
Because again, oftentimes when people come into a membership, there’s so much content in there. It’s like, where do I even start? So the more that you can make it super easy, one step at a time giving them baby steps basically to, Hey, okay, you’re here. Then in that case, what I recommend that you do is you go down this path, you tailor their experience based on where they are at.

[00:41:44]
And you’re starting that out with a quick win again. You’re letting them know you’re in the right place. I got you. The community is here for you. And, this is the content that’s going to help you add value to begin your journey. another thing, speaking of content is you want to show them. In multiple ways.

[00:42:09]
If you like video format, a checklist, step-by-step, you can record an audio, whatever, how to navigate the content. And I’m saying this in kind of just here, but you’re always onboarding regardless of how long somebody’s been in your membership. You’re always onboarding. You’re always sharing. What are the easiest ways to get the most out of your membership?

[00:42:33]
Because we assume that people read stuff, right. Or we assume that people watch a video when it’s like, wait, it’s on my thank you page. Wait, it’s in the first email, wait, it’s in the slide deck that they just got, wait, it’s the first screen they get to. And their membership, whatever it might be, people are gonna, they’re just gonna, you know, breeze over it.

[00:42:52]
We don’t want to assume that they know how to get the most out of your membership. and the last thing on onboarding is just really, like I mentioned before, simply one step out of. Making it very simple and not overwhelming them. What are things that you can do to keep it one step at a time? And I just given you examples there about how you can, leverage one step at a time.

[00:43:14]
Okay. Moving on from onboarding. Another thing that you can do to increase your lifetime customer value is you can offer upgrades to the annual price. So if somebody is in at a monthly price, they’re paying whatever $10 a month. Well, let’s just say you and they’re, they’ve been in there a month.

[00:43:35]
Now you can offer the annual price and you give them like two months free, right? So you offer them all right, Hey, it’s $120 for the annual, but it’s a special now for a hundred dollars or something like that. That’s one way to increase that lifetime customer. Especially if people stay in your, in your membership on average, say like seven months right now, you’re now they’re going to be in there for a year.

[00:44:03]
And if they continue on after that 12 months, you can expect about a 50% conversion from your yearlys. Uh re-upping. If you will, for another year, if you’re doing 50, 50% or above, you’re doing very, very well. Okay. So you can give people the option to, upgrade to yearly, just as an example, by the way. And I’m going to talk about them here from a platform perspective and running your membership.

[00:44:33]
So I use pro.io in my business there where I house all of my trainings, funnels my email or excuse me, my, funnel campaigns.

[00:44:44]
They offer affiliate, to whole affiliate center. I freaking love it. I’m so glad I found this platform this year. So anyway, I was referred to them by a very trusted friend of mine. And I went in there on a dollar trial, was a dollar for 30 days. I was like, no brainer. I was in for like two weeks and I’m like, yep, I’m signing up for this.

[00:45:04]
I absolutely love it. Super simple, best platform I’ve used in my eight years of being an online business. So two weeks in, I sign up for the monthly, you know, the monthly reoccurring fee. I don’t remember what it was. but I was in for like, I dunno, like a month later. So here I’m in now, like six weeks or so.

[00:45:26]
And they gave me an offer to upgrade to annual. So for the next 12 months, and it was like a huge savings. It was. I think it was close, like $700 or something. Like I was like a no brainer. And so with that, even though I wasn’t going anywhere, they just increase their lifetime customer value by making that offer to me after I’d been in the membership for a little while, because they’re assuming if you’ve been in for a little while, you’re seeing the massive benefits of it and like, Hey, here you go.

[00:45:55]
Here’s another, here’s a, you want to pay? You don’t want to pay for the next 12 months. Here’s a special offer. I was like, sign me up. So I upgraded there. Okay. So upgrade people to yearly. another way to increase lifetime customer value is to game-ify the experience within the membership coming up here right around this episode here, you’re going to hear from Jeff Harry.

[00:46:16]
I talked to Jeff on the show here about how to use fun and play to create a thriving member. Right. I know like who would’ve thought, right? Fun and play. What, what are you talking about, Rick? So anyway, how can you game-ify how can you make your membership more fun? Where people get to unlock certain things and win badges.

[00:46:39]
Maybe they win gift cards or whatever it might be. How can you, game-ify the experience of your membership when people are having fun again, when they are just like, I cannot leave this community because it is just so amazing. They are going to stay much longer. So if you’re not already gamifying the experience within your membership, you’re missing a great opportunity, to do that.

[00:47:05]
Okay. So that right there can increase your lifetime customer value. Okay. Two more things. The next thing is always be communicating to your membership community about what’s coming now. I don’t mean like seven months down the road. But like what’s coming up next month. You’re sort of, you know, it’s that cliffhanger, if you will, you know, you’re like watching a show and then there’s a commercial or something like that.

[00:47:31]
And does anybody watch commercials anymore? you’re watching a commercial and you’re like, well, Hey, wait, don’t stop there. Or the episode ends. Right. And I’m like, I’m watching succession. I’m all caught up on HBO. And it’s like, Ugh. They episode ended. I got to wait until next week now. Right. It’s the same sort of thing.

[00:47:49]
And so you can incur if you’re not already communicating with your, with your members about what’s coming up down the road a little bit, you’re losing opera, you’re missing an opportunity to, they’re like, oh really? That’s coming up next month. I can’t wait for that. Right. So they’re staying in, you are communicating with them on a consistent basis, which brings me to the last point.

[00:48:12]
I’m going to bring up here about, you know, another way to increase lifetime customer value. Be doing like weekly emails to your members with highlights from within the membership, things like what they missed or like the top posts or, you know, you can do profiles of different wins that your members had, whatever it might be.

[00:48:32]
The key here is to be communicating with them on a regular basis. Now I heard from somebody recently where they were like, well, I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to be, I want to remind them that they’re paying for this membership. Don’t be that person please. Okay. If somebody is in your membership strictly because they forgot about it, that they’re paying for this.

[00:48:59]
That’s no way to run your business. Right? We’re doing things within integrity. Right? Right. We want people in the membership who want to be there now, are there going to be people in there who frankly have forgotten about depending on what your price is. Right. But they’re like, oh yeah, I forgot all about this membership.

[00:49:15]
Yeah, of course. But it’s not a reason not to email them. if you’re not emailing your members of your membership, because you want to be flying under the radar and you want them to keep paying, you don’t want to remind them stop. Okay. Email them regularly with highlights with again, with community wins, what they’ve missed, what’s coming up, et cetera.

[00:49:40]
These are all ways that you can increase lifetime customer value of your members. I just shared six things. It felt probably like 17. Cause I talked a lot about onboarding, but those are just six things. There’s all kinds of ways that you can increase retention, for your membership. And again, I’ve got some great episodes coming your way, where I bring on some guest experts talking all about how to increase retention, we spend a whole episode on what they recommend for increasing, retention.

[00:50:14]
Like we got a couple episodes just about onboarding. that’s how important it is. Okay. We’ve got three more questions. My friends, we are in the last few here, and this is going to be a quick one because I just talked about it. people often ask me like, what’s the best platform for running your membership?

[00:50:35]
My recommended platform, is, as I mentioned before, 10 X pro.io. One reason why, I liked 10 X pro. You can run memberships, you can run courses, you can run, message boards in there. You can create a Facebook group experience that looks very similar. They call it, the social wall. you can house all of these things inside a 10 X pro.

[00:51:01]
They have pre-written or pre done templates for funnels. You just click a button and like, oh, there’s my quiz funnel. It’s already written out. It just got to throw some words in there and it’s all good to go. order, form templates. They can do it. A Phillip, they have an affiliate center in there, which is very hard to find, not in 10 X pro, but just in general.

[00:51:19]
This is my recommended platform. I was introduced to it earlier this year, by a very good friend of mine who I trust his recommendations a lot. And I was like, where have you been all my life? 10 X, pro dot. and so it’s the best platform Franklin I’ve used, in my eight years because of the simplicity of it and their support is off the charts.

[00:51:41]
I’ve gotten on support with a me like I’m. So non-techie, I’m like, ah, how do I do this? They’re like, oh, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. There you go. and they just knock it out for me. It’s awesome. So if you want to check it out, by the way, I am an affiliate, I should say, of 10 X pro.

[00:51:56]
I actually have no idea what the affiliate thing is for them, but I don’t really care because I like it so much. So it’s Rick mulready.com forward slash 10 X pro. And you can go in on a soup. It’s like a dollar trial. The last time I looked. So platform for running your membership, 10 X proto IO is my preferred.

[00:52:16]
Two more questions. And the first one here is how often the question is, how often do you email your members after they’ve gone through the initial onboarding/welcome process? again, it goes back to what I talked about as a one thing that you can be doing to increase your lifetime customer value.

[00:52:41]
And that is I would be emailing them weekly you’re emailing them a newsletter each week that, you know, contains things like, again, like highlights that they may have missed. what’s coming up, profiles of members, member wins, et cetera, et cetera. Again, you’re creating this community atmosphere or your community manager is creating a community atmosphere inside of your.

[00:53:07]
Membership. Okay. And again, don’t be that person please, that doesn’t want to email your members because you want to stay under the radar. No email people let them know, create a community, make it fun. They’re like, holy cow, I’m getting so much value. I love being here. I’m not going anywhere. All right.

[00:53:25]
Final question. And this is actually a very simple, easy answer. but this is one that comes up a lot. When somebody joins your membership at a specific price, is that always their price? or let’s say they came in at a certain price and then you raise that price six months from now. Does that person pay the new price you’ve increased it to?

[00:53:52]
The answer is you grandfather them in at the price they came in on, unless they leave and then want to come back. let’s just say, you, you have a membership and it’s whatever $20 a month for your, founding members, or your pilot or whatever, whatever it is that you’re, if you’re just starting it out, adding into your business, they come in at $20 or it’s going to be $20, but they’re coming in at, I don’t know, just for simplicity’s sake, $15, very inexpensive.

[00:54:27]
So they’re locked into that $15 price for as long as they are a member. However, if they leave after seven months and then five months later, they want to come back. they come back in at whatever price you’re offering at that time they don’t, they lose their grandfathered price.

[00:54:50]
When somebody joins your membership at a price, that’s their price for as long as they’re a consistent. member If they leave and then they come back. When they come back, it’s there, they’re joining the prices, whatever you’re offering at that time, not their original price. I think it’s really, really important that, you know, we don’t, I’m not, not punished.

[00:55:18]
They’re not, not the right word, but you know, we want to, if somebody is coming in, they’re like, yeah, I’m so excited to jump in here, grab this price. You’re grandfathering them in. If you will. Where does that come from? Grandfathering? I just thought about that. I don’t know where that comes from, who are keeping them at that price for as long as they are a member, but if they leave, they lose that price and they come back in at, you know, whatever new prices you’re offering when they come back in Okay.

So my friends that is almost looking at a time of this episode, almost an hour of, you know, your questions answered. When it comes to memberships, if you got more questions by the way, shoot me a DM over on Instagram. I’m at Rick Mulready and, I’m always open to suggestions of what you want to hear more about here on the podcast.

[00:56:10]
And if you’ve got specific questions, I’ll make sure they come in, or are included in a future Q & A episode, here on the podcast. Or, if you’re watching this podcast on YouTube, for example, just leave me a comment down below and let me know what questions that you might have.

So, don’t forget, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, if you’re interested in learning more about my Accelerator coaching program, it’s application only, so you can learn more and apply over at rickmulready.com/Accelerator.

[00:56:45]
The final thing I would ask of you is, if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, the show here, I would be forever indebted to you, forever grateful to you, if you would take a second just to leave a quick rating and review for the show there on Apple Podcasts, and click subscribe. Regardless of where you’re either watching or listening to this episode, make sure that you click that subscribe button.

[00:57:10]
Or the follow button if you’re listening on Spotify, for example. Okay. It really helps with this podcast here. We are talking to thousands of new people here on the show. Thank you by the way, for tuning in, and listening. This is going to allow us to help even more people create the most amazing, impactful, online business where they’re helping just tons and tons of people while working less, while working fewer hours, so there’s less hustle, right?

[00:57:41]
It’s all about more impact, more profit, less hustle. Alright, my friends, thank you as always for tuning into today’s episode. I appreciate you. I’ll see you right back here for the next episode of the Art of Online Business podcast.