347 - How to Identify Your Member Drop-Off Points

03/22/22 • 18 min

Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

What do you fear most as a membership site owner?

Let us guess... Cancellations?!

We'll let you into a little secret...

You're not alone in this.

Cancellations are without doubt the big bad boogeyman of the membership world...

Even your friendly neighbourhood Membership Geeks face this fear with you!

No one likes them...

The truth is, cancellations are inevitable.

But there are ways to minimize them...

Especially if you can predict drop-off points in your memberships ahead of time and take action to fix them.

In this episode of the Membership Geeks podcast, we’re going to share with you how to do just that.

Essential Learning Points

5 key drop off points majority of memberships face.
How to make people want to stay after the initial 30 day period.
Strategies to put in place to maximize your number of annual renewals.
How to identify and prevent seasonal cancellations.

Key Quotes:

“Sometimes the reasons for cancellation are beyond your control. And often, they're even beyond the control of your members. Life happens!”

“Within the first month when someone joins your site you'll see several different stages that can form a common drop-off point - a time when you lose a lot more members than normal - You need to ensure that you have a strong onboarding process in place to minimize the number of drop-offs.”

“If somebody joins for 12 months and this period is coming to an end, they have a big decision to make whether or not to renew, as it's a bigger lump sum investment rather than a monthly payment.”

“It’s a worthwhile exercise to monitor the performance of your membership site, identify patterns with sign-ups and drop-offs, and average member attendance. But also, to try to monitor, predict and pre-empt seasonal drop-off periods or topic-based drop-off periods according to your audience profile.”

What do you fear most as a membership site owner?

Let us guess... Cancellations?!

We'll let you into a little secret...

You're not alone in this.

Cancellations are without doubt the big bad boogeyman of the membership world...

Even your friendly neighbourhood Membership Geeks face this fear with you!

No one likes them...

The truth is, cancellations are inevitable.

But there are ways to minimize them...

Especially if you can predict drop-off points in your memberships ahead of time and take action to fix them.

In this episode of the Membership Geeks podcast, we’re going to share with you how to do just that.

Essential Learning Points

5 key drop off points majority of memberships face.
How to make people want to stay after the initial 30 day period.
Strategies to put in place to maximize your number of annual renewals.
How to identify and prevent seasonal cancellations.

Key Quotes:

“Sometimes the reasons for cancellation are beyond your control. And often, they're even beyond the control of your members. Life happens!”

Previous Episode

346 - How Much Time Does it Take to Run a Membership Site?

How much time does it actually take to run a membership site?

This is probably one of the most common questions we get asked...

And as with many things when it comes to memberships, there isn't a 'one size fits all' answer.

Some membership sites can quietly tick away in the background without really needing much attention...

Others, however, need you to work on them pretty much daily.

How much time you dedicate to running your membership is entirely up to you...

It could be half an hour a day, 5 hours a day or 8 hours a day.

But how do you decide how much time is needed?

In this episode of the Membership Geeks podcast, we explore where you’ll most likely spend the bulk of your time when managing your site, how to decide what tasks to spend your time on and we share some top time-saving tips to help you maximize your input into your site.

Essential Learning Points:

The benefits and drawbacks on your time spent running live sessions.
Content creation is one of the most time consuming elements of running your membership.
The difficulties gauging time of handling customer service.
Marketing your site - how the closed-door model might not be the time-saving option that it appears to be.
Why you should hire a team to save you time managing your membership.
The importance of picking the right structure for your membership.
How to manage your accessibility to members.

Key Quotes:

“When it comes to handling customer service it’s very difficult to gauge how much time this is going take you. That's because it's variable. It will depend on how the dynamic of your community forms and it will change over time as your site evolves.”

“Not every task for your membership site needs to be done by you”

“If you know that you don't have the time to commit to engaging with and growing your community, then it may be better for you to forego it altogether. Having no community is better than having one that's as dead as a dodo.”

“You don't have to be totally accessible to your members. There are benefits to actually taking a step back”

Next Episode

348 - How to Build a Membership Website in Under a Day

Trying to build a membership website is a sizable undertaking for anyone...

But building one in under a day, that sounds unrealistic, right?

After all, you've got to wrestle with technology, create content and focus on building your audience - quite often ahead of your launch - all while generating a buzz to ensure you get that initial influx of members when you open the doors to your membership...

There are a lot of plates to spin...

Surely it's not possible to do that in under a day?

Well, if you're able to bring some of those elements to the table from day one...

So if you already have an established audience who are eager to buy from you...

Or a wealth of content curated from past projects, maybe via courses you've previously released or workshops you've delivered...

Then it’s entirely possible to build a membership website a lot quicker than you may think - in under a day.

And in this episode of The Membership Geeks podcast we share how.

Essential Learning Points:

This approach isn’t right for everyone.
You need to make sure your expectations about the end result are realistic.
Keep things simple, especially when it comes to technology.
Stick to the essentials, avoid the bells and whistles at this stage.
Create your content in real-time and utilize live video.
Make lots of noise when you launch.

Important links and mentions:

Key Quotes:

“What we’re shooting for here is “good enough”. So you have to accept that it won’t be everything you want it to be initially, however the best memberships are always evolving and are a constant work in progress, so the good news is that you can make improvements as time goes on.”

“As long as people can register, pay and log in, and can then access protected content, you have a working membership site.”

“Don’t create any content upfront. Instead, create a calendar of upcoming live webinars that will be only available only to paying members.”

“Whatever the reason for needing or wanting to build your membership website in just a day, it’s important to recognise that this approach shouldn’t become the norm as your membership grows.”