You do have a membership site, right?
You can’t really be telling me that you don’t have a membership site?
I’m here to tell you that you need one.
I don’t care what business you are in, whether it is online or bricks & mortar, whether you do coaching and consulting, whether you are in the professional services or food services, or maintenance services or whatever. Do not fall into the “But, my business is different!” trap.
Because it is not.
Here are just a few reasons to have a membership site:
- It helps put an “iron fence around your herd.” It discourages them from trying to escape.
- It increases the pain of disconnect. If you create a compelling membership site that only members have access to, your members will feel the pain if they do decide to leave the herd. They will not only no longer be part of the club, they will no longer have access to the great stuff you provide.
- It helps build tighter relationships with your clients, patients, prospects, or just followers. As we all know, people prefer to buy from those who they know, like and trust.
- It creates a sense of feeling special and valued to be part of the club where all the cool kids go.
- You give your members a sense of community. Almost everyone wants to be part of a community. Need convincing? The meteoric rise of social media is all the proof you need that community is important to most people.
- You can easily create member-only special deals, discounts, early-bird specials etc.
- If your membership site has paid levels (and why wouldn’t it), you have regular income that you can count on each and every time period.
- You can even use a free membership site as an internal training and/or communication center for employees and team members, structured to reveal different content to different groups.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Of course you need a membership program, and some businesses you know have that in a formal or informal way. Like a frequent buyer program. But you will greatly augment your membership program when you couple it with a membership site. In many cases the site is all you need. Look at the ubiquitous Starbucks card. Yes, while that is a membership program, you can look at the Starbucks mobile app as the membership site. How many of the above reasons pertain to what Starbucks has done with its mobile app? (Here’s a hint to the answer….all of them!)
Think that your business is different? Here are a few examples:
For those who follow Dan Kennedy and his style of marketing, they use both off-line and online membership and tiered membership levels. You get the items you pay for each month, depending on your membership level, and you get access to the appropriate archives and resources online.
Diana Coutu (now Diana Cline). She owned wildly successful gourmet pizza restaurants in Winnipeg, Canada. Among her other innovations, Diana had a pizza club where members paid her a monthly fee to be able to order pizzas from her. Before she even opened the restaurant for the day, she had income coming in, and customers/members who felt so special they were completely loyal to her.
I had a client who runs a membership site for people facing time in Federal Prison for white collar crimes. He gives them advice on how to best handle their prison time and what to do when they get out. A unique market for a unique membership site.
Another client has her members pay her to consolidate the dates and times of actor workshops. Could these workshops be found other ways? Sure, but it is just easier and faster to pay her to curate it for them.
Making it work for you
OK, so hopefully I’ve convinced you that you need to do this, but now I hear you saying that you cannot add one more piece of technology to manage….who should have access, and at what level… if they cancel, I have to make sure that we stop charging them and remove their access to the membership site, and on and on. Well, before you go all negative on me….I have a solution to automate the management of your membership site. Let your Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) do it!
We recommend Infusionsoft by Keap
You can really use any of the products by Keap, but generally we prefer their Infusionsoft product for most of our clients. Besides automating your sales and marketing, Infusionsoft or Keap can automate the management of your membership site. Get more information on Keap products.
We are huge fans of the Joomla website content management system (CMS), and build all our clients’ websites using that platform. Since we are such big fans of Keap products and of Joomla, it was only natural that we would build an automation integration between the two. JoomFuse is product we built to automatically manage your membership site from your Keap CRM. Find out more at JoomFuse.com. And if you use Infusionsoft’s eCommerce package, we can even let your members manage their own subscriptions, invoices and credit cards!
If you are stuck on a WordPress platform and are not changing, then Memberium is one of the most popular integrations between Keap and WordPress.
There you have it — not only do you need a membership site, but you can have Infusionsoft lessen the administrative burden and manage your membership fulfillment and marketing. Yet another way you can grow your business with our help and Infusionsoft’s!