Members are the lifeblood of your business

This is a more customised version of the membership roadmap. Have you users answer a series of questions to determine their competency in a certain area. Their score determines what course or content you suggest they should consume next. This can have the feel of a "choose your own adventure" story.

Recommended for: membership sites where you have multiple courses or a large number of resources. You can customise this to your own business based on the questions you ask in your quiz.

Often, people sign up for a membership and then lose momentum. Email your members if they have stopped making progress through your material. You can offer encouragement and help them get back on track.

Recommended for: memberships where members mark off progress objectives as they complete your material. AccessAlly Pro is required for progress-based check-ins.

Remind your members on a regular basis of the features of your membership and the benefits they bring. For example, promote the next month's content, or events that are coming up. You want to make sure your members know what they'd miss if they left. You should use all your communication channels for this.

Recommended for: everyone

A year is long time between credit card charges. You want to offer a courtesy email(s) to remind members that their renewal charge is approaching so there are no surprises. This is also a great time to offer an incentive for them to stay and to remind them of the benefits you offer. Your annual renewal reminder email(s) can include a yearly appreciation letter thanking your member for their continued subscription.

Recommended for: memberships with an annual subscription option

Nurture your members by offering bonuses. These can be surprises, or coincide with a birthday or anniversary (right before an annual renewal is a great time to offer a bonus). A bonus could be as simple as a birthday card or email, or you could offer additional credits/points if you are using an AccessAlly credit system. You could offer a physical product, or one-on-one time with you. You might give them a special PDF, or access to an additional mini-course. Bonuses are only limited by your imagination!

Recommended for: everyone

Gamification is more than just a buzz word. It's a way to keep your members engaged. Gamification refers to features of your website that make interacting feel more like a playing game — and who doesn't like to feel like they're playing instead of working? The following are some simple gamification additions you can make to your site:

• Progress tracking
• Quizzes and personality tests
• Certificates and badges
• Countdown timers

Recommended for: everyone

This is an advanced gamification option. You can do many things with a point system, such as:

• giving points for engaging with the site (for example, for logging in for the first time, or for completing lessons)
• automatically giving points each month
• unlocking bonus content when members have accumulated enough points
• displaying leader boards to add an element of friendly competition

Recommended for: established membership sites looking to further engage their members

Did you know that the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.¹

With AccessAlly, you can set up a Dashboard that displays all the things you have for sale using icons to represent each one. The icons have a locked state if the member has not yet purchased, and an unlocked state if they have. If a member clicks on the locked icon, they are taken to the sales page for the program. If they clicked on the unlocked icon, they go right to the content. This is a nice way to do a soft cross-sell or upsell of new offers to existing clients. Each time they log in, they land on your Dashboard and see everything you have for sale, and will be tempted to investigate those locked offerings.

If your order pages are on your members site, those locked icons can link to one-click order forms, making the checkout process smooth and simple.

Note: The Dashboard can include free offerings too. Nathalie Lussier, founder of AccessAlly, refers to this as the "login opt-in." Members opt in to get free content, and are then given an id and password to access the content on your members site. They see only the free offer as "unlocked," and see locked icons linking to sales pages for everything else.

You can also set up an automated email series to cross-sell or up-sell your members on other offers you have. For example, after someone has been a member for a while, you would reach out and offer them the next level of membership.

Recommended for: membership sites with multiple programs, courses, ebooks, or other offers.

1. https://www.outboundengine.com/blog/customer-retention-marketing-vs-customer-acquisition-marketing/

Members may join for your content, but stay for the sense of community and camaraderie with fellow members. You can achieve a sense of community in a number of ways:

1. Add a Member Directory. Members can see who else is in the directory, view their profiles, and filter or search for members based on elements of their profile.A member directory can also display member successes in the form of badges or a leader board.You could also use a member directory to help members find an accountability partner.
2. You may choose to provide extra, direct communication with yourself or your instructors through interactive private notes or group calls.
3. Consider upgrading to the CommunityAlly level of AccessAlly. This will allow you to add Groups which are a place for your members to connect with other members who are part of the same program. Members in a group are able to create posts on the group’s feed, reply, mention and favourite posts, and view all members who have access to the same group.To take the pressure off your having to deliver all the value yourself, you may want to engage long-time members as mentors, who could interact through the Groups.

Recommended for: established membership sites where communication between members of the same program is desirable

Lead scoring in your CRM can be used to boost membership retention. You'll want to create and track a lead score for your members. If the score it falls below a certain level, you'll take an action (such as sending an email) to re-engage the member.

For example, you could add points to the score every time someone visits a page on your site, or completes a class. A certain number of points are lost over time if there's no activity from the member. When the score falls below a certain number, you can trigger an email.

Recommended for: ONTRAPORT, ActiveCampaign and Drip users (If you joined Drip after June 2, 2020, Lead Scoring is not available).

Cancellation rescue offers have been proven to work, and are a great way to hang on to members who have one foot out the door. When someone asks to cancel, you can intervene with a downsell offer to entice them to stay instead, e.g., a reduced price, a lower tier membership, or with a means of temporarily pausing their subscription. If they turn down that offer, then you give them an easy way to cancel.

Note: If you choose to go the discount route, research by Marketing Land found that win-back offers that included dollar-off discounts worked 200% better than offers with percent discounts.

Recommended for: everyone

Things happen! Life gets busy. Sometimes your members need a break. If they have the option to pause their membership, they may not fully cancel. Give them the option to pause their subscription for a number of months, and restart at any time. Their payments and access will be temporarily suspended until they're ready to rejoin.

This option could also be offered as a cancellation rescue intervention.

Recommended for: everyone