Attrition is one of those things that most membership site creators don’t think about until they’ve already gone through with the headache. The simple fact is that you are going to have people dropping out out of your membership site every single month. It’s just going to happen. There is no such thing as having 100% retention – in other words, 100% of the people staying in your site just does not happen. So, how you keep this membership site attrition as low as possible? I have three tips for you. The upfront about the re-billing, send them email reminders, and announce upcoming posts ahead of time.
So first of, be straight up about how you’re going to be billing your members. This seems like it would do the opposite of what you want but being upfront, being honest is going to be what it keeps your members in. So, on your sales letter, be upfront about the payments, tell them what the initial payment, what they get as soon as they make that payment, and then what the future payments will be and how often. For example, if you want a $50 a month membership site for six months, then say on the sales letter, “Your initial payment will be $47 tonight and then $47 every month for the next six months.” That way, when that billing comes in, when they see their credit card bill, then they know exactly what’s that for. And to help that, also state what the name on the credit card bill will look like. And then I’ll just prevent people from forgetting or wondering about what a certain bill is and charge them back without even investigating because a lot of people simply won’t.
On top of that, the next thing you can do is to send out email reminders. So, if your membership site updates once per week, then get them on an autoresponder after they join that sends them an email once per week, telling them what is new in the membership site, what they missed if they have not logged in for a week. The reason why this helps is because people forget to log back in. If somebody joins your membership site and they never get an email from you ever again, then they might go for two or three months without realizing they’re in that site, joined, and then be overwhelmed, confused, and behind. So, send email reminders and you might think that this will remind people each month to cancel. But remember, they chose to join your site. So, it’s in everyone’s best interest that you remind them of what they paid for this week or this month and tell them where to go and click and log in to go get it.
And then finally this brings you to my next point, announce upcoming posts. It’s one thing to say, “Here’s what you missed so far,” but if there’s a really important post coming up, like a long video or a big webinar or even a live webinar, send an email reminder a few days ahead of time so they can take a few minutes or hours out of their schedule on a particular day. This once again helps people to consume your content and to just make time in their schedule to make it a habit, make it a regular thing to check in on what you have just added to your membership site.
Those are my top three methods of reducing membership site attrition and increasing membership site retention – the upfront about the re-bills, send email reminders, and announce upcoming posts.
Go ahead find out how to not just make a membership site but to keep your members in it for as long as possible.