Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

To the uninitiated, money-back guarantees can feel a bit like those scenes in cartoons when someone puts a freshly baked pie on an open windowsill. Someone is bound to come along and grab a slice – it’s just too tempting.

But in all our years of running our membership site and helping others run their own, we’ve learned that money-back guarantees are not an easy option for people to exploit. In fact, they can be an essential part of persuading people to join who end up becoming long-term members.

In this episode of the podcast, I do a bit of money-back myth-busting and explain the ins and outs of why you should embrace offering a money-back guarantee (with a few caveats…) 

Essential Learning Points:

• What money-back guarantees are and why they are actually an important part of your marketing
• Answering some of the most frequently asked questions about money-back guarantees
• The fatal flaw in one of the most common objections to money-back guarantees

Important Links & Mentions:

• Advanced Tips and Tactics for Offering a Membership Trial
• Keeping Your WordPress Membership Site Secure
• How to Deal With Payment Disputes in Your Membership
• Why You Should Keep Things Simple with Your Membership

Key Quotes:

“A money-back guarantee shows confidence in your product. You’re essentially saying: ‘we know that our product is so good that you’re not going to regret buying it, but if you do, we’re confident enough that we’ll give you your money-back.’”

“If you find yourself struggling to communicate the terms of your guarantee, then you are probably heading down the wrong path.”

“Have as few conditions as possible, have as few hoops, as few ‘gotchas’ within your money-back guarantee.”

Offering a membership trial can help you take people from sitting on the fence to joining your membership, by giving them a risk-free test-drive of your membership.

But it isn’t as simple as adding a new option to your sales page, creating a great membership trial system is a fine art that will take some time and consideration to get right.

This episode of The Membership Guys will fast-track you to becoming the Michelangelo of membership trials, sharing advanced tips and tricks to create high-converting trial sequences that will help you grow your membership with less stress and better results.

Essential Learning Points:

• The key things everyone offering a trial for their membership NEEDS to make sure they’re doing
• Why charging a nominal fee is often better than making your trial completely free
• What to do about the people who don’t actually make use of their trial
• Specific tactics for taking your trial to the next level and improving conversions

Important Links & Mentions:

• 5 Things to Include in Your Member Onboarding Sequence
• Trial periods and risk reversal
• 6 ways to use onboarding to make new members feel welcome
• How to level up by creating a membership ecosystem
• Calendly
• Intercom
• Active Campaign

Key Quotes:

“Trials get people over the initial hurdle of signing up, get them into the habit of logging into your website and consuming your content, and expose them to the quality of your membership.”

“You don’t want to have the mindset of assuming everyone signing up for a trial is only looking to stick around for that free period. You need to have the confidence in your product.”

“There are two sides to this coin – really making sure that people get off to a good start in their trial and get plenty of value from it, but also future pacing and signposting future value beyond the trial so it becomes a no-brainer for them to join your membership full-time.”

“Once you get people in your ecosystem consuming the basic level of membership content, it becomes so much easier to prompt them to upgrade to full membership.”

So many membership owners live in fear of their members cancelling.

It kind of makes sense, because the goal of a membership site is to retain its members for as long as possible and so when someone leaves - whatever the reason - it's hard not to see that as a negative.

However when a member cancels, it doesn't have to be the end of the road.

In this podcast I talk about why cancellations don't mean it's all over, and how implementing a 'win-back' strategy is essential for getting lapsed and cancelled members to return.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Some of the main reasons why your members leave (and why cancellations aren't always a bad thing!)
• How to create effective win-back campaigns to tempt your cancelled members
• Dos and don'ts of planning win-back campaigns that work
• A walkthrough example of email sequences and promotions that will get your cancelled members to return

A membership launch isn't as "do or die" as with other types of products such as online courses, software or services.

But getting your launch right is important for giving you the initial influx of members that will help you to build momentum within your membership site.

In this episode I talk about how to ensure your launch is successful.

• Ways to build excitement and anticipation for your membership launch
• How launching a membership differs to other types of online products
• The key strategy that will make your membership launch successful
• Planning your launch offers and promotions

The right idea can make or break a membership website.

Far too often, people steamroll ahead into worrying about which membership plugin they're going to use or how much content they need without actually doing the research necessary to make sure you're on the right track.

But how do you know if your idea is a winner?

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I take you step by step through the process of choosing, research and validating your membership idea.

• Why it's important to research and validate your membership idea
• 5 questions to ask yourself to determine whether your idea is a good one
• The biggest mistakes people make in their research, and how to avoid them
• Specific steps you can take to validate that people would be willing to pay for your membership

Amazon have just announced the launch of a new digital subscription marketplace called "Subscribe With Amazon".

This will enable people to tap into their sales tools and, of course, their huge audience in order to sell digital products for a recurring fee such as - you guessed it - membership websites.

Make no mistake, this is a potential game-changer for the membership space.

In this "hot off the presses" episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I explain exactly what this means, how it works and what you need to do to capitalize on this opportunity.

• What exactly "Subscribe With Amazon" is and how it works
• Why membership site owners need to be excited about this new development
• Technical and logistical considerations for adding your membership to the Amazon marketplace
• Restrictions and financial implications of joining "Subscribe With Amazon"

In many ways, launching a new membership website is one of the biggest marketing opportunities you'll experience as a membership owner.

So it makes sense why some people may advocate for constantly closing and re-opening your membership in order to recapture that opportunity over and over again.

But it's not quite as simple as that.

In this episode, I cut through the hype and talk about why I strongly dislike "closed door" marketing tactics and why it might not be the best thing for your membership strategy.

Running a membership site is the best job in the world… but it’s still a job.

Some days you wake up and just aren’t feeling it. Your motivation is AWOL and you’ve not got a colleague to complain to, a different project to focus on, or anywhere to turn.

Well, that was until we recorded this episode of the podcast. Because we have felt that lack of motivation and almost every membership site owner we have worked with has felt the same.

You are not the only person who feels this way and there are some tried and tested ways to get over your slump and stay motivated. We’ve shared our favorites in this episode.

Essential Learning Points:

• Why membership site owners are especially likely to have moments of demotivation
• 5 great ideas for rekindling your motivation and getting back on the horse
• One of our secrets for staying positive that we have practiced since starting Membership Academy

Important Links & Mentions:

• How to Deal with Problem Members Inside Your Community
• Why It’s Important to Take Time Away from Your Membership
• Carrie Green on Conditioning Yourself for Membership Success
• How to Set Boundaries with your Members

Key Quotes:

“Once the day-to-day running and operation of your membership really kicks in, it’s easy to fall into habits and routines and sometimes the shine comes off the apple a little bit.”

“Being a membership site owner can be quite an isolated role because you don’t actually see your members. When you’re working one-to-many, the downside is that you don’t develop relationships that are deep enough for you to draw from to pep yourself up.”

“Even if the people you are comparing yourself to do actually have it all figured out, the chances are it’s because they’re a lot further along in their journey than you are.”

“If you decide to check out for a day or two, the world won’t stop turning. Your members don’t expect you to be in the membership serving them ASAP every single day, 24/7.”

Like it or not, your members won’t stick around forever, losing members is just part and parcel of operating a membership site. However there’s plenty that you can do to make sure that you’re not losing members for the wrong reasons.

In this episode, I discuss the most common reasons people typically leave membership sites, and provide tips for improving your retention strategy to prevent them.

Getting someone to join your membership site is great, but it’s just the beginning.

Before you have time to celebrate, you really need to figure out how you are going to get that member to stay month after month, year after year.

Hanging on to your paying members is crucial to the long term success of your membership site; so you need to make sure that you have a strategy for keeping members engaged.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I dig into how to craft your member experience in order to develop the habits and interaction that will keep members engaged and subscribed for longer.