Creating a membership site can be a great boost to your business revenue. Membership platforms allow you to scale from one-to-one to one-to-many business model. (This means that you produce a single piece of valuable content that is served to a large population).
However, membership sites are only as good as their content, as well as their engagement. If your customers are not active and engaged on your membership site, then don’t expect them to renew when the time comes up.
The following list are must-have automations that link up with your membership site.
8 Must-Have Automations for Membership Sites
Free Trial Countdown
If your membership site offers a free trial you will want to include a free trial countdown sequence. The purpose of this sequence is to continue to sell your membership site to your prospects because they have not become paying members yet! This sequence should continue to share testimonials, overcome objections, and promote key benefits of your platform to encourage subscription or purchase at the end of the free trial.
Abandon Cart/Browser
The abandoned cart and abandon browser automations will catch those potential customers that view or started to complete a purchase for your membership site but stopped or canceled mid-order.
Check out the Abandon Cart Calculator on the ActiveCampaign website to see what amount of revenue you may have lost already, by not having an abandon cart sequence.
(For more information on Cart Abandonment, check out the Nitty Gritty Guide to Winning at Cart Abandonment).
Post-Purchase
The post-purchase automation will provide confirmation of the recent membership site order. This automation is triggered by your shopping cart system and initiates both the membership access and new member onboarding automations.
The post-purchase automation should include a purchase receipt as well as expectations regarding the next bill date, refund policy, and what to expect in terms of gaining access to the site.
Membership Access
The membership access automation will generally run on the back-end of your site, meaning that your customers do not necessarily see what is happening. This automation will communicate between your shopping cart, CRM (such as ActiveCampaign) and membership portal to ensure that access is provided upon purchase.
Once access is completed, this automation may send a campaign to a customer informing them where and how to login to the membership site.
New Member Onboarding
A new member on-boarding sequence will promote the features and benefits of your site, post-purchase. This sequence will contain step-by-step instructions, reminders, and specific actions to take on your site.
The new member onboarding sequence is possibly the most critical sequence of your membership site, as it sets up your customers for success right from the start and gets them in and using your portal right away.
Membership Cancelation
Inevitably your membership site will not be for everyone and you will have cancelations. Your cancelation automation should contain actions to remove membership access for the particular customer as well as notifications when expiration will occur, if not immediately.
Even though the customer is leaving your membership product, providing clear communications is a must so that they are leaving on a positive note rather than disgruntled and annoyed.
Membership Pause
A paused membership automation is a great option to recover potential membership cancelations. For instance, is a current member is considering canceling a monthly membership due to lack of time, pausing their membership may be a way to avoid cancelation entirely.
A paused membership automation may include actions to temporarily expire member access along with notifications or a countdown of when the membership will resume.
Failed Billing
The failed billing automation will handle recovering charges when a re-occurring payment is declined by your payment process. Campaigns in this sequence could include a reminder email to update payment information and notification of membership site expiration due to failed payment.
Building a Better Membership Site
If you currently have… or want to have a membership site, these key automations will surely help enforce action and engagement!
What other methods are you using to build up your membership site?
