2016-05-23

They key to any sustainable membership site is a steady influx of customers combined with a relatively low churn rate. Getting new members is the easy part. Keeping them is the challenge  — one that ensures recurring income.

Without loyal members, your membership site is ill-fated to become a barren wonderland. Think abandoned carnival: Rusty old rides left standing with ne’er a soul in sight.

Here’s a sobering fact:



You’re right to feel disheartened; that’s a frighteningly high turnover rate. Thankfully, there are a number of effective user retention strategies you can employ to keep users on board and engaged with your site (and with each other) well after they’ve joined.

1. Tease Upcoming Content

To build anticipation around your soon-to-be-released content, give members a glimpse of what’s coming. This not only incentivizes them to stick around, it builds organic buzz which is likely to spread to non-members.

Better yet, give members a taste of what’s to come. By utilizing drip content functionality, you’re able to leak blocks of your new content —  also known as cliffhanger content — to eager members. Leave them with an unfinished piece and they’ll be yearning for the rest.

2. Grant Early Access

If you’ve ever perused Amazon.com (let’s be honest, who hasn’t?), you’ve surely noticed Lightning Deals on featured items peppered throughout the site. These are time-sensitive deals that sell out quickly. Early access to these deals is one of many reasons it pays to go Prime,  Amazon’s exclusive membership. For Amazon Prime customers, a membership guarantees a 30-minute heads-up period in which members get priority access to flash sale items before the general public.

Take a page out of Amazon’s book (pun intended) for your own membership site by granting early access to products, sales, webinar registrations, or content such as courses, downloads, ebooks. Not only does this keep your members engaged, it opens the door for early feedback which you can use to better your offerings.



3. Offer Discounts

Think of your membership site as a rewards program – the longer you’re a member the more perks you get.

For those of you pursuing a paid membership model, discounts can be a great retention tool, but beware; emphasizing them too strongly may undermine the the value of your offer.

Here’s an effective discount idea: If your membership site boasts multiple tiered membership levels, offer an upgrade at a discounted rate to mid and low tier members. Customers love being rewarded for their loyalty. They pay less and gain more value from a worthy product or service while you’ve effectively locked in new recurring income.

4. Reactivate Dark Users

Reactivation, also called re-engagement, is a technique used to reach out to the people who have previously expressed interest, purchased, or otherwise engaged with your company but have since “gone dark” or disengaged. The goal is to encourage them to become active again. The reality of reactivation, however,  is that not all members will be receptive to your efforts.

Benefits of Reactivation

Check out these actionable articles to get you on track for creating an effective user reactivation campaign:

Awaken the Dead! How to Re-Engage Your Audience with Reactivation Campaigns

Reactivate Your Subscribers

The Complete Guide to Reactivating Customers

5. Spotlight Your Members

Acknowledging your members is a surefire way to heighten their sense of belonging. There are a number of creative ways you can make members feel loved and appreciated.

For instance, Online dating giant Match.com will spotlight the dating profiles of select members (with permission) for up to two weeks on its site and partnering sites. Members are incentivized to stick around by being offered more exposure in the dating pool.

You can also try this: Recognize new members, by name, who have recently signed up, thereby rewarding them for signing up.

6. Host Contests/Giveaways

A well-designed contest or free giveaway can be a great way to keep your community engaged and strengthen loyalty to your brand. It’s a proven model.  Contests are fun, there’s nothing to lose and you stand to win something.

Recently, retailer Neiman Marcus hosted a photo contest in which customers could win ascension to a higher tier of membership by submitting a photo of themselves on Instagram with a caption professing their love of the brand.



You don’t need to be a high-profile retailer to pull this off. Your contests can be small and even limited to certain membership levels. Here are some ideas:

Award a gift card to whomever leaves the best comment on a post

Host a photo contest related to your product

Both of these work great on user forums too. Which brings us to…

7. Stir Up Your User Forum

Encourage your members to leave comments on your posts and/or forums!  It’s the best way to instill a sense of community while engaging your audience. Make sure to respond to EVERY comment! Doing so elicits two critical responses:

Encourages members to comment, since they know they will be getting a response from you

Shows your readers that you care about them and what they have to say

It’s also important to moderate all comments as well. Spam equals visual pollution. Allowing spammy comments in your forums/comment sections is an easy way to annoy your members and ruin the authority of your site.

8. Gamify the Membership Experience

Gamification — in all its forms — can be a turnkey solution to guarantee engagement on your membership site and turn your visitors into loyal fans.

What is Gamification?

Here’s the official Wikipedia definition: “Gamification is the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.”

In other words, making your site more intriguing and stimulating using games. However, let’s make something clear: Gamification is not about creating games for your business for the sake of it. It’s about adding the elements that make games so much fun (points, levels, challenges, competition, etc.) to an underlying customer interaction in order to make the experience more exciting and engaging.

By ‘gamifying’ your membership area, your site automatically becomes more appealing, which incentivizes users to log in more often and spend more time interacting with your content.

Gamify your membership site’s user experience and you’ll see amazing results.

Gamification Examples

Check out how these awesome companies are using gamification to encourage engagement and make the user experience fun.

1) Treehouse

Treehouse utilizes tracks, courses, challenges, quizzes, bonuses, points, badges, and perks to teach users how to code.

2) Fitbit

A goal oriented app, FItbit uses celebrity challenges, quizzes, badges, goals and competition to encourage users to take their fitness to the next level.

3) Waze

Its efficiency contingent on user interaction, Waze uses points, leaderboards, and levels to encourage users to report obstacles on the road.

Gamification Resources

How to Use Gamification to Raise the Bar of Your Online Course Experience

The Gamification of Education [Infographic]

5 Ways to Inject Some Buzz in Your Membership Site

What are Game Mechanics?

Gamification: How Competition Is Reinventing Business, Marketing & Everyday Life

The Swipe Addiction: 4 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From Tinder

Increasing Member Engagement through Gamification

10 Best Practices for Implementing Gamification

__________________

For everything you need to know to launch a membership site and more, check out our all-inclusive resource guide The Blueprint to Building Your Membership Site.

The post How to Keep Members of Your Site Coming Back for More appeared first on The ONTRAPORT Blog.

Show more