Reducing Churn: 14 Member Retention Ideas

A membership website empowers you to create a recurring and predictable source of revenue while helping others at the same time. However, you might find yourself discouraged if your member base stops growing, or worse—you start losing members. This is where member retention efforts can make all the difference.

Two major challenges membership site owners face are:

1. Members leaving (churn)
2. Getting new members to sign up

If you’re hitting a plateau in your membership growth, these two challenges could explain it. While you should always rule out things like site performance, mobile optimization, your member registration page, checkout optimization, and other technical elements, focusing on member retention is always a good idea.

The first step is to understand what makes members decide to join or leave your membership. Here are a few possibilities:

• The member has achieved their goal and has determined that they no longer need your membership
• They can no longer afford the membership dues or has budget concerns
• The member is experiencing subscription fatigue
• They forgot to update their card details, or a payment has failed for some other reason
• The member didn’t complete the renewal process
• They simply don’t have enough time to devote to your content

Fortunately, there are some strategies you can employ to reduce churn and inject some new life into your member acquisition process. In this post we’ll cover 14 member retention ideas you can start using right away, including a variety of membership marketing strategies to incentivize new member signups.

14 Retention Tips From Kim Coleman [Video]

Tips for Reducing Churn

1. Add New Content Regularly

One of the most common reasons members leave is that they’ve consumed all (or most of) the content offered on your membership website. 

You can solve this problem and improve your member retention by adding new content regularly. Keep in mind that this content doesn’t have to be completely new, totally original, or complete online courses. 

Workshops, masterclasses, live training sessions, or even live coaching phone calls and mentorship meetings are excellent ways to build upon existing material and encourage members to stick around. 

2. Survey Members for Content and Membership Marketing Ideas 

Creating content for your membership website is not an easy task. After a while, it’s not uncommon to be faced with a creative block and get stuck thinking about what kind of content you should create. 

The best way to figure out what formats and topics you should cover is to survey your members and ask them directly. Don’t worry if they suggest a membership marketing strategy that falls outside of your realm of expertise; That is where collaboration comes into play. 

For example, you can always solicit the help of experts to deliver training on a specific topic. Or, better yet: Why not engage members of your own community to host a masterclass or workshop? 

You can even include an exit survey for those who do decide to cancel their memberships so you can better understand how to win them back—or retain members in the future. 

3. Implement Gamification

Everything is more fun when there are game-like elements involved. Consider adding things like quizzes to encourage members to complete lessons or sections of content, and assign them badges depending on their progress. 

You could also implement a points and rewards system that automatically unlocks unique bonus content, deals, or swag upon meeting certain criteria or accomplishing a goal. 

4. Give Members Completion Certificates

Just like gamification, you can provide your members with completion certificates. 

This helps members feel more accomplished and encourages them to complete the content and materials that your membership offers. 

5. Send a Special Gift to Your Members 

Another way to make your members feel special (and improve member retention) is to send them a gift as a part of their member benefits. 

This can be as simple as sending a personalized coffee mug with their name on it, or a branded t-shirt. 

6. Pair Members With Accountability Partners

One of the primary reasons why people pay for memberships is to benefit from the community aspect. You can emphasize this by introducing the concept of accountability partners. 

How does this work? Simply pair members together so they can hold each other accountable to their goals. They will be more likely to complete your membership content and training materials. 

7. Add a Group or a Forum

Another way to capitalize on the community aspect and boost your member retention rate is to create a group or a forum where members can interact with each other. 

That is especially effective if your membership is strictly online and your members come from different parts of the country or the world.

Plugins like BuddyPress or bbPress can help you add a social network or forum to your membership website. You can also use platforms like Slack, Discord, and Facebook Groups to provide your members with a dedicated place to spend time together.

8. Offer a Co-Working Session

Co-working sessions allow members to implement the strategies they’ve learned from your membership while working with others. 

That not only helps them take action, get results more quickly, and stay on track; It also fosters a greater sense of community. 

You can easily set up a co-working session on Zoom once a week for an hour where everyone can show up and put to use what they’ve learned that week. 

You can make this even more interactive by hosting a live Q&A portion at the end of the session—or, a simple discussion where participants can share their biggest takeaways from the session. 

Tips for Boosting Membership Signups

As mentioned earlier, it’s not only churn that membership site owners should be concerned about; Increasing membership signups is an important piece of the puzzle as well.

If you want to maintain or grow your monthly revenue, the following tactics can help you boost membership signups. 

9. Run a Limited-Time Promotion

If you run a membership site—especially one with higher pricing—you can incentivize signups by offering a limited-time promotion. A plugin like Sitewide Sales can help you set up a promotion like this in no time. 

For example, you could run a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale, or a flash sale that offers members a special discounted price on the first month of their membership. 

10. Take Your Audience Behind the Scenes 

Another way to increase membership signups is to go live on Instagram or Facebook and show your audience exactly what they can expect if they join your membership. 

You could also share a peek behind-the-scenes with Instagram Stories, talking about your story, what motivates you to create your membership content, how you want to help your audience, as well as the content creation process.

Getting a view into your day-to-day and learning more about your intentions helps prospective members get more familiar with you and your brand, understand the scope of your membership offering, and determine if your membership is right for them.

In other words, it builds trust and rapport with your audience, which is hugely effective when it comes to the decision to join your membership website. 

11. Use Facebook Retargeting 

Some people will visit your website, check out what you have to offer, and then decide not to complete the signup process. You can use Facebook retargeting to continue marketing your membership to these people, even after they leave your site. 

First, make sure you have Facebook Pixel installed on your website. Then, create a Facebook advertising campaign for people who have visited your website before. 

This serves as a gentle reminder of what your membership has to offer and can encourage them to come back and sign up. 

12. Celebrate Your Members on Social Media

Alternatively, celebrating your existing members on social media is another way to boost member retention. After all, who doesn’t love some feel-good recognition? 

Share member wins and achievements to show potential members that they could achieve the same results if they join your membership. 

You can take this a step further by having a weekly live video or monthly blog post where you interview your current members and ask them to share their honest opinion about their experience with your membership. 

13. Release a Sample of Your Membership Content

For people considering whether or not to join your membership, one potential barrier could be that they don’t know what type of content to expect. Or, they might wonder if your teaching style and methods are right for them. 

Quell their doubts and increase membership signups by releasing a limited portion of your membership content for free. For example, releasing the first few modules or lessons of your membership content for free could serve as a gateway into your membership

This allows prospective members to get a taste of your content and become familiar enough with you and how you present your material to make a confident purchase decision.

14. Offer a Trial Period

Lastly, suppose you don’t want to release any of your membership content for free. In this case, you may want to consider offering a trial period. This allows people to try out your membership without assuming the full risk of purchasing.

You can offer a trial for free, or at a reduced price. A common strategy is to offer half off or a $1 trial period of 7, 14, or 30 days. 

This gives potential members a low-risk way of signing up for your membership and seeing what you have to offer. Once the trial period is up, the membership resumes at the regular price. 

For more information, check out our Mega Guide for Trial Memberships.

More Signups + Less Churn = Happy Membership Site Owner

A membership website is a great way to share your expertise, help others, and create or enhance a thriving online business, but it does take some work to nurture a member base that continues to grow over time.

Plateaus shouldn’t stop you! 💪 Hopefully the tips in this post have given you some new inspiration and guidance when it comes to reducing churn and incentivizing new member signups.

If you’d like some additional “big picture” strategies for member retention, check out these four membership retention strategies that focus on business model decisions.

It’s also important to remember that churn is a natural occurrence for many membership businesses, especially if your content is designed to help members achieve specific, measurable goals. Be sure to map out the member’s journey through your content if you want to get a good understanding of where this point will occur. That way, you can prepare to offset the churn in other ways, such as creating additional membership levels or offering related products or services that might interest members who are approaching the natural end point.

Ready to add memberships to your existing business, start a new membership business, or take your membership site to the next level? Paid Memberships Pro has your back—with many powerful features for free, premium plans for every budget, and Add Ons and integrations for all kinds of different needs.

Download PMPro today and start building your dream membership site.