#54 What It Takes To Run A Successful 7-Figure Membership
Hello & Happy Weekend!
I talked to a successful business owner this week doing multiple 7-figure launches per year of their live programs.
They're gearing up to launch a membership that fits perfectly into their customer journey between their two flagship programs, creating a strategic balance of live launch & recurring revenue.
When I asked the CEO what he needed help with or felt blocked by right now he said "well... I don't know. I don't know what I don't know about running a membership."
And so today I'm sharing the list I put together for him with you.
If you are considering launching a membership for recurring revenue... I don't sugarcoat sh*t around here – memberships are a lot of work.
But of course they can have HUGE rewards. Today's essay will make sure you don't have any surprises.
Let's get into it –
Before we dive in, let's call out a few important assumptions:
01 This is about a community-driven membership, not a content subscription (a la Netflix).
Content subscriptions are a whole other ball game and someday I'll write an issue about those. The TL;DR is that without personalization your retention will tank because trying to find the right content for you in some "vault" or "library" is exhausting.
02 If you are launching a small-scale membership to start, you don't need to consider all of these things out of the gate.
This article is not titled for "click-bait" – it's titled to represent the scale of memberships this list is for.
If you're just launching or early-stage in your business, I don't want to deter you from getting your membership out there.
Think of this as your scale plan 😉
03 I'm not a marketer and so this list doesn't include funnels or landing pages.
Marketing is crucial to getting any sales, but membership success has a lot to do with retention (keeping your members) and your community-growth flywheel (your members bringing in other members).
THAT is product strategy, and that is what I do and teach here.
"You may continue now!" *hands the mic off*
We have 3 pillars to run a sustainable 7-Figure membership:
Community Management
Product Management
Operations
Let's break these down 👇🏻
01 Community Management
Listing community management first because – SPICY HOT TAKE – it's the most important.
If you're not showing up for your community, supporting them, learning from the past to plan the future, then your retention is going to tank.
Programming – Thoughtfully planning events that support member goals, foster connection, and keep members engaged.
Managing Partners & Collaborations – As part of programming you might plan guest events or workshops – the guest experience is important too so that you can invite people back and build a reputation as a great partner.
Event Facilitation – Managing the Zoom room – making sure even a virtual event is an amazing experience.
Forum Management – There's nothing worse as a member than putting yourself out there and getting crickets back. It's important that questions don't go unanswered or shared sentiments or experiences aren't left without replies.
Content – Content that is posted in the forum, you also may consider things like a monthly or weekly members newsletter. This helps create a "sticky" membership that people come back to. Email strategies are crucial for re-engaging members.
Connecting With Members – Someone on the team needs to be connecting with members on an individual basis, supporting them, and connecting them to one another.
02 Product Management
Memberships aren't set and forget. There is a lot of thoughtful strategy that goes into keeping a membership engaging and relevant so that you retain your members. This type of strategic work falls under the product management realm of business strategy.
Membership Design – Everything from the community structure to how they access curriculum, content, or events is membership design. The ability to find what they're looking for and know what to do next will make or break the member experience.
Onboarding – When a new member joins, their experience should be highly curated for the next 30 days helping them create a habit of logging into your membership, and get their first "win".
Member Research – Members evolve, and your membership has to evolve with them. Understanding who has joined and what their goals are will help you with programming strategy and continuing to improve the membership.
Curriculum Creation & Updates – With your member research in hand, you'll develop and update curriculum so that you can support your members in reaching their goals.
Track KPIs – You can't make informed decisions without tracking your membership performance. Track a few metrics like retention rate, engagement, and customer lifetime value (LTV).
Data Analysis – Using tools to analyze what your members are engaging with and what they aren't so that you can pivot the experience. For example, if they're only completing 5% of the curriculum, that is an indicator that improvement is needed.
Product-Led Growth – You need a strategy to create community flywheels. This allows community members to invite and bring in other community members. It could be how the membership encourages sharing on social, or incentivizing invites via affiliate.
Customer Journey & Ascension Strategy – Strategically align membership tiers to different customer stages so that there is a clear path for members to upgrade and move up the value ladder.
Innovate The Product – Use strategic and creative thinking to continually make the member experience better and better.
03 Operations
The nice thing about a recurring membership is that you sell once, and then that payment recurs. But that comes with it's own unique challenges. Not to mention, you have to think about long-term maintenance.
Revenue Projections with assumptions for churn (cancellations), and failed payments.
Failed Payment Management – with recurring payments you will have failures. You either need to reach out to individuals to fix their payment or you could use a tool like Churnbuster to help automate failed payment collections for you. And if all attempts fail, you need to remove the member from the product.
Customer Service Management – you can't have recurring payments in the business and not have someone available to swiftly look into payments, process refunds, and manage the inbox. At this 7-figure scale you'll likely have a lot of inbound, meaning you should be using a customer service tool like Intercom or Zendesk.
Platform Management – Platforms come with updates and often need maintained. For example: checking for platform updates, checking that notifications have strategic defaults, sequences are still accurate and relevant, etc.
Affiliate Management – If affiliates are part of your marketing growth or product-led growth initiatives, managing the maintenance of those links and payouts are necessary.
Legal Agreements – Ask a lawyer what's needed here but at a minimum you'll need terms & conditions that represent the membership product.
Project Management – Manage this entire list of things to do so that nothing gets missed and you provide an excellent member experience that results in retained members and revenue growth.
Membership Business Roles
This breakdown doesn't necessarily equal roles. Each business is different and going to require a unique team structure.
For example, a product leader might come up with the specific membership affiliate strategy, but someone on the marketing team may manage the affiliate program.
A community manager may handle customer service, but at this scale typically there is a specific person or team for handling customer service request and managing inboxes.
What If My Business Offers...
The list above is high level and gives you an idea of some of the things you need to consider to scale a membership product. But there is plenty of unique challenges in each business that will shake up this list.
A few things that aren't considered or included that could have significant impact:
In-person retreats or events management
Highly produced monthly content (think: masterclass)
Podcast bonuses or members-only podcast feeds
Custom membership platforms that need developer maintenance
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If you want help with your community and membership strategy, work with me.