Few notice secrets hiding in plain sight. Lots of subscription owners wish to emulate Netflix’s subscription growth. Yet, they use an entirely different marketing approach. Then, they’re disappointed when their subscriber acquisition languishes with poor results. I’m asked to review dozens of subscription marketing efforts, retention plans and new subscriber onboarding campaigns each month. Almost all of them make the … Continued
3 Ways to Get More New Subscribers
An early business mentor, Bill Glazer, told me in 2004: “Most business owners get a new customer to make a sale. Smart owners focus on getting a new customer to buy a series of transactions.” While I liked the idea of getting a series of transactions from a new customer rather than one sale, my first thought was, What’s the … Continued
Gamify Your Products to Increase Engagement, Improve Long-term Retention and Generate Great Testimonials
If I told you there’s a free way to generate excellent outcome testimonials from a large number of your product buyers, improve engagement, and extend long-term member retention, would you want to know what that is? Perfect, it’s something I learned from Sean Greeley. Sean Greeley is one of the smartest marketers I know. He’s a longtime friend who owns … Continued
Your Members Don’t Exist to Solve Your Company’s Problems Your Membership Exists to Solve Your Member’s Problems
There are so many big promises out there about the benefits of membership and subscription business models that too many people launch, expecting that offering a membership will solve their business problems. You invest money and hundreds of hours creating a brand-new marketing campaign, but it generates so few members you wonder if it’s really worth it. You try to … Continued
Most Subscription Marketers Should Ignore My Advice: How to Decide if I Can Help You
Why are you offering subscriptions to your customers? What is your subscription program for? Did you start a subscription program because it was the best way to serve your members? Or did you hear that a subscription is a great way to make money, and you want to pursue 2019’s version of the Gold Rush of 1849? When James W. … Continued
Are You Fishing With Holes in Your Cast Net? Is Your Recurring Revenue Slipping Away?
Even though I grew up in Florida, I never learned how to fish with a cast net. You are supposed to throw the net into the water, it’s water-laden and made heavy by the lead weights meant to drop the net to the bottom as you let out the line you are also holding in your hand. The net is … Continued
Your Monthly Member Calls Have Become Social Proof Documenting the Problems With Your Program
Members are calling each week, presenting their problems, their self-doubts, their questions about the strategy, their fears about whether the program works — and if it does work, whether it will work for them. Although it’s important to challenge your members to expand beyond their comfort zones, if your calls are one doubt after another, you are sowing discontent, frustration, … Continued
Motivation First, Engagement Second, and then Retention for Life
Zander Marshall, son of my friend and client friend Perry Marshall, told me this quote in a conversation we had at the Connemara National Park in Ireland. I made note of it in June when he said it, and I’ve been reading and rereading it ever since. Too often, when I’m asked to review why a membership program is failing … Continued
Hidden Peril or Power of Your Member Stakeholders
Most membership marketers ignore the people around their member. What does the husband say to his wife about her monthly subscription box credit card charge? What does a wife say when her husband of 50 years, a retired engineer, buys a $2,000.00 subscription trading service on stock options when his past stock picks include Lucent Technologies, Enron, and General Motors? … Continued
They’re Not Buying Your Membership, They’re Buying Your Promo
Membership subscription businesses are a Utopian business model where your revenue grows every month, we all get fat bonuses, and everyone lives happily ever after. Of course, this is crap, but that’s what some appear to promise and many believe. I had a long conversation with a company analyst and business newspaper reporter about a number of subscription businesses and … Continued