Pointless. I was writing, printing, and mailing a 24-page full-color newsletter for 36 people. That’s all that signed up.
It was so humiliating to write and preparing a newsletter for only 36 members. Expensive too — although each member paid $199.00 monthly, total dues collected was not enough to cover my production and fulfillment costs with so few members.
Membership would exceed 360 in just a few months, and a year later there were more than 1,000 members. By then, I’d forgotten about running negative that first month. But at the time, it felt pointless.
The release of my new book, Retention Point, has generated a lot of discussions with potential new clients. At some point, I’ll charge for the subscription assessments I deliver. They really are amazing and well worth investing $2,500.00, $5,000.00, or more. Heck, I put 5–10 hours into reviewing your subscription marketing, onboarding, and deliverables before producing your report. You get a ton of important insights on your membership. However, I’m going to deliver them for free as long as I can. I enjoy the work, it’s transformational for the people I do it for, and it usually leads to a client.
I’ve been doing a lot of these lately because of all the new people who have been introduced to me through my Retention Point book. I’ve consulted with a wide range of people, from a Fortune 500 brand manager (whom I cannot name because of a nondisclosure agreement) looking for a few missing pieces in his company’s subscription business all the way to a wife and husband team where the wife is the marketer and the husband is the subject matter expert.
One thing is consistent for all of them: They’re overwhelmed.
There’s no business better than the membership and subscription business. I give thanks every time I see the recurring revenue deposits come through. It has changed my life. And I’ll never again sell a single one-time purchase.
However, there’s another side to the subscription business. That recurring revenue comes with an obligation — to deliver.
In the subscription business, you and I don’t get to take a month off. We’ve always got to produce. And we’d better make what we deliver this month better than ever.
Among my clients, from the billion-dollar subscription programs to the mom and pop ventures, there’s not enough time to get everything done. When the wife told me she didn’t get time to implement the new marketing copy we discussed, she used almost the exact words the Fortune 500 brand manager had used with me 30 minutes before. One has a marketing budget of $25,000 a year. The other, $25 million. Both are overwhelmed and too busy to get it all done. A large part of the value I deliver are ways to simplify your marketing and fulfillment.
It’s easy to make things complicated. Simplification is difficult.
This is one of the big values I provide my clients: breaking through the overwhelming clutter to identify the few things that make the biggest difference. Another big value is simplifying what they deliver and how they create it.
There’s a strong temptation to add bonuses and deliverables to maximize new member conversion. This is a problem because it rarely increases conversion and makes it a lot more complicated to deliver what you promised.
If you’d like to implement better membership and subscription marketing but don’t have the time to do it, let’s talk. There are likely several important ways you and I can simplify what you deliver, streamline your monthly fulfillment tasks, and improve your member retention while we are at it.
I understand what it’s like to start these businesses and deliver when you only have a few people to deliver to. And once you do have a lot of members, I understand how overwhelming it can become month after month. I’ve been there.
But it doesn’t have to be complicated and time-sucking to grow your membership — in fact, just the opposite. Let’s simplify to make your life easier for you and more valuable to your members. Call/text me at 850-222-6000 or email RS@RobertSkrob.com today.
About Robert Skrob
