How do you build long-term loyalty that enables you to retain members for 2, 3, 5 years or MORE?
I recently had a business owner tell me, “Robert, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a member been with me quite a while, they give me a glowing testimonial, and then they quit a couple of weeks later!”
Maybe YOU’VE experienced that too?! Why does it happen? Actually, the psychology behind it is pretty simple.
This is why and how to stop it.
In the lifecycle of a customer in a recurring revenue business, there are actually three stages of member engagement.
Level 3 is where members stay with you for years. They recommend you to their friends and they buy additional products and services you offer. Getting all your members to Level 3 is the goal.
Level 1 is where new members join your subscription. This is when your subscribers join your subscription. It’s easy for them to feel overwhelmed during those first critical 90 days.
They may fundamentally believe your subscription program is good, but, it’s also easy for them to decide it’s not for them. So you’ve got to make sure your subscriber gets through this stage without quitting.
When you’re successful, members move forward to Level 2. This is when they experience success and begin to feel good about themselves. success leads to confidence, which is great, because it enables them to continue to consume what you deliver, and get results. See the video for more details here.
The danger to be aware of in level 2 is overconfidence on the part of the member or subscriber.
Left unchecked, they can soon feel that they are “too smart for the room.” While these members are happy to give you testimonials, demonstrate their expertise on your message boards, and contribute to your membership in many other ways, this all feeds their ego. It demonstrates that they have superior knowledge.
The key to getting members to move from Level 2 to Level 3 is to introduce them to other members and subscribers that are getting even better results than they are.
This is one of the reasons why ‘member success’ case studies are so valuable. These stories help members at Level 1 believe that success for them is possible, and it helps them take those first steps necessary to get initial results.
And, these subscriber success case studies help illustrate to your successful members that there are a lot of other, MORE successful members within the community as well. It helps them believe that your program can grow with them.
And, as they meet MORE of these successful members, it’ll encourage them to move to Level 3 where they want to be members for years.
So to recap, the goal is to move members through the 3 levels of interaction and communication so that you strategically give them what they need at each phase of their customer journey.
You must change your communication style, content, and engagement as your member moves through those three levels. Watch the video here.
Level 1 – I’m Stuck, these members are likely to get overwhelmed and quit within the first three months. Help them believe in themselves and get small, quick victories.
Level 2- these members made it through the first 90-days, have experienced success, and now feel much better about themselves. These members may give you an amazing testimonial, and then quit if the member forum has a bunch of newbie questions that they’ve not grown bored with. In general, they begin to think of your program for basic people who aren’t as successful as themselves.
Level 3 – these members think for the long-term benefit where one relationship with another Level 3 member or one of your many features will benefit them more than enough for them to maintain their subscription for years.
Once you recognize these levels within your own subscription membership it becomes a lot easier to recognize how to alter your communication and what you deliver for these three levels of relationship.
It’ll give you a superpower, like x-ray vision to see what’s happening to cause churn for different groups of members and what you need to do to make it stop so you can increase retention and accelerate your recurring revenue growth.
This episode of Be Unleavable® Subscription Growth reveals the lifecycle of a subscriber in a recurring revenue business. you’ll discover there are actually three levels of member engagement. In this episode, I reveal what those three stages are, so you’ll understand the secret to improving retention in the short, mid, and long-term.
Watch Be Unleavable Subscription Growth here.
About Robert Skrob
