membership website

About This Episode

In this episode, we talk with association management royalty, Velma Knowles, about the four pillars of membership growth, discussed in her latest best-selling book about how to scale your membership. We start by busting some myths associations hold around membership and replacing them with data-driven pillars that are universal to all associations.

About Our Guest

Velma Knowles is a coach and consultant to associations and non-profit leaders around the what, when and how of growing membership, engaging boards, and delivering member relevance. Velma works with leaders to create sustainable membership growth by focusing on the 4-drivers of growth: Clarity in Numbers, Alignment in Resources, Relevance in Value, and Accountability in Planning. She is a speaker and best-selling author.

Full List of Questions We Asked Velma

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

What are the biggest misconceptions around membership growth?

Can you tell us more about how association employees can avoid working in silos and how to break down those silos?

You mentioned that there are 4 key ingredients to membership growth. Can you talk about those key drivers of growth?

Out of those 4 key drivers, where should associations start?

How can we be sure to listen to the voices of members?

When we are onboarding new members, what can we do to ensure a good member journey and start building the relationship right away?

For a large association that has many new members, it may not be realistic to reach out to each new member. How do we build relationships at scale?

What are the key metrics associations should track about their members?

Why do you see a membership website as important for associations?

What features should associations have in their member portal?

We hear often hear from clients that having a login area is a barrier for members. Do you think it is inherently a barrier?

Many associations have benefits that are not being used or only used by a few members. Is there value to keeping those benefits around or time to retire them?

What universal benefits should be in an association’s portal?

Audience Questions

Are membership drives out of fashion?

How do we engage members with limited resources?

How often should we add to our different membership tiers?

What are some valuable strategies to recover members that were lost during the pandemic?

How can we turn engagement into revenue opportunities?

Closing Remarks

What is your biggest takeaway for our audience?

Can you share a personal habit that has contributed the most to your success?

Special acknowledgement to our guests for providing powerful insights into membership management. 

Follow our podcast for more free educational content.

Visit memberlounge.app to learn more about us.

Contact anika@grype.ca for questions or support.

About This Episode

In this episode, we talk about the value of creating a change management plan throughout the process of your association's next big tech transition (eg. membership site, member portal, website, etc.). It will make for a smoother development process and launch, where your stakeholders, staff and members can embrace the change rather than resist or reject it.

About Our Guest

Betsy Bond has been the president and founder of Bonding Change (a change management consulting firm) for the past 18 years and a change management instructor at the prestigious Prosci, the global leader of change management solutions.

Ready to Improve the User Experience of Your Members today?

Get your copy of the Member-Centric User Experience Checklist & Worksheet that we put together from recommendations made by Elizabeth during this episode.

Full List of Questions We Asked Betsy

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Change management is about getting people prepared for a change that is to come. It’s not about the technology so much, it’s about all the people who will be involved in the change, the staff, the users, the senior leaders.

We are all more or less familiar with project management, but where does change management come in?

When do we start the change management process, and when does it end?

In a typical project that we take on, there is a technical component and a people component. Our developers take care of the technical. On the people side, there is the marketing team (trying to recruit new members), the membership team (trying to keep members happy), and the financial team (who has to collect financial data), how would you get all teams involved?

How would you go about performing a stakeholder analysis?

At which point in the project would you bring the stakeholders into to the discussion about the project?

If we start with high-level stakeholders, is it possible that relevant information will be missed that the high-level group doesn’t have?

How do change management and agile design work together?

How do we overcome the adage that people are resistant to change?

How do we overcome the hurdle of the people who are most resistant to the change?

Do you have any advice to roll out a membership site to the membership? Which members do you involve in the process?

Let’s talk about improving the user experience for new members: do you have any advice for how to onboard members to new features in the membership site? 

What issues do you see come up with membership sites and member portals?

Let’s talk about training and providing on-demand support in your technology.

Sometimes we see that an association’s membership team will not have control of the membership site, or a marketing team that does not have control of the website — how would you resolve this conflict to get everyone’s voice heard?

What are the best road mapping or change management tools to use for a project?

Would you encourage annual surveys? What is the best way to design a survey?

How long does it take for members to get used to a new portal?

What is your biggest takeaway for our audience?

Can you share a personal habit that has contributed the most to your success?

Get Started

Get a headstart on planning out the phases of the next big change at your association with our downloadable Change Management Planner & Worksheet.

Special acknowledgement to our guests for providing powerful insights into membership management. 

Follow our podcast for more free educational content.

Visit memberlounge.app to learn more about us.

Contact anika@grype.ca for questions or support.

The data shows that most associations took a hit through Covid. Let's dive into reengaging your members and lapsed members through a multi-channel communications approach. We discuss using different approaches for new members, existing members, veteran members and members who left. Let's renew buy-in from your volunteers and staff with an action plan for growth.

We are honoured to have Scott as our guest for this episode. Scott has spent the past 20 years working with hundreds of associations. He is an accomplished speaker and writer and respected guru in the nonprofit space. 

In this episode, Scott shared with us many great insights and valuable advice about membership marketing in our current pandemic situation.  Here are the questions we asked him with a  timestamp for your quick reference.

1:50 Today we are going to talk about post pandemic marketing. Given that things are starting to open up, how should we approach our marketing in this climate?

5:01 Associations generally know how to help out their members on a professional level. How can associations help out their members on a personal level?

6:10 Are there certain areas of marketing that we should be focusing more on moving forward, such as online events?

8:29 If an association has not been actively involved on social media platforms, is there an easy way for associations to identify where their members are online?

10:32 Over the pandemic, associations have been doing a lot of webinars. What we are hearing from some of our clients is they are more likely to do smaller events moving forward than bigger, less frequent events like an AGM. What do you suggest?

14:12 Do you have any advice for how associations can make webinars more engaging for their audience and maintain that communication after the webinar?

17:08 If you were to design your marketing campaigns, how would you design them differently for your prospects versus members, or if you have different member segments?

21:40 You have been running marketing campaigns for associations for a long time; do you have any thoughts on a good balance between how much communication is too much?

24:34 On the other end of the spectrum, we also want to track conversion, do you have any marketing metrics that you prefer to track? 

28:29 When someone is investing in smaller campaigns to bring their prospects to the end of the marketing funnel, in their journey in between, what do you think is important to track? 

30:51 Do you have any good examples of freebies that you can give away to members? 

34:43 It is usually harder to sign up a new member than to keep an existing one. How do you design the member experience throughout the year to increase member retention rates? 

37:10 How do we get our members to get more engaged in our mentoring program and stay committed to it? 

39:55 Is there value in providing content that is unrelated to your organization but better valued by your market sector?

43:31 Do you have any strategy or advice on how we can re-engage lapsed members? 

46:37 How can I communicate with my members using a lead to coordinate discussion with a number of volunteers or members? 

50:00 Do you have one key takeaway for our audience today? 

51:12 Can you tell us about a personal habit that has contributed to your success? 

51:50 Can you share with us a tool or a strategy that makes you effective at your work? 

Special acknowledgement to our guests for providing powerful insights into membership management. 

Follow our podcast for more free educational content.

Visit memberlounge.app to learn more about us.

Contact anika@grype.ca for questions or support.

Show Notes

IIn part one, Elizabeth Ionita and Chanelle Lavigne shared their vision for creating a business platform where professional women could come together to find resources for personal and professional exploration and development. Tune in as Lori Vajda and Nola Boea share their vision for creating this recurring revenue stream. Will Elizabeth and Chanelle be in agreement? If you’ve dreamed of starting a membership business you will not want to miss this episode. Get access to the handouts, resources and step-by-step guidance so you can take small steps leading to big effects and for creating and launching a successful new membership business.

Thanks for Listening!

You can subscribe to Lori and Nola's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

We love hearing from you! Leave or speak your message here

If you haven’t already, please connect with us on Facebook! 

Would you like to be a featured guest or have your question, comment or review mentioned? Ask Muse!

Sticky Brand Lab

A positively exciting business opportunity is in the works. Come have a listen!

In This Episode You’ll Learn

• The most compelling reasons for starting a membership business...we’ll give you one hint, recurring income.
• Why starting your membership business with a small audience is an advantage. 
• How to avoid overwhelm when launching a new business.
• What makes or breaks most membership sites. 

Although membership businesses make money from paying members, you don’t need a large following to start this type of business. What you do need are true fans. What are fans? These are the kinds of members who are excited to buy your products and services. These fans have respect and trust for the information you provide and are therefore willing to pay for your offerings such as courses, your e-books, your newsletter or etc. Listen in as we share our suggestions, ideas, and action steps for launching and scaling a membership business idea.

• (2:10.12) How an economic crisis launched  Airbnb, Slack, WhatsApp, Uber, and Square and why a crisis can be a great time to launch a new business idea.  
• (04:43.60) The 6 steps to building a successful paid membership business. 
• (05:59.01) Why narrowing your audience can actually give you an edge.
• (08:01.23) The top three reasons for starting a paid membership business.
• (09:13.02) The four most common types of membership business platforms.
• (13:30.36) The 3 Bs to building a unique brand for a membership business. 
• (15:24.03) 4 benefits of using an acronym to explain your business.

Resources

This episode was supported by: Ask Muse

Podcast Transcript – https://www.stickybrandlab.com/podcast

Show Notes

Have you dreamed of starting a networking community? Maybe you’ve wondered if it’s possible to create a thriving community in which members would be willing to pay a fee to access premium content, resources and attend ‘members only’ events. In this episode of Ask Muse, guests Elizabeth Ionita and Chanelle Lavigne ask Nola Boea and Lori Vajda to help them explore this business idea. 

Having identified a missing need for many professional women, that of having access to highly recommended personal and professional mentors, coaches and counselors is what propelled Elizabeth and Chanelle to consider this model. The two women sought out Ask Muse for help creating a business model, strategy, and messaging that would resonate with their like minded prospective audience.

Thanks for Listening!

You can subscribe to Lori and Nola's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

We love hearing from you! Leave or speak your message here

If you haven’t already, please connect with us on Facebook! 

Would you like to be a featured guest or have your question, comment or review mentioned? Ask Muse!

Sticky Brand Lab

A positively exciting business opportunity is in the works. Come have a listen!

In This Episode You’ll Learn

• One of the main reasons entrepreneurs want to start a membership business is because it has the possibility to generate a predictable and recurring revenue stream.
• Why so many major publications are putting their premium content behind a paywall.
• You don’t need to have a massive following to create and launch a successful membership business model.
• What the number one advantage is for starting your membership business with a small audience. 

Whether you’re at the beginning and just contemplating the idea of starting a membership business or you’re seeking out tips to make your membership even better, this episode will help you. And, best of all, launching a successful membership business does not require a massive audience.

(4:50.37) How the pandemic is giving fuel to new business opportunities? 

(07:27.15) Why you need this shared goal if you want to build a community whose members are willing to pay to join. 

(12:14.10) This is the major benefit prospective participants consider before deciding whether or not to become a paid member.

(15:18.00) Questions to consider before deciding to start a membership side business? 

Resources

This episode was supported by: Ask Muse

Podcast Transcript – https://www.stickybrandlab.com/podcast

For full show notes click here

Enjoyed the episode? Leave us a review here :)

Would you like to be a guest? Apply here

Questions or comments? Please email podcast@memberspace.com