Crafting and Delivering Membership Content

One key to retention is to drip content out over time, rather than give your members instant access to all of the content at once. This is particularly important if you have a large or complex topic.

If you give the content all at once, some people are going to be overwhelmed. They might glance through the content to see what all is included, but they set it aside for “later” to look at it more thoroughly. And as you likely guessed, “later” doesn’t come. The member may stop opening any emails you send them, and they may ask for a refund as well.

Now if you drip that content instead, then you can pace your members. And every time you send a new piece of content, you can send them a teaser that lets them know the benefit of that particular piece and encourages them to read or watch the content. Plus, every time you send new content, you get a chance to recommend another related offer.

Simply put, getting your members to read and use the content is a big key to a high customer satisfaction rate, which leads to a high retention rate.

The second retention key when designing your content is to be sure you’ve got high-quality content that’s engaging and solves a problem.

Let’s start with the “high quality” component. For starters, you want to make sure your content is “fresh” – something a little different than your users have seen from others.

If you’ve created an entirely new strategy or you’ve done some other pioneering in your niche, that’s cool. You’ll definitely want to share your new strategy, as doing so will boost the value of your content and instantly establish you as an expert.

But even if you’re not a niche pioneer, you can still create some content that makes your membership site stand out. For example, you can:

·         Share fresh tips. Not everything you share needs to be 100% new and never-before-seen. After all, that’s basically impossible. However, simply sprinkling in a few fresh tips will make your entire piece of content seem fresh.

·         Share old content in a new way. For example, instead of just sharing a straightforward step-by-step process, create a “formula” around this process and give your formula a name. While the underlying strategy might be similar to what others are sharing, yours will stand out because of the new name.

Another step to take to make your content more useful is to sprinkle “quick wins” throughout it. A quick win is a tip or other piece of advice your audience can implement fairly quickly – and once they implement it, they’ll get fast results too.

Typically, most of the content you’re sharing involves processes and help with goals that may take months and months to achieve. Quick wins let the user see a small bit of progress fast, which in turn will keep them motivated to keep going. And when people keep using your strategy and get results, then you’ll have a higher retention rate.

Secondly, as mentioned, your content needs to be engaging. There’s no sense in providing solid solutions if your content is so boring to read or watch that no one can actually get through it. That’s your ticket to refunds and low retention rates.

When it comes to engagement, think “edutainment” – this means your content should entertain while it educates.

You can do this by:

·         Keeping a light, conversational tone throughout your content. Picture writing or speaking to a friend of yours, and then use a similar friendly tone in your membership content.

·         Tell relevant stories. In particular, share stories that are humorous, embarrassing or frightening, as engaging your audience’s emotions is a good way to keep their eyes on your content.

·         Be funny. A few light jokes will keep people entertained. But know your audience – you don’t want to cross into humor that’s offensive.

·         Share a unique viewpoint. Approach the content using a unique hook or angle, such as by comparing your niche topic to something outside the niche.

And of course, if your content is in the form of a video, then be sure you’ve got clear audio and video, plus you pace the video in a way for maximum engagement. Take a look at some of the top YouTubers with some of their top videos – take note of how they change scenes and angles frequently to keep the pace of the video brisk and engaging.

Finally, be sure your content includes your branding and that it looks professional. Someone should be able to glance at your content and instantly recognize it as belonging to you.

For example, if it’s a piece of text content, then there should be a footer on every page that includes your branding. Or if it’s a video, someone who watches the video for a few seconds should see you or your branding, either of which will tell them it’s your video.

Secondly, you want to make a great impression by ensuring content looks professional.  If needed, you can hire someone to proof and polish your content for you. You can also hire a designer to layout the interior of your PDFs. If you’re doing videos, you might hire someone to produce the final videos so that they’re high-quality and professional.

One final key to creating good content that boosts retention rates is to be sure your content is evergreen. When you’re running a membership site, you may create content today that goes out to members in six months, a year or more from now. You don’t want to have to constantly update this content, which creates a lot of work for you. And you certainly don’t want to send outdated content, which will impact refunds and your retention rate.

The key to creating evergreen content is to stick to sharing “tried and true” strategies and tips. Don’t share fads that are likely to go out of style. Don’t share untried strategies that may later prove to be ineffective or even dangerous.

Likewise, be sure the way you create your content is also evergreen. You want to avoid any references that will date your content. This includes references to actual dates, seasons, news events, pop culture references or anything else that will give a clue to the viewer that the content was created some time back. The goal is to make your content look like it was JUST created moments ago… even if it was created six months ago.

So, the bottom line here is to be sure to deliver high-quality branded, professional, engaging and evergreen content, all of which will help you maintain a good retention rate.