Developing an Onboarding Sequence
An important component of improving your retention rate is to develop an onboarding sequence. This is a series of emails you send out over the course of several weeks to your new members. The goal is to introduce them to your membership site, get them excited about being members, and encourage them to start reviewing and using the content inside the site.
See, the big problem with selling infoproducts is that sometimes our customers don’t actually use the product. They buy it, they set it aside on their hard drive, and they may even forget about it. And the next time they see a promo for one of your products, they’re not going to buy it since they haven’t yet seen if the product they already purchased works.
That’s why you want people to use your product immediately. The sooner they use it, the sooner they start getting good results. And the sooner they start getting good results, the sooner you’ll see repeat purchases from them, testimonials, and referrals.
So, let’s talk about how to construct this onboarding sequence.
The first thing to do is think about the main features and benefits of your membership site. In particular, what features and benefits are most valued by your audience? You’ll want to focus on these top benefits, especially early on in your sequence.
For example, let’s suppose you’ve got a weight-loss membership site. You have some materials stocked in the website for immediate download, and some of the materials will be dripped out over time.
You’ve determined that the main features of your website include:
· The nutrition guide.
· The meal plans.
· The easy-to-make recipes with videos.
· Access to meal-planning software.
· The exercise guide.
· The exercise videos.
· Access to a private peer-to-peer support group.
· A weekly weight-loss webinar.
That’s eight main benefits, which means your onboarding sequence will be a minimum of eight emails – one email highlighting each of the main benefits of the site.
This is just an example. You’ll need to look at your own specific membership site, determine the big benefits, and use that to determine the minimum number of emails you’ll be sending out.
Secondly, think about the quick wins you’ve sprinkled inside your materials. Again, this is something you’ll want to draw your members’ attention to, as members can apply the information quickly and get results quickly too, which will boost their overall satisfaction.
Now that you know the main benefits and the quick wins that you’ll want to focus on, the next step is to think about what other quick wins and tips you can share with your audience that are related to the main benefits that they most desire.
Let’s go back to this weight loss membership site example. You’ll want to look at the eight main features that you’re going to highlight, and then think of tips or other information you can share in each of those eight emails. For example, if you’re pointing members to the recipes inside your site, then you can share tips for ingredient substitutions.
Finally, you’ll also want to think about what other solutions your audience needs and see where you can fit recommendations in for these solutions. These could be additional products and services that you offer (which is the ideal for maximum backend income), or they could be affiliate products if it’s something you’re unable to offer yourself.
Let’s go back to the weight loss membership site example. When you start talking about food prep, some of your members may not have the time to cook. You can promote a book of “quick and easy” recipes that require only 10 or so minutes of prep work. Or you can promote a meal service that sends people prepackaged, frozen “heat and serve” meals.
Once you have this outline of the main features you want to showcase along with additional tips, tools and information to share that’s related to those main features, then you can begin to construct your onboarding sequence.
For the first email, you’ll want to do the following:
· Thank the member for joining the membership site.
· Give them instructions for logging in (login info and link).
· Reiterate the main benefits of the site to build anticipation and reduce buyer’s remorse.
· Point them to something specific within your membership site. Ideally, if you have a “quick start” guide or video, that would be the perfect place to start. If not, point to something else that’s quick and easy to consume for your members to start with.
Then for each addition email after that, you can highlight one of the specific features of the site, get members excited about the benefits of that feature, and then encourage them to review or use that portion of the site.
The last thing to determine is the timing of when your members should receive these emails. Ideally, you’ll want the first several emails to go out every day or two so that you can build brand recognition, keep people excited about their membership, and get them using the membership immediately. As time goes on, you can start spacing out the emails a bit. Be sure your sequence runs for a minimum of three weeks or so. If needed, add additional emails to stretch out your sequence.
Here's an example of timing a sequence. The first email is the intro email, and the remaining eight emails highlight the main benefits of the site:
· Email 1, send immediately after member joins.
· Email 2, send one day later.
· Email 3, send one day later.
· Email 4, send two days later.
· Email 5, send two days later.
· Email 6, send four days later.
· Email 7, send four days later.
· Email 8, send one week later.
· Email 9, send one week later.
This particular sequence stretches out to a month. If you have any delayed bonuses to offer, you may offer the first one at the one-month mark.
Once your sequence is already to go, then you can upload it to your membership site and drip the sequence out over time. Or you can upload it to your autoresponder and drip it out to your audience.