Memberships
Let’s go back to June/July 2016... Newly ConvertKit Certified Expert ● ● Working as a Tech VA Mostly hourly, but had started to offer ConvertKit migrations and other package work Lots of requests to create a ConvertKit ● course but I had the idea to do a membership Bought convertkitclub.com and created ● a wait list landing page (I think I actually ran some Facebook ads to this landing page?!) Created a Facebook page for ConvertKit Club ●
The ‘launch’ of ConvertKit Club Not even an email just about ConvertKit Club! My full list! 4.8% unsubscribed! The waitlist! On 30th July 2016 I officially opened doors to ConvertKit Club. I had no sales page, just a plain SamCart checkout page.
What was ConvertKit Club? Regular price: $35 Early bird price for August 2016: $25 Included: Monthly Training ➢ Video Library ➢ Facebook Group ➢ A Beginner's Guide to ConvertKit ➢ 15% discount on any of my 1:1 ConvertKit services ➢ Anything else ConvertKit related I create! ➢ Membership site: OptimizePress/OptimizeMember Payments: SamCart
How did the launch go? I sent 2 emails to my full list about ConvertKit Club and promoted quite a lot in Facebook groups. By the end of the early bird (end of August 2016), I had 21 paying members! And then 4 more on a $27 birthday promo. So 25 by early September 2016.
My Thoughts Looking Back I had no idea what I was doing but I got it out there super quickly and I could figure it out as I went with paying customers/members. Go me! ConvertKit Club was not ‘The Thing’ ● “Anything else ConvertKit related I create” was too big an offer. ● My audience was too small to not have a sales page from the start ● Wouldn’t have used affiliates from the beginning ● Would have sent more emails/marketed it more! ●
The first few months September 2016 I tried my first ‘promo’: Dress Your Business for Opt-in Success. ● November 2016 Took off the whole month for wedding + honeymoon. ● Had a fellow ConvertKit Certified Expert ‘cover’ the Facebook group ● Emailed paying members (around 25 still) and offered them a 30 min 1:1 call ● with me or a free month. January 2017 My list was now around 420 people. ● Still around 25 paying ConvertKit Club members.
Trundling onwards into 2017 I wasn’t really promoting ConvertKit Club. It was just this thing I did/have. I had the smallest trickle of new members, many of them got a free month for signing up to ConvertKit through my affiliate link. It was around this time the monthly trainings stopped happening monthly. Elsewhere in my business my rates were going up. I was doing more and more ConvertKit work. I offered several ConvertKit trainings standalone for $29 and then had super messy upsells into ConvertKit Club.
Enter… ConvertKit Rockstars Launched May 2017, ConvertKit Rockstars was a 6 week small group program of ConvertKit strategy and ConvertKit tech. Beta round in May: $497 Next round in August: $697 Included free 6 months of ConvertKit Club. Explaining the difference was a little tricky. Most people who did ConvertKit Rockstars weren’t current ConvertKit Club members. Post-launch survey I offered free month in ConvertKit Club (and got 11 new members)
Branching out from ConvertKit After the second round of ConvertKit Rockstars, I was a bit ConvertKit-fatigued. September - November 2017 I started to branch out, offer some non-ConvertKit related things (Rock Your Tech Specialism and The Lazy Guide to Affiliate Marketing) and grow my list a bit with non-ConvertKit users. By November 2017 I had around 100 ConvertKit Club members. Quite a few weren’t paying though (for different reasons e.g. ~ 30 were now ConvertKit Rockstars).
Something needed to change with ConvertKit Club!
That time I lowered my membership price by 71%! A lot of changes happened in November 2016: Lowered the price from $35 per month to $10 per month ● Gave everyone on my ConvertKit affiliate link free lifetime access to ConvertKit Club ● (instead of just a free month which it had been previously) Moved ConvertKit Club to Teachable ● Launched ConvertKit Rockstars DIY. Early bird price: $197, but ● ConvertKit Club members got a $50 discount and 6 months free in ConvertKit Club. So what happened next…?
What happened next? Well firstly, ConvertKit were not entirely happy about the flood of people wanting my new affiliate bonus and trying to switch. They had to change their policy! I had to manually cancel over $1000 of recurring monthly payments in ConvertKit Club and ask people nicely to sign back up at $10 a month (most didn’t). Moving to Teachable allowed me to do huge cleanup of who had access to what in ConvertKit Club as it’d had gotten super messy. I had 16 sales of ConvertKit Rockstars, 8 were ConvertKit Club members with $50 discount. By the end of 2017 (a month later), I had just 22 paying members (and 8 of those weren’t paying for the next 6 months as they’d just bought ConvertKit Rockstars).
My Thoughts Looking Back Do I regret lowering the price, cancelling the recurring payments, and moving to Teachable? Definitely not! It really saved ConvertKit Club for me. It felt like a fresh start. ConvertKit Club 2.0. The customer loyalty and trust and I gained was priceless. Missed Opportunity: Promoting lowering the price. It was in an email with other things and I was primarily talking about ‘breaking the rules’.
Into 2018 January 2018: ConvertKit Club revenue was $340. I spent the start of 2018 focusing on non-ConvertKit areas of my business - Collective Momentum (a group coaching program), several large international business events and retreats, more ‘Guide’ trainings, etc. Things got pretty messy in lots of areas including my energy, offers and money. 2nd April: I joined Stu McLaren’s TRIBE on the day cart closed. I made a decision and commitment to continuing to include memberships as an income stream in my business.
TRIBE TRIBE was hands down the best course experience I’ve ever had. Watching the live module Q&As and the newly released module was the absolute highlight of my week. The energy of the course, and in the Facebook group - wow. You just get carried along with it. It’s amazing.
GDPR - May 2018 I created a GDPR & ConvertKit Tutorials training. But I tried something a little different… I gave people 2 options: 1. Get access to the GDPR & ConvertKit Tutorials for $29 2. Join ConvertKit Club for $10 a month and get the tutorials, dozens of other trainings and my support in the private Facebook group. It took off . By the end of May: - 70 sales of GDPR & ConvertKit Tutorials ($29) - 36 people joined ConvertKit Club on the GDPR tutorials checkout page - 29 people joined ConvertKit Club off the main sales page - 8 people joined on tripwire (mostly from a GDPR related blog post)
Time to implement what I’ve learnt for my newly doubled-in-size membership!
My first ‘proper’ ConvertKit Club launch 24th June 2018 I announced that doors would be closing 3rd July and when they reopened the price would be doubling. I also offered an annual membership option for the first time. But then… The Name Change happened. 2 days before I was due to close ConvertKit Club doors for the first time.
But I made lemonade! 48 new members from main sales page 10 new members on the tripwire 27 annual members (some were existing members) End of August I did a 48 hour flash sale at new price of $20 a month. By September 2018 I had 245 paying members . (In April 2018 I’d had 54 paying members!)
One final big change In July 2018 I closed doors to ConvertKit Club for the first time. Why? Because Stu McLaren primarily teaches a closed membership model where you do bigger launches. In October 2018 I joined Member Site Academy. They primarily teach an open membership model where people can join all year round. Late October I decided to (quietly) re-open ConvertKit Club. Why? Because I didn’t feel like the closed membership model made sense for my business long term, and the success I’d had closing the doors could possibly be attributed to other things.
My Thoughts Looking Back Do I regret closing doors? Definitely not. I needed to go through that process for myself to really understand and learn what was best for me and what was best for my business. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the closed membership model. It works very well for a lot of people. Both models work. I’ve adapted what I learnt in TRIBE to a way of doing things with an open model that works for me. Memberships aren’t about big launches or new members. They’re about retention and keeping members happy (and paying!) month after month. Membership success is in the long game.
How I run my 350 people membership without a team
Customer Service Direct all ConvertKit related questions into the Facebook group. ● Live chat/Chatra inside the membership ● Saved responses for everything ● I use a Google extension called Gorgias. Cancellations ● Don’t fuss about it. Just let them go. ○ Add to my Google calendar to remove them ○ Failed payments - email and put in calendar ● ‘Boomerang’ emails I need to deal with in future ● Generally prioritise existing member emails. ●
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