Over the past two decades we’ve seen the rise of the membership community, and for good reason!
Membership communities offer a ton of benefits both to the person leading and the people who join. However, when you’re running a membership of any kind the work can add up quickly. That’s why you may want to get help from a membership management company.
While memberships can offer an amazing way to grow your community, they also require you to focus on delivering amazing content to your members.
Over the years we’ve worked with countless businesses offering memberships, and they quickly have become overwhelmed by keeping up with creating content for members. Once they’re overwhelmed, something starts to suffer, and typically that’s the day-to-day management of the membership.
To retain your members you want to ensure they have a top-notch experience which means you need to stay on top of all of it. That’s where a membership management company comes in as they take over the operational side and the technology of running a membership.
For many creators and business owners who run memberships, hiring this type of support is the best possible option as they know everything is being handled behind-the-scenes without having to worry about things like if a link was sent out or a call was posted to the membership site.
Let’s dive in to see if outsourcing to a membership management company is a good fit for you.
Benefits of Membership Communities
Depending on the type of audience you’re trying to capture, offering a paid membership can be an ideal way to do so. But well-operated membership programs require consistency and ongoing content creation and that’s why so many people make the decision to outsource to a membership management company.
One of the biggest reasons memberships can be effective in growing your community is because they’re engaging. You’re offering valuable content to people who are already interested in what you do, and you’re providing options for members to interact with both you and other members.
These paid communities offer a way to connect with like-minded people while building relationships and learning from one another. People often look towards membership communities as a means of support, guidance, and learning. Your community can offer value not just through the content you provide, but also by providing opportunities to build relationships.
Depending on the type of business you run, transactions or interactions — like making a sale or having a consult call — that are usually one-and-one done can be used as a jumping-off point to move people towards an ongoing relationship through your membership community.
Ultimately, membership communities build loyalty and devoted customers helping to support your business now and for years to come.
The Hurdles of Membership Management
One of the most important aspects of running a membership community is ensuring everyone has a great experience — and that can be hard to do when you have 42 other things on your to-do list every single day.
You need to keep your members engaged, and if your focus is elsewhere, retention will likely become a problem over the long term. Your members need to feel taken care of and without the proper support and systems in place for your community, it’s much harder to execute consistently.
The reality is that managing a membership consistently requires a lot of moving parts. There are the reminders, the scheduling, the replays, and the tech that all suck up a ton of time.
Each of these tasks is really important for retention… but they do NOT have to be done by you. Your time is far too valuable to spend on these items.
Another consideration isn’t just your time — it’s the skills that you and your team may (or may not) have. All the tasks required to execute monthly events require a variety of skills that may be challenging to find in one single person. Plus, you need effective project management for each moving piece and you likely don’t have time to do that yourself on an ongoing basis.
Any way you slice it, membership management is WORK and if you want to deliver an amazing experience, then you need to honestly assess if managing this independently is realistic. More importantly, if you’re doing it all yourself what aspects of your membership are likely to suffer?
Is Outsourcing to a Membership Management Company Right For You?
Getting the help you need, from a team that has the experience and expertise to take it fully off your plate will help you serve your current and future members with excellence.
Running a community is about so much more than collecting a membership fee. You want to be known for offering a great experience, and this isn’t something you want to cut corners on.
Most of all, you want people to join — and you want them to STAY.
Now, you may be thinking that you already have a community manager, so why could you possibly need a membership management company.
In short, your community manager should be focused on engaging and retaining the members, not trying to handle various pieces of content, tech, and project management in the background.
An experienced membership management company can handle all the moving parts, including things like:
- Event set up
- Worksheet creation
- Email reminders
- Replay processing
- Membership site maintenance
- And more!
By choosing to hire a membership management company, you’ll be able to focus on what you do best with the confidence that your community members are getting the amazing experience they want — without sacrificing quality or adding even more to your already full plate.
__________________________________
Want help with managing your membership?
Simplify Now offers membership program management services so you can be confident that everything is happening on time, every time.
Let us manage the moving parts so you can focus on creating connections and doing what you do best.
Check out our Membership Program Management package right here.