In this bonus episode of The Publisher Podcast, sponsored by Memberful, we hear from Jen Matichuk, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Memberful.
Jen spoke about how membership is a powerful way to diversify revenue, whether you need to introduce membership tiers (spoiler: you don’t), and how to deliver value that converts.
She also explores the value of community, and why evolution and iteration are key for retention.
Here are some highlights, lightly edited for clarity:
What makes a thriving community
With memberships, we can often say, your membership is your community. I don’t think that’s always true. I think in order to have a version of a community, it involves actually having conversations and creating that value that these people are talking amongst each other, and they’re talking with us, and we are creating conversation based on what they’ve subscribed to. Based on the content we put out, our community is engaging not just with it, not just with us, but with each other.
When you’re building something out, that’s the ultimate goal is that you’re creating a dialogue that expands beyond what you’ve done. That’s what social media is all about. Somebody shares an article, and they hope that other people are going to comment on it so they can talk about it amongst themselves.
If you’re creating that within your offering, and all these people are meeting each other… you’re building out something that is building loyalty. It’s building high retention, because they know that if they left that community, they wouldn’t be able to have those conversations. You’re not always going to find that on highly algorithmic social now, you have to find your niches, your communities that you can chat with.
Product development as a key retention strategy
All you’re thinking about with membership is, when am I going to acquire more people, and how am I going to retain my people? It’s really hard to think about both of those at the exact same time, because it requires completely different ways of thinking. It’s people who are converting, and people who have not converted, or people who are maybe leaving.
Changing your tune between retention and acquisition is tough, but if you want to focus on retention, building out your product based on what people are already saying. But at the same time, if you’re evolving your product based on those folks, there might be folks that are outside that have not converted, that you finally launch something that they are going to convert for.
Product development that can both help acquisition and retention at the same time, without having to completely change your way of thinking… it’s the way you communicate that new addition to each different group is going to affect how they acquire and how they retain.
Giving membership a runway
Folks I work with come in and they want this perfect recipe on how to have a successful membership. Of course, you want to launch and be successful right away, but you don’t always know how your audience is going to react to the content you’re putting out, and you don’t know how things are going to convert.
You have to try new things until it feels like, okay, that’s sticking. That feels good. People are giving me good feedback. I’m going to keep that here, and I’m going to move over to this thing, and I’m going to figure out how to make this work, and guessing, and checking, because not everything you launch immediately is going to be successful.
You have to give it the runway to get to the place where it can take off.
This season of The Publisher Podcast & Newsletter is sponsored by Memberful, a best-in-class membership solution for independent publishers and journalists who want to diversify their revenue stream and connect with their audience.
Memberful lets you offer membership perks and exclusive content to your loyal audience, giving you full control over who has access to your articles, newsletters, and podcast episodes.
Take control of your publishing business this year with Memberful. Visit memberful.com/publisherpod and get started with a free trial.
