You’re frustrated or worried about your membership revenue. You’ve poured hours into creating your membership program and building your marketing strategy, but when you look at the numbers…
It feels like you aren’t seeing the payoff.
What now?
Increasing membership sales makes a huge difference for the success of your business. And with the right strategies and a focused approach, it’s well within your reach—even if it doesn’t seem so right now.
So, how do you get started? Which channels should you prioritize? And how do you sell to your audience without feeling… well, icky?
This article offers 9 strategies and actionable steps you can take to boost membership sales and run a more sustainable business.
How to increase membership sales
- Get clear on your value proposition
- Optimize the funnel for your most popular sales channel
- Nurture potential customers through email
- Create an upsell offer
- Use psychological triggers
- Showcase member testimonials
- Run sales or promotions
- Increase membership prices
- Be consistent and keep it simple
1. Get clear on your value proposition
A lot of creators feel like selling to their audience is “icky” or awkward, especially when it comes to the products and services they’ve created themselves.
That’s totally natural. You love your audience, so you want to protect your relationship with them by being selective with what products you promote to them.
But, if you’re not afraid to do sponsorships or sell for somebody else, why should your membership be any different? Something that’s much higher quality, and that you’ve poured so much time, effort, and energy into.
It’s because some creators find it hard to talk about themselves and what they’ve created. They can’t separate themselves from the product, so it’s hard to market a membership to their audience.
There’s a simple way to overcome this: figure out your unique value proposition.
Your unique value proposition is the problem that only your membership can solve for your members.
Instead of advertising your membership as a way for people to sign up for access to you, figure out the bigger benefits and outcomes that members receive. In other words, figure out your unique value proposition and who your membership is for.
Example: My membership helps [specific group of people] overcome [1-2 specific problems] and achieve [2-3 specific outcomes].
Remove yourself from the value and sell the outcomes of solving this unique problem instead. “Become a more confident business owner” is a much more engaging, powerful, and value-packed offer than “Get direct access to my business expertise!”
Here are some prompts to help build your membership’s value proposition:
- Why do people come to you?
- What goals are you helping people achieve?
- What problems does your content solve?
- How will members’ lives change after they sign up?
This doesn’t have to be based on guesswork. Pick a small group of existing customers and either send out a quick survey, or jump on a call to learn more about them. Figure out why they signed up, why they’ve stuck around, and what they want from their membership.
This can help you find out the value they came for and what keeps them around, so you can use their feedback to define your unique value proposition and optimize sales pages.
Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.
2. Optimize the funnel for your most popular channel
As a modern creator, it’s easy to spread yourself thin. New channels pop up every day,and the little voice inside your head will constantly ask… “if you’re not on to the next big thing, are you still a relevant creator?”
But it’s a myth that you need to put the same amount of effort into every social platform (or, that you have to be on every platform at all).
Instead, be ruthless about keeping things simple. If you have 150K subscribers on YouTube and only 1K on Instagram, for example, you should prioritize selling your membership on YouTube. Find your most popular channel and create a funnel for your audience. Take a look at the conversion rates and focus on the places in the funnel where the conversion rate is low, then figure out how to boost those numbers.
Let’s put that into practice and say your creator funnel looks like this. Each stage has a different conversion rate:
- YouTube: 40% of viewers click the link in your video description, which takes them to a landing page for your membership website.
- Landing page: 20% of people who visit your landing page end up subscribing to your email list.
- Email series: 30% of email subscribers buy membership access after the first series of emails.
This example shows the biggest leak is the membership landing page. The people who visit this landing page aren’t sure what they’re signing up for, or they aren’t convinced of the value of signing up.
In that case, you might ask:
- Am I selling outcomes or talking about myself?
- Are there too many pricing tiers or lead magnets that overwhelm a potential subscriber?
- Are there too many calls to action on my landing page, or is it clear what action visitors should take?
Again, this isn’t a guessing game. You already have access to your audience to figure out what they want, the things they need to see before buying, and their preferred pricing model.
Use their feedback to figure out why your funnel might be leaking, try to test a few different improvements—and soon enough, you’ll fix it!
3. Nurture potential customers through email
Having an email list lets you own your audience and protects your access to them.. If social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram were to randomly go down (which they have) or if they were to suspend your account (which they can do), you would instantly lose access to your audience.
But by having an email list, you’ll be able to reach your followers directly—regardless of social media blackouts or algorithm changes.
We’re not saying having a social media following is bad; it’s actually one of the most effective ways to engage your audience and generate leads.
What we are saying is you need to move your social media followers to your email list, so that you can leverage email marketing to keep potential members engaged, and eventually convert them into new members.
Start building your email list by sending your social media followers to a sales page or your membership home page where they are greeted by an email capture tool. Visitors can be prompted to leave their emails in return for something you’ve enticed them with like:
- Limited community access
- Exclusive insights
- Discounts/coupon codes
- Giveaway prizes
- Free content
Once you’ve built out an email list, mobilize your email subscribers to sign up for your membership site using an automated email sequence that’ll help people on your email list get to know your brand, your offer, and convince them to convert.
At Peak Freelance, for example, we welcome all subscribers (who haven’t yet joined our paid membership) with an email series.
The last email asks why people haven’t signed up so we can ease any sales objections and personalize any future contact with them:
A good rule of thumb is to welcome your new email list subscribers first. Then, try to convert them to paid customers using 3-5 emails over the course of 1-2 weeks.
Here’s a template you can use:
- Email 1: Introduce yourself, your brand, and ask questions to get them engaged. Make sure to respond to any emails you get, this will create a more personalized and memorable connection.
- Email 2: Describe the problem your membership solves without directly mentioning your paid service. Focus on the problem and lean into their pain.
- Email 3: Share the solution to their problem–your paid membership site–and how it can help them.
- Email 4: Conquer their sales objections and answer frequently asked questions about your service.
- Email 5: Make your best pitch on why they need your video streaming service in their lives.
Then, finish your email series with a remarketing campaign that retargets people based on the content they’ve interacted with.
If someone downloads a free guide or template that you offer, for example, but doesn’t sign up for a membership within the first 2 weeks, send them a more salesly email campaign with the best discount you offer.
That way you don’t lose money by offering discounts to anyone and everyone—just people who’ve shown an interest in your content and need a nudge to start their membership subscription.
4. Create an upsell offer
If you offer both monthly and annual packages, you can create an upsell offer that’ll help you boost membership sales and grow your creator business.
An upsell offer is where you convince a customer that wants to buy a monthly subscription to instead buy a discounted offer of your annual subscription at checkout. It taps into some primal psychological elements that influence how we buy products and perceive value.
When clients make the decision to buy a product, like your monthly subscription, their brain goes into what’s known as “purchasing mode”. They already know they’ll spend money, and now they’re willing to negotiate for the best deal.
That’s where your discounted annual subscription offer comes in.
By offering an upsell you can increase the amount they spend, and lock them in as a customer for longer.Here’s how XO Now does it using Uscreen’s built-in Upsell tool:
It’s common for discounts to make you feel like you’re going to make less money. But, annual subscription upsells are a tried and tested sales strategy.
They help you in 3 main ways:
- Retain more customers: People on a discounted annual plan have a bigger lifetime on your membership site platform because they’re customers for a longer period. They’re also less likely to experience buyer’s remorse because of the good deal.
- Improve your cash flow: You get a bigger sum of money upfront as opposed to smaller, incremental payments. This will make it easier to grow your membership business.
- Increase engagement: Customers on annual plans have a full year to integrate your service into their everyday life and are more likely to be active users.
We have the numbers to prove it. Uscreen clients converted 50 to 100 customers a month to annual subscribers—all thanks to a discounted annual subscription upsell.
Better still, these clients saw a 558.8% increase in just 4 months.
That’s almost 6x their revenue.
Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.
5. Use psychological triggers
Psychology plays a huge part in increasing membership sales.
You can generate more sign ups and sales on membership landing pages by tapping into age-old marketing techniques, like playing to feelings of scarcity and urgency, as well as giving people the opportunity to overcome any sales objections all on their own.
Here are 4 triggers to start thinking about when writing your landing pages:
- Urgency. Why should people take action right now? Countdown timers or time-sensitive coupons can convince people to sign up while they’re on your landing page, rather than put it off for later (when they’ll probably forget).
- Fear of losing out. Humans find it more emotionally intense to lose something than to gain something. Instead of telling people what they’ll get in a more expensive tier, tell them what they’re missing out on by choosing a lower price one.
- Scarcity. Some 60% of people make purchases when they fear they’ll miss their chance to buy or be a part of something. Use this to your advantage and make membership spots scarce. “Limited spaces left” is often enough to entice potential customers to subscribe.
- Herd mentality. People are programmed to follow the herd. Use social proof triggers like “10 new members joined within the last week” or “join 2,000 members” to show potential customers that they’re in good company, should they choose to join your membership.
6. Showcase members testimonials
Social proof is a type of word-of-mouth marketing. It plays into the fact that 99.9% of people read reviews before deciding whether to buy something.
Existing members will already be talking about how much they love your membership, so you might as well use their kind words to promote your brand and let them do the talking.
The best way to get genuine testimonials is to clip comments and community posts from real members who are sharing positive feedback. You can also actively seek out feedback and interview members who have been successful using your service.
Ask these members about:
- The things they love about their experience as a member
- Why they chose to use your service, and why they’ve stuck around
- How it has helped them achieve their goals
- How their life looks different now, compared to before they became a member
Try and get data wherever possible. It’s great to sell the outcome of your membership through testimonials, but even better if you can get concrete proof that it works.
If your membership operates in the fitness industry, for example, you might want to ask people how your membership has helped them achieve their specific fitness goals.
Whether it’s how much body fat they’ve lost, how many hours a week they workout, or how many weeks it took them to reach their target weight. These are all hard facts that can’t be contested.
Once you’ve got this information, create these 2 types of social proof to sell more memberships:
- Written testimonials: A written testimonial is a valuable marketing tool that can be used as social media updates, newsletter callouts, and features on your membership sales page.
- Video testimonials: Being able to see a living, breathing person who is willing to go on camera to talk about your membership site can have a massive impact on a potential customer. PowerNation uses these to great effect on a standalone video testimonials page on their site:
7. Run sales or promotions
Promotions and sales are some of the best strategies to use to grab the attention of potential members and boost sales.
There are a few sales strategies to choose from, but the most popular promotion for membership sites is free trials.
A free trial allows potential customers to experience your membership site and see exactly what they’ll get from your platform. The length of your free trial will depend on your business, but we find that between 5 and 14 days works best.
This allows them to overcome objections that would usually stand in the way of them signing up, like:
- Is it too expensive?
- Is the product right for me?
- How is this different from the last membership I tried?
- Will the membership actually work?
- Will I even use it?
- Is it too technical for me?
We’ve found that 52% of free trial sign ups convert into paying customers.
In fact, one our our most successful clients, Find What Feels Good does this over on their site and sees great results:
Combine your year-round free trial with a few sales campaigns staggered throughout the year. These could combine a number of sales offers like:
- Annual subscription discounts
- Gift cards
- Bonus content or experiences
- Coupons
Regardless of what you’re offering, position the promotion as a limited time offer.
The scarcity technique is a great emotional trigger that will make your audience want to take action and join your membership, helping to drive sales.
Best of all, you can do all of this right from the Uscreen dashboard. With our built-in coupon tool, you can:
- Create a custom coupon code
- Use a fixed dollar rate or percentage discount
- Set an expiration date
- Limit the number of people who can use the coupon
8. Increase membership prices
It’s a given that your membership fees will change as your business continues to grow and develop.
The more content and community members you have, the more value you can offer—and the more money you can charge for your membership.
When you reach the stage where you need to make your next membership fee increase, you know that you’ll receive an overall revenue boost from your current members. But, while it might sound counterintuitive, increasing your fees can also increase membership sales, since you’re:
- Increasing the perceived value of your membership. Most people are wired to think that a $50 membership is more valuable than a $5 one.
- Driving sales from on-the-fence customers who want to secure your lower rate.
The best part: you can even combine this membership price increase with other psychological triggers we already discussed.
For example, you could:
- Use countdown timers to show when the price will increase (urgency)
- Limit the number of members who can lock in the old price (scarcity)
- Show how many people have already locked in the lower price (herd mentality)
9. Be consistent and keep it simple
If you’ve done your research, you will have seen that most articles about how to bring in more paying members will tell you that one marketing strategy isn’t enough.
The reality is: This kind of advice pressures creators to spread themselves too thin by trying to adopt all of the most popular marketing strategies at once, regardless of whether it works in their niche or for their type of product.
This can pull focus, waste resources, and create bottlenecks that affect how efficient their membership business is.
You don’t need to rush into Google Ads, referral programs, or search engine optimization (SEO).
These shiny, fun marketing efforts might not be a fit for your target audience and—unless you have resources to burn—they could be a risky gamble that doesn’t help to actually drive membership sales.
Instead, start with sales techniques that are simple but effective, and focus on perfecting them before you slowly test out new strategies.
The fundamentals are underrated:
- Valuable premium content
- A thriving, active membership community
- A strong unique selling proposition
- A well-optimized funnel, including emails and landing pages
- A powerful upsell offer
The same concept doesn’t just apply to you as the creator. Your audience will likely want to keep things simple.
The paradox of choice is a psychological phenomenon that proves people struggle to make decisions when too many options are presented to them.
If you have 6 membership tiers, for example, you’re at risk of losing a potential customer purely because they got overwhelmed when forced to decide which tier was best.
Make it a quick, gut decision to choose the best option like Big Picture Skiing—a membership site hosted on Uscreen that generates over $30,000 per month—does with its “best deal” message:
Increase membership sales with Uscreen
Whether you’re in the first few months of being a membership site owner or you’re a few years in and growth is stagnant, these techniques are bound to help you increase sales for your membership site.
The only thing left is to find a membership platform that has the essential tools and features you need to make each strategy possible.
Take a free trial today and see why the average creator earns $12,000 each month with their Uscreen membership site.
Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.
