Are you looking for a way to use automation to boost membership renewals?
Getting customers to join your online course or membership site is essential, but getting them to renew their membership happily is another big hurdle. Luckily, with the right WordPress automation tools and strategies, you can reduce churn and make customers more likely to renew.
In this article, you’ll learn the types of automations you can use to boost membership renewals, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce customer churn rate. Let’s dive in!
1. Create and Run a Membership Retention Campaign
Memberships aren’t one-and-done. You need to continue to deliver value to your members throughout their membership to make renewal a no-brainer for them.
A customer becoming a new member is the very start of their journey with your business. This is something you should think about well before membership renewal time.
Here’s what a solid membership retention campaign can include:
- Multiple emails that span from sign-up to membership renewal
- An initial onboarding sequence to welcome new members
- Monthly challenges and goals to keep members engaged
- Member match-ups and mentorship to help members achieve goals
This plan will look different depending on the type of membership site you’re running. For example, Starter Story offers an online database of business case studies. However, once you become a member, you’ll get regular updates about new case studies added and the latest reports. This constant reminder encourages you to take action, log into your account, and consume the content you’ve paid for.
You’ll create and send these campaigns within your email marketing automation tool. These tools allow you to send individual email campaigns and automated campaigns that you create once and send out automatically.
Here’s an example of the visual automation builder within FluentCRM that you can use to create year-long campaigns.
2. Bring Back Inactive Members With Automated Emails
Inactive members are users who signed up but haven’t logged into the membership portal in a while. There’s a low chance these members will renew since they aren’t putting the membership program to use.
However, you can use automated emails to bring back inactive users and get them to engage with your membership content.
These emails can be part of your automated customer retention campaign, or you can run them separately based on your members’ actions.
The goal is to get people to actively use their memberships. The more often they use it and gain value, the more likely they are to renew.
For example, let’s say you run a paid membership community for eCommerce store owners looking to improve revenue. You’ve found that members who are the most active in the community, ask for feedback, and show up for the monthly calls get the most success.
So, your goal for your automated campaign is to get members to post wins, ask for feedback, or simply attend the monthly call.
Here, you’d create an automated email campaign encouraging members to log in to their accounts and post a quick win or show up for the monthly call. The key here is to make it something simple to get them back into the routine of using the membership they’re paying for.
You’ll need to set up a trigger within your email automation tool to do this. The email is simple; the goal is to get members to open and spend some time in their membership dashboard.
3. Send Automated Membership Renewal Reminders
If you’ve done everything above correctly, your membership renewal reminder email can be short and sweet. The important thing here is to make it as personalized as possible.
Renewal reminder emails can include things like:
- Their name
- The plan they’re on
- When the plan expires
- How long they’ve been a member
- Any results they’ve gotten
The great thing about using a tool like FluentCRM is it pulls all kinds of helpful contact data like emails opened, purchase history, and notes. You can use this to create highly personalized emails that make them more likely to convert.
Besides making your email feel like it was written just for them, you’ll want to reinforce the benefits of your membership. Even though you have a good idea of the benefits of your program, you need to reinforce this with your current members.
One great way to do this is to highlight case studies of other users in your program. These work great on the front end to convert users into members, but they can also help reinvigorate that excitement and possibility with existing members.
How you set this up depends on your email marketing platform of choice, but essentially, you’ll create a membership renewal automation email that is sent out based on the date they purchased the membership.
4. Let Users Auto-Renew Their Memberships
Another way to increase renewals is to allow your members to turn on auto-renewals. That way, you don’t have to send reminders to boost renewals; it’ll happen automatically.
Instead of simply making it available as an option during checkout, you can incentivize auto-renewals.
Some great ways to do this include:
- Offer a discount for auto-renewal
- Break pricing down into a monthly membership with autorenewal
- Include a free 1-hour call with the founder
Ultimately, the goal is to make the auto-renewal option a value-added choice. Even if it’s cheaper for your members, you can earn more in the long run since there’s less friction in maintaining an active membership.
5. Run Automated Member Satisfaction Surveys
Surveys are a great way to measure your customers’ satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. They can also help you address these issues before it’s time to renew a membership.
Remember, all feedback is helpful. Properly addressed negative feedback can improve loyalty and help your members become customers for life.
An automated survey email can be simple, but it should be sent out after your member onboarding, once they’ve had some time to get value from the membership.
For example, you can create an automated survey that is sent out three months into a new membership to gather valuable feedback. Then, you can use this feedback to improve their experience.
The easiest way to do this is to create a time-based trigger in your email automation platform. Then, your members will get an automated survey email three months into their membership.
You can use a WordPress-specific tool or a third-party platform like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey. The most important thing is that you create the automated campaign and set aside time to review your responses.
6. Create New Value to Entice Member Renewals
If your membership stays the same and doesn’t evolve to meet your members’ needs, you’ll probably see a high drop-off rate.
That’s why we recommend implementing customer surveys and always thinking of ways you can add value to your existing membership.
Here are some simple value-adds you can consider adding:
- A community forum or Facebook group for your members
- Access to related deals you negotiate for your members, i.e., discount software tools
- In-depth coaching/accountability with you or your team
As you improve your membership, add these announcements and new features to an automated email campaign. For example, if you’re adding new features, content, interviews, or VIP access to the membership this year, spell out the details in your membership renewal emails.
Your automated renewal campaigns should be more than a single email.
Here’s a simple structure you can use:
- Email 1: A simple reminder their membership will expire in 30 days.
- Email 2: An overview email of what they accomplished in the year using the program.
- Email 3: A reminder of the benefits they’ll lose if they don’t renew.
- Email 4: An enticing email that highlights the new things to come this year.
- Email 5: A deadline email that can offer a renewal discount.
7. Offer a Membership Down-sell for Members on the Fence
Finally, if you’ve found that your member doesn’t renew their membership, then you can offer a lower-priced membership to keep them as a customer.
For example, if your main offer includes monthly coaching calls, you can create a lower-tier membership that lets them watch the recordings but not participate.
Ultimately, this will depend on your original membership offer, but think about how you can package your membership to create different tiers. Many WordPress membership plugins let you create multiple tiers and packages you can offer your users.
Then, you can email and create membership renewal automations for members in that tier. For example, FluentCRM has built-in options that let you create automations for specific user tiers.
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, boosting your membership renewals is a process that begins the moment a new member joins your program. Creating automations that get sent out throughout the year can help members get the most out of your program and get valuable feedback to improve your membership.
However, you can also create a few membership renewal automations that’ll improve renewals across the board. The most important are personalized renewal reminders, benefit-oriented emails, and even down sells to capture members who might not want to pay for your flagship membership.
Overall, the best way to create a healthy membership program is always to deliver value while adjusting your membership to their feedback.
