Your war against churn just got more difficult. There’s now one more way for your members to quit. The new app AskTrim.com allows your subscriber to monitor subscriptions and cancel them via chat bot. This means no save or down-sell opportunity for your team.

As if the 34 Reasons Why Your Subscribers Quit weren’t enough, your subscription is being lumped in with everything else your subscriber pays for monthly. It’s never been more important to create a relationship with your subscriber that transcends the standard deliverable.

Once your new member buys your subscription, your welcome sequence has two jobs. First, stop your member from canceling the sale and asking for a refund. Second, get him engaged so he’ll keep his subscription for years instead of months. 

This is your shot to keep your member. Do you want to limit yourself to a few emails and perhaps an online video? Or do you want to send a package in the mail? Or perhaps combine the mailing with a welcome phone call from your team?

While you’ve got to deliver what you promised in your sales materials, your new member welcome sequence must also be about reselling your customer on taking action. Without action, it won’t be long before he doesn’t need what you provide. Here are the 9 critical elements of any effective member welcome sequence.

1) Dream

Before your customer is going to take action, he’s got to have a good reason for investing the time and energy. He’s busy and overwhelmed already, and you want him to take time from his schedule to implement your strategies? You’d better paint a clear picture of what his life will look like if he takes action.

Weight loss companies use before and after photos to convince you to buy their program. Then, after you buy it, you realize all the food you are going to have to give up and how little you get to eat in a day. Suddenly your habits are in conflict with your desires. This is when these companies must reinforce your weight loss dreams by showing you more photos and getting you to imagine the healthier, skinnier you. They’ve got to make the positive image of their programs in your life so impactful that you are willing to break old habits, plan for new routines and make different choices about what you eat when you’re at your favorite restaurant with your friends.

To get your customers to make positive choices about your program, you have to resell them on what they want. What will life look like after they implement your program? How will life be better? How will they feel when they implement what you provide?

2) Belief

It’s one thing to believe that something is possible. Sure, I know that it’s possible for some people to run a marathon within 2-1/2 hours. But there’s no way I can do that. At least that’s what I believe. Maybe if I trained as much as the other athletes, I could do it. Nah.

Your customer may look at the dream and your proof that the dream is possible, and believe it’s possible to achieve-for other people. But unless he believes it’s possible for him, there’s no way he’ll take action. And if he doesn’t act, then he doesn’t need your subscription.

Convince your customer that his past failures weren’t his fault-that there was something missing, and you’ll provide it. Bring out any testimonials you have and/or your own personal story of overcoming this doubt to achieve breakthrough results.

3) Goal

When I first walked into a Weight Watchers store in 2005, I was welcomed, I paid my money and I received a welcome kit. The lady behind the counter asked me to step on a scale, where I discovered I’d swelled to 237 pounds.

Then she explained that Weight Watchers recommends that all new clients set an initial goal of losing 10% of their body weight. For me, that was 23 pounds. Then she explained how we were going to achieve that goal.

My healthy body weight is closer to 175, so 23 pounds was still far from where I needed to be. However, it was a step, a goal I could achieve. I believed I could make it happen.

4) Space for attention

Your new subscribers are already busy. They have jobs, families and activities that consume every waking moment. Spare moments are now filled with phones and tablets.

You must help your members overcome their busyness to find time to engage in your subscription. Many people set aside four years for college because colleges are very good at providing a structured environment that feels as though it doesn’t have a structure. Teach your new member how to compartmentalize his time and attention so he has clarity and space to implement your materials.

5) Eliminate clutter

Once your member creates space in her life, next you need to help her choose what to focus on. If she is a business owner, should she focus first on improving her product pricing, offer, sales, marketing, customer service, product offering, employee recruiting or leadership? Each is an important element of running a successful business. And each may be broken and causing her frustration. But where should she start? 

Stephen Covey’s “Big Rocks” is a great tool for this; you can read the details in his book First Things First. Google the story if you haven’t heard it, but the purpose is to get your new member to choose the most important items on which to focus her attention. After she identifies what’s important, she can choose which of your shortcuts to implement first.

6) Curriculum for solution

When you are mapping a route on Google Maps from where you are to where you want to go, Google Maps gives you the fastest route and two other options, estimating the time for each. Life is not that simple. There may be dozens of tools and strategies promising similar outcomes. That’s like having Google provide 20 routes, each promising to be the single fastest way to get to where you want to go. 

Once your customer chooses her priorities, help her select the single fastest way to solve her problem with your subscription program. Provide a curriculum that allows her to experience the outcomes you promised within your marketing. Do all this before she even implements the first strategy.

7) Fastest possible result

Your most important decision within new subscriber onboarding is where to start your new member.

I’ve seen hundreds of products that start their customers with a long planning process. While planning is an important exercise, you can spend a lot of time planning and not experience any benefit.

Rather than doing all that, you should focus on your single fastest and most effective strategy for achieving results. If you are selling financial or business improvement, then give your new member the fastest way to make money.

There’s an important psychological component to getting your member to take action and get a quick result. For example, you may have had a desire to play tennis for years. You see people having fun on the court. But you’re forced to decline invitations to play with friends because you’ll be embarrassed. Your level of interest in tennis won’t change until we get you on the court with a racket in your hand, hitting the ball across the net. Now we can sell you lessons, equipment and outfits.

What is the first thing your new subscriber should do with your subscription to experience a quick win?

8) Recognition

When a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? I have no idea, but if no one notices your new subscriber’s engagement with your program, it’s the same as if it never happened.

It’s important to create feedback loops that encourage your new subscriber to interact with your team, your subscriber community and/or her friends about your subscription. Your member is doing something new, so encourage her to post photos, submit materials to you for review and if possible, track engagement so you can recognize her when she reaches important milestones. Action plus recognition creates success.

9) Upsell

The single best way to reduce subscriber churn is to get the customer to make a second investment in your relationship. This can be anything from upgrading to an annual or multiyear commitment to buying some additional products to upgrading the level of membership. The act of making a second decision to increase his investment in your subscription will triple or quadruple retention rates and increase lifetime subscriber value.

There’s little value in information or some product that’s otherwise available at any number of stores or on an app. No one needs to invest in an ongoing subscription for any of these.

The value is in delivering transformations in your subscriber’s life. Transformations don’t come from buying your subscription. They come from using your subscription. Lower churn by using these 9 essential components within your member welcome sequence to get your new subscribers engaged so they become subscribers for life.