Growing a subscription or membership site isn’t simply a matter of producing the right content or using any single marketing tactic. Successful sites employ a host of site design tactics, acquisition and retention marketing strategies, different copywriting approaches, and tests to attract members and boost revenue.

We’ve compiled seven “secrets” of successful membership and subscriptions businesses based on our research, case studies, and proven tactics we have observed. Put these to work immediately and start growing your business today. 

Secret #1: Improve Retention with Timely “Gifts”

Legally, you are obligated to send a formal notice to automated (recurring) billed customers at least annually. It can be a bit scary — will people, who might have otherwise overlooked a routine charge on their card, suddenly decide to cancel?

As they debate whether to stay subscribed, what can be done to sway their minds in your favor?

One proven tactic is to include a “premium” download or gift as a kind of on-the-spot thank-you gift in your notification email. You could, for example, include a non-advertised e-book or special new video. It should be highly relevant to the topic of your site, and make sure you state the actual dollar value of the content or gift.

Also, if possible, your email should feature a thumbnail image of the premium– or another relevant piece of artwork related to the gift. This increases perceived value, increases downloads, and lets customers see they’re receiving something real.

Lastly, while you’ll position the download as a “thank you” for their continued membership or subscription, make sure recipients can download it right away. (It never hurts to add a little friendly guilt to the marketing mix.)

Obviously, be mindful if your customers are in the government, Fortune 500, or other organizations with rules about gifts. The goal isn’t to offer extraordinary bribes, but rather to soften the blow of the renewal payment and convince some fence-sitters that it is worth sticking around for another term of service.

Secret #2: How Your Member Log-in May be Hurting Conversions

You want to make it easy for your members to log in. But are your efforts to create a more visible log-in area actually hurting your conversion goals? There’s a good chance that they are.

One of most frequent mistakes we see from membership and subscription businesses is using a large amount of space and/or prominent placement on their homepage and paywall pages for member log-in forms. Insider’s research shows that this decreases conversions for two reasons:

1. Wasting key real estate

Your on-screen real estate “above the fold,” or the area that they see without the need to scroll down the page or a screen is quite small. Any elements above the fold that don’t help your visitors focus their eyes and minds on your marketing message (invariably, getting them to sign up for something) are distractions. And the more distractions, the lower your conversion rate. Sites that strip out all content irrelevant to the marketing message always have better conversion rates.

2. Negative messaging

Your log-in box reminds new visitors that payment may be required to access your subscription service, membership or content. For example, if you’re conducting a trial offer and you’re trying to schmooze new conversions softly along, your highly visible log-in prompt acts like an icy glass of water in what could be a very eager face. And yes, we’ve seen many A/B tests that have proven this to be true.

With that in mind, where and how big should your log-in box be? In terms of size, you want it to be tiny. As for location, it should go in the top right corner of the screen. Truth is, nobody needs anything big or prominent.

Secret #3: Use Telemarketers to Attract and Retain Subscribers

Are you using telemarketers for your subscription or membership sales site – even if you’re B2C?

Here’s a little-known fact: Many B2C companies have phone reps on staff, many dedicated to outbound calls (not just inbound customer service). In fact, it’s one of the secrets to these businesses’ success.

B2B businesses have also used phone reps for years to maximize conversions and improve retention. If you aren’t phoning for your best prospects and customers, you may be leaving a lot on the table. Our research shows that telemarketing works best for businesses offering annual terms of service.

It may not seem obvious, but the best date to follow-up with your customers is sometime in the first 14-30 days of service. A call that early in the account lifetime can make a big enough impact that reverberates years later.

The topic of the call is not overt marketing because you’ve already landed the account. Instead, it can be a check-in call with an encouragement for the customer to return to the site to use content or services they may not have utilized yet. You can measure initial success rate by watching on-site engagement levels of touched customers. Later, you should see a lift in account lifetime as well.

Secret #4: How to Get a 500% Boost in Email Referrals

Here’s a tactic for boosting email opt-ins that hardly any membership or subscription business that we know of uses, but those who do report that it works gangbusters.

When a visitor chooses to opt-in for your email newsletter, or registers as a free user, instead of just showing them a general “thank you” page, give them a form they can use to tell a few friends about the site.

And here’s a key best practice: The form should also include a plugin or app that allows users to upload their Gmail, Outlook, and other email contact names.

What difference does adding this social feature make? If your new email subscriber has to type in names by hand, you’ll get 1.5 referrals per user. But if they can upload names from their address book, you’ll get 7+ referral sign-ups per user!

Plus, our sources tell us that these referred names tend to convert as well as your very best prospects and they have above-average lifetime value. Best of all, the referral forms are simple, inexpensive scripts you can find online. It probably won’t take your tech team much time to add this functionality to your site.

Secret #5: Price Test Idea — Turn 7s into 9s

What if you could just as easily sell a $70 subscription for $90?

Pricing psychology research reveals that you can. Based on studies, we now know that people who will pay $7, or $70 or even $700 will probably just as readily pay a similar amount, just with a “9” at the beginning.

So if your pricing numbers start with sevens, try a test where you replace them with nines and you’ll see your profits rise.

Secret #6: How to Make Content Teasers Convert Better

If you publish a content site, chances are you use “teaser” copy on the public parts of your site and perhaps your email newsletter as well  in an attempt to drive people to your paywall.

But this is a big mistake we see people make all too often: using the first part of your text content as your teaser.

In fact, it’s not your fault: Many content management systems do this automatically. They’ll pick up the first 100 characters or 35 words or two sentences and use that as the public “teaser.”

Seems reasonable enough. So why is it bad?

In short, the beginning of your content probably wasn’t developed to serve specifically as a teaser. For example, it may not include SEO keywords. It may not explain what the value of the content is. It’s meant for a regular reader, not as a marketing device, so instead of allowing your content management system to “auto-populate” your teaser content, get one of your marketing people to write a compelling and enticing teaser that makes visitors want to convert into paid members, and drives SEO value.

Secret #7: Paywall Placement — How Much Content Should be Public?

How much of your content really needs to be public in order to entice the public to convert to memberships? If you are a publisher, while you will need more content these days strategically placed in front of your paywall to complete with the high-quality content marketing articles, it’s still less than you think.

Overall, no matter what type of content you publish (even if it’s journalism or B2B info), research shows as soon as you allow as little as two content headlines from your homepage to click to public pages, your paywall conversions *plummet*. It’s probably because psychologically visitors assume that if some content is available, “enough” of the rest will be.

So, unless your paywall is obvious, they fool themselves into thinking they don’t really honestly have to convert to get the good stuff. A clear strategy that segments content with clearly differentiated content behind your paywall from what is in front of it is absolutely essential!

Your public content needs to:

• Attract eyeballs to sell ads against
• Entice newbies to return to the site multiple times until they finally decide to convert
• Get better SEO results
• Compete against content marketing articles, whitepapers and other information targeting the same SEO keywords and/or target audience.

Our recommendation is to limit this content very tightly and consciously and use content that’s overtly different in nature from your premium content. Make your paywall as obvious as possible as to what’s worth buying and what’s a teaser for the public. Public content might be:

• Editorial blogs
• Brief news alerts
• “Random” sample pages a la Amazon “see inside”
• Feature articles with a shorter length and lighter topical content than your premium content
• Press releases
• Customer letters

If you make premium content public as an example to “show off” your premium quality, don’t fool yourself. Great copywriters since the dawn of time have known what sells is the sizzle, not the steak. A compelling video preview, a testimonial, a site “tour”, a trial offer (with card required), etc. can all do better than a raw sample.

However, before making any substantial changes in your paywall strategy, first, analyze your own site’s public page conversion data. Which pages, content types or page templates are getting great conversion rates that either click on sponsor ads or convert to your own in-house offers for membership or other products?

Don’t forget SEO content. Your top 10-20 pages for inbound SEO traffic are not worth much to you if they are not converting.

In summary – make your paywall obvious – you can’t be too obvious!.

• Obvious that the content is different than what is in front of it (Marketing and Messaging!). 
• Obvious to see and become a subscriber or member (Conversion!)