Best Ways to Increase Membership and Boost Subscribers on a Membership Site

Are you looking for a way to increase your membership site sign-up rate and boost subscribers?

There are many ways business owners can grow their membership site business and maximize the revenue generated. The most effective way to do this is by encouraging more users to sign-up for a paid membership plan. This is not only important for growing your business but helps ensure it’s worth it for your brand to create high-quality content.

In this post, we’ll talk about some of the most effective ways business owners can use to increase membership and boost subscribers.

Ways to Increase Membership and Boost Subscribers on a Membership Site

Here, we’ll talk about the top 8 ways you can use to increase sign-ups or registrations on your membership site. More registrations mean more people are interested in joining your membership program to access premium high-quality content.

#1: Offer perks at sign-up

One of the best ways to increase membership sign-ups for your brand is by offering sign-up discounts or coupons for your membership subscription plans. This way, you can attract more users who are new to your membership site but are also interested in joining and consuming high-quality “members-only” content.

For instance, you can create a “First-time subscriber” discount that only applies to users who are joining your membership site for the first time. As a result, you encourage more people to join your membership site and benefit from a discounted subscription fee for the first month.

If you offer incentives to users who sign-up for the first time on your membership site, you’re more likely to gain new sign-ups and increase membership registrations for your business. It helps encourage prospective members to take action and commit to subscribing to your membership plan. If you don’t take quick action to encourage interested users to join, there’s a high chance they’ll end up finding some other membership program which will result in a loss of sales for your business.

Other perks you can offer at sign-up include free gifts, resources, downloadable content, and coupons.

#2: Use a referral program

Affiliate programs work wonders when it comes to increasing membership subscriptions for your brand. Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing that incentivizes existing registered members to bring in new members in return for a small percentage of the sale or a discount.

For instance, if a member recommends your membership site to their family members and gets your brand new subscriptions using their affiliate link, you can give them a discount on their next month’s subscription fee or offer a small percentage of the sale back to them. You can ask users to write blog posts or post about your membership plan on social media.

By incentivizing existing members with discounts and commissions, you can create a self-sustainable way to increase membership subscriptions for your brand.

#3: Offer a free trial

Offering a free trial is important for encouraging new sign-ups on your membership site. This is because it lets you give prospective users a “test drive” of your membership program so they can decide whether it’s the right fit for them or not without having to fully commit just yet.

Let’s say you offer a free trial period of 3 days before the user gets charged for the monthly membership plan. This way, they can use the membership program for 3 days to get a better feel of your membership content. This strategy also makes it easier for them to trust your brand.

This is also a great way to get people to try out the paid plan and see the value in it for themselves. Once they start, it can be easier to convince them to stay for longer so they don’t miss out on future content and features. Best practices suggest offering a free trial on the basic membership tier only.

The Paid Member Subscriptions plugin for WordPress sites lets you set up a free trial on your membership site. You can set the duration of the free trial to however many days you want. The plugin also lets you charge a sign-up fee which will be applied for free trials if you’d like.

#4: Ask for feedback from existing members

Gathering member feedback is one of the most crucial parts of running and managing a successful membership site. This is because you want to hear what your audience has to say about your membership program so you can actively keep improving your membership offering.

Gathering member feedback and acting upon it makes it easier for business owners to make improvements that matter and make a difference. With more satisfied and happy members, they’re more likely to recommend your membership site to others. This way, you can increase membership, boosting subscribers on your membership site.

#5: Create a quick and easy registration process

Membership sites need to offer an easy sign-up process regardless of the tech-savviness of their target audience. This is because if there’s a complicated process for signing up or applying for registration on your membership site, there’s a pretty good chance your audience will end up getting frustrated and leaving.

Ideally, your membership registration process should be straightforward and simplified to the core, even for non-tech-savvy users. For instance, you can create a one-page registration and subscription form that only displays essential fields. This way, users can quickly add their account information as well as their payment details from the same page. As a result, it helps reduce friction in your membership registration process and helps encourage more subscriptions.

The Paid Member Subscriptions plugin makes it incredibly easy to create a website with membership and user login too.

#6: Optimize for search engines

If you want users to find your membership site organically, you’ll need to enhance the SEO of your membership site’s pages. This way, your target audience will find your membership site’s pages on top of their search results when they’re looking for solutions.

While there are many ways to optimize the SEO of your site, one of the best ways is to use search-intent keywords in your content. Semantic SEO is not only the most important metric Google and other search engines use to rank web pages in SERPs but also helps you position your membership content as the best solution for your audience’s pain points.

In addition to this, it’s important to make sure your membership site’s pages load fast. You should also consider using images and video content to improve SEO.

If you can increase your membership site’s visibility in users’ SERPs, you have a better chance of driving more traffic to your membership site and increasing subscribers.

#7: Collaborate with other companies

Another great way to gain more attention on your membership site and boost subscribers is by tapping into another brand’s audience. For instance, you can collaborate with other companies in adjacent industries as a way to reach new people and boost visibility for your membership content. This way, you could create a win-win partnership where both companies send each other prospective clients.

You can also host live events and invite VIPs in your industry as the “Special guest”. This helps you tap into new audiences and gives you a better chance to encourage them to join your membership program.

#8: Create a blog

Another great way to increase membership subscriptions is by creating a blog. You not only make the most of content marketing and repurposing your high-quality content to other parts of your site, but it’s also another great way to use more long-tail keywords.

As a result, you can improve the SEO of your membership site and encourage more new users to join your subscription plans.

Additionally, creating a blog also helps answer some of the most common concerns or questions of your audience. This way, you can offer clear instructions and details so it’s easier for new users who might have some concerns about joining the membership program. For instance, you can talk about the benefits of joining your membership site or talk about who the membership plan is right for.

Creating a blog can be pretty simple, especially if you have the right plan in mind. For starters, you want to research and create a list of membership topics and validate them so it’s easier for you to evaluate which content idea resonates the most with your audience. You can then develop a content calendar so it’s easier for you and your team members to stay on schedule.

#9. Host contests and giveaways

While most new users who join your membership site want to get access to high-quality content or engage themselves in an online community, you can also attract new users with giveaways and contests.

For example, you can host a giveaway that offers a prize to the user that shares your content the most. By introducing gamification features and incentives, you encourage more new users to share your membership content which can help your brand gain new subscribers.

#10. Offer incentives for early sign-up

Similar to offering sign-up discounts to new users who join your membership program, you can also offer other incentives such as gifts or grant exclusive “perks” to users who sign-up for your membership plan.

For example, business owners can create a waiting list and let users who’re interested in your content sign-up for “early access”. This not only creates hype around your membership site but encourages more new people to join and purchase subscription plans. Similarly, you can offer a free one-month membership subscription to users who are joining your membership site for the first time. This is great for encouraging re-subscriptions and makes your membership offering more appealing to your target audience.

As a result, you can encourage interested users as well as people who just want to try out your membership site without having to pay a penny to register as members.

Conclusion

According to your membership site and your target audience, there are many ways you can gain new subscribers and encourage new users to join your membership offering.

While you can offer sign-up discounts and incentives for early subscribers, it’s also a great idea to introduce an affiliate program on your membership site. This way, you can let your existing members bring in new subscribers in exchange for a small commission or discount. In addition to this, you also want to improve the SEO of your membership site to increase visibility as well as create a blog to make the most out of content marketing. As a result, you can gain more subscribers and generate more revenue for your business.

For more information on how to maximize your membership brand’s revenue, you can check out our guide on the most effective ways for growing subscription revenue.

If you’re just starting out with your membership site, the Paid Member Subscriptions plugin is the best place to begin. Paid Member Subscription is a WordPress membership plugin that helps you easily set up subscription plans and restrict the content you offer based on each plan. You can also offer free trials, discount codes, or even a free limited tier for users to get accustomed to your service or content, reeling them into your other paid plans slowly.

You can download the plugin for free at WordPress.org, or choose one of the premium plans for full membership features.

Do you know any other ways to increase membership sign-up rates, boosting subscribers at the same time? Let us know in the comments box below.

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