Learn How To Grow Your Ecommerce Memberships Business With Easily Applicable Strategies
Most eCommerce stores have set up membership or subscription plans or both. But quite often, membership and subscription plans are confused to be the same.
They are not. We’ve looked at both these strategies in detail in an earlier article.
Of the two, memberships can be hard to sell. So, in this article, we’ll tell you some eCommerce membership marketing strategies you can easily apply for your Shopify store. In addition, we’ve shared some of the best membership marketing examples for your inspiration.
Let’s get started!
13 Best Membership Marketing Strategies With Examples
Some of the best eCommerce membership strategies are the most obvious and yet brands seem to overlook them. Others are secret strategies that you might not have thought about. Here are 13 actionable tactics for your Shopify membership marketing with examples.
1. Create a dedicated landing page
The benchmark for a good conversion rate is 10%. Studies show the average landing page conversion rate across industries is 9.7%. Not bad at all, isn’t it? Whether you’re selling products or services, B2B or D2C, landing pages can benefit your business with leads.
For maximum returns, follow these best practices when setting up your landing page:
- It must list out the benefits of your membership, products, and services
- Focus on customer pain points and how your membership can solve their problem
- Explain how the membership works
- Share customer testimonials, reviews, case studies to demonstrate credibility
- Have call-to-action buttons at strategic spots on the page
- Have a clear, targeted headline
- Add FAQs
Example of a landing page of Vital Proteins – a wellness supplement membership plan:
2. Make your memberships prominent on all channels
If you treat your membership plans as secondary or something that you also offer, your customers will give it the same treatment. Hence, go all out in making your memberships visible and prominent. Here’s what you can do:
- Have a dedicated page for memberships
- Give a prominent spot to the membership tab on your Shopify website
- Provide the memberships option on all product pages
- Keep the messaging about memberships consistent
- Add it to the footer
- Talk about memberships in the banner
Example from a clothing brand membership plan:
3. Use popups to promote memberships
It’s not easy to get customers to sign up for memberships, especially if there’s a membership fee. And so, you’ll have to constantly keep encouraging customers to sign up. One eCommerce membership marketing strategy that can work is automating popups on your website. Here’s what you can do:
- Trigger a popup to nudge customers to sign up
- Target returning visitors to sign up for memberships
- Mention offers to motivate customers to sign up
- Time the pop up smartly—if you show it as soon as customers come to your site, it may seem pushy
Example from an eCommerce wine store membership popup:
4. Combine memberships with your social media marketing strategy
Most of your customers are on social media, which is why you must incorporate memberships in your social media plan as part of your eCommerce memberships marketing strategy.
But with every brand increasing their social media budgets year-after-year, you’ll have to think out of the box. Here are some ways to make your Shopify memberships a part of your social media plan:
- Plan a mix of different types of posts for memberships
- Create posts that exclusively talk about memberships
- Combine memberships in social posts in a less obvious way. For example, run a contest on social media to boost followers and offer a free membership in return
Example from Sephora – a cosmetics brand membership plan promotion on Instagram:
5. Promote memberships on product pages
One of the best ways to encourage customers to sign up for memberships is to clearly show how they can benefit from it. Customers expect some of the basic advantages when they sign up, such as discounted prices, free shipping, exclusive access, etc.
One of the best membership marketing strategies is to show customers how much they’d save if they sign up. Here’s how you do that:
- Show customers the price benefit on each of your product pages
- For example, the price is $30 and next to it members pay $27, save $3
- This way, customers see how much money they can save and choose to sign up
- Similarly, you can mention free shipping for members on all product pages
Example from a Vital Proteins product page:
6. Run ads on social media and search engines
What do we do when we want to buy something? We go online, run a quick search of the related words. The average person makes about three to four searches every day. And so, if your brand or products don’t pop up when customers make searches, you’re losing out on those leads, every day! Now multiply those leads by 365.
One tactic you can include in your eCommerce membership marketing strategy is to run ads. Here’s what you can do:
- Run ads on social media channels, for example, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn (in case of B2B)
- Run ads on search engines
- Create a year-long plan to run ads so that you reach customers all year around
- Run ads on platforms where your customers hand out the most
- Try A/B testing for ads
- Leverage the platform that brings you good results and focus more on it
7. Include email marketing in your eCommerce membership marketing strategies
While customers choose to receive text and chat messages from brands for instant, short updates, they still want to have a back of updates in their email inbox. That’s why it’s a must to have an email marketing strategy for your memberships.
Here’s how you can use email for memberships:
- Send a welcome email as soon as customers sign up
- Send an email that explains the benefits of the membership
- Create personalized email campaigns
- Create segments of customers who have been transacting with you but not signed up. Then, run a promotion to motivate them to sign up
Also read: Types Of Emails To Send To Your Subscription and Membership Customers To Prevent Churn
8. Run SMS campaigns around memberships
SMS is a way to convey quick updates in brief to customers. Customers signed up? Send them a thank you message. Introduced something new in your membership plans? Let customers know via text. SMS is one of the fastest and forsure ways to reach customers. Here’s how you can use it for memberships:
- Send a welcome and thank you message when customers sign up
- Nudge customers to join membership plans via SMS with a link
- Announce anything new in your membership plans via SMS so customers don’t miss it
- Send ‘Look what’s new’ text messages to inactive customers
Here’s a template for an SMS campaign for your membership plans:
| Hello Bob, Welcome! We’re thrilled to have you join our membership program. Your membership plan is now active and you can start saving up to 20% on all your orders. Shop now: www.shop.com |
9. Set up WhatsApp marketing for memberships
69% of customers are more likely to buy from brands that use WhatsApp to communicate with them. WhatsApp has an open rate of 98%, just like SMS. And there are many ways to incorporate it into your eCommerce membership marketing strategy. Here are some:
- Provide customers the option to receive communication on WhatsApp
- Run WhatsApp only marketing campaigns, for example, ‘Sign up for memberships via WhatsApp to avail special gifts’
- Integrate WhatsApp into your Shopify membership app for a seamless experience
- Share membership related content such as videos, blog links, PDFs, etc. via WhatsApp
- Use WhatsApp to address customer queries as a customer support channel
- Create WhatsApp members-only groups
- Allow members to renew membership plans via WhatsApp
Example from Disney Hotsar’s WhatsApp strategy for subscribers:
10. Make memberships a part of your subscription plans
Another eCommerce membership marketing strategy is to make memberships a part of your subscription plans. If you have both, you can think of ways to make memberships an extension of your subscriptions. How? Let’s look at some ways to do it:
- Offer a free basic membership plan as a benefit of the subscription plan to the top most tier of subscribers
- As a limited-period offer, allow subscribers to sign up for memberships for free or at a discounted price
- Conduct events where you bring together your membership and subscriber communities
- Allow customers that are subscribers as well as memberships to upgrade their membership plan
11. Make memberships a part of your loyalty program
If you have a loyalty program running on your Shopify store, you’d have to consistently introduce new things to engage customers. Afterall, most loyalty programs are similar and hence, it’s tough to keep customers hooked to them.
But you can think of ways to make it exciting by incorporating membership plans into it. Here’s how:
- Add membership benefits to your loyalty program benefits. For example, free shipping, or more points
- Run a limited-period offer allowing customers with a certain number of accumulated points to sign up for free for the membership plan
12. Make memberships a part of referral program
One of the best ways to grow your customer base of authentic customers is by way of a referral program. Studies show that referred customers are highly likely to buy from you and stay loyal for longer.
And one way to enhance your referral program for loyal customers is to bring in the good part of memberships into your program. How do you do that? Here are some cues for your eCommerce membership marketing strategy:
- Think of new ways to make memberships a part of your referral program
- Offer membership plans at a discounted price to customers who share successful referrals
- Offer a free membership trial to customers who have shared successful referrals
13. Make memberships a part of influencer campaigns
Influencers have taken the world of marketing by storm. And it’s not only for retail, eCommerce to promote products or services. You can even involve influencers to promote your membership program. Here are some ideas:
- Collaborate with influencers to promote your membership plans
- Get influencers to talk about the benefits of your membership plans
- Choose influencers from different industries, think of new ways to collaborate
How To Get Started With Ecommerce Membership Marketing Strategies?
While you can choose one or all of the above strategies for your Shopify store, you’ll need the best membership app for your Shopify store to automate the process and provide a seamless experience to customers.
And that’s where Appstle Memberships and Loyalty comes in, the best membership app on Shopify.
