There’s immense competition in the home decor and lifestyle eCommerce market. Brands are trying various marketing strategies to attract and retain customers.
An emerging strategy is memberships, helping brands engage customers and increase ROI.
In this blog, we take an in-depth look at home decor and lifestyle brands membership strategies.
You’ll learn various aspects of how to set up an effective membership program to how to engage better and increase your home decor brand’s profits.
Get started!
What are home decor membership plans?
Home decor membership programs are just like programs of brands in other industries. Home decor brands aim to offer perks and benefits to customers via membership programs. In return, they could expect better customer loyalty and higher engagement from customers.
Here’s an example of a home decor and lifestyle brand membership program from IKEA:
8 best home decor and lifestyle brands membership strategies
Implementing a successful lifestyle brand membership requires thinking beyond discounts and free shipping. Today’s customers look for meaning, value, and uniqueness. If you don’t have a mix of the right strategies, you’ll find it hard to attract and retain customers. Here are 8 strategies to promote lifestyle brand memberships.
1. Offer different membership period validity
If getting new signups on memberships is hard, renewals are even harder. That is why, one strategy you must apply is to offer multiple membership period validities or multiple tier-based membership plans. For examples, most membership plans offer these validities:
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Half-yearly
- Annual
- Seasonal
Now let’s try to understand how this membership strategy benefits your home decor brand.
- You’ll know how long members are going to be around. With this information, you can plan your way forward, renewal strategies to ensure members remain with you, and more.
- You’ll have time to plan renewal strategies: From sending renewal reminders to offering discounts, you will have enough time to plan and craft your strategies.
- You will be able to predict revenue: Offering multiple plans will not only increase the number of members, but you will also know your periodical revenue. Hence, plan finances accordingly.
- You’ll be able to cater to diverse customer segments: A tier-based membership program can help attract customers from different segments who have specific needs, preferences, and budgets. Explore Appstle Memberships App to incorporate unlimited membership tiers and custom plans for your Shopify home decor store.
2. Offer membership perks that add value
The most enticing factor about your membership plan would be the perks. If your perks aren’t meaningful or valuable, members won’t have a reason to join. For instance, a study by Harvard Business Review talks about values that address four types of customer needs—functional, emotional, life changing, and social impact.
Here’s an illustration that can help you get ideas:
Here are some perks for implementing a successful lifestyle brand membership:
- Organize members-only offline events in different locations
- Create and share exclusive content – for example, a home decor newsletter
- Get members to participate in surveys for planning new products
- Make membership discounts exciting. For example, show how discounts can save members money they spent on the membership fee
- Keep updating membership perks frequently to keep members engaged
- Offer home furniture and products repair and maintenance services
- Offer discounts or free tickets to home decor exhibitions
3. Offer omni-channel communication
One of the most critical home decor and lifestyle brand membership strategies is to communicate with members. Communicate frequently. A lot. And hence, you’ll need a proper communications strategy for your membership program.
When you communicate with members frequently, they stay engaged, they remember your brand, and feel more interested in it.
And given that members have got into a special, long-term relationship with your brand, they expect exclusive and smooth communication from you.
Here’s how you can create your membership program communication plan:
- Personalize all communications to your individual members and segments
- Provide multiple communication channels—social media, WhatsApp, SMS, phone, email, live chat, etc.
- Integrate communication channels so they aren’t in silos. This improves members’ experience
- Set up real-time automated notifications on members’ preferred channels
4. Understand your members
You’re building a special relationship with members with your Shopify membership program. And hence, to make it unique and exclusive, you will have to first understand your customers, their needs and preferences. When you understand your customers well, you’ll be able to leverage the best home decor industry and membership program trends and create a more relevant experience with customers. How do you do that?
Here are some ways:
- Request feedback: In memberships, there are many touchpoints. For example, when there are new collections, on special events, during renewal, etc. Ask for feedback at every critical touchpoint. However, ask targeted questions around members’ experience.
- Conduct member surveys: Nothing better than asking members what they want from memberships. Conduct surveys around memberships, products, your membership portal, etc. to collect genuine and first-hand information.
- Listen to your members: Listen to what your members are saying and talking about – online, at on-site events, in forums, on their social platforms, etc. It will help you collect genuine data.
5. Create communities for members
Most customers like experience-based perks from memberships. Because discounts, free shipping, and early access are now standard perks offered by all brands. One noticeable home decor industry and membership program trends is communities.
To entice customers and to retain them you have to create unique experiences, such as creating communities. Because when people feel like they belong somewhere and have the opportunity to interact with like-minded people, they feel more satisfied and happy.
Here are some ways in which you can create communities for your members:
- Create a private group on social media or online platforms
- Segment members based on their membership plans or levels
- Promote your membership community so that non members also know about it even though they don’t have access to it
- Create a hybrid community of members and non members so you can entice more people to join your membership program
6. Set up top notch logistics and operations
Efficient logistics and operations play a key role in members’ experience. It is one of the best strategies to promote lifestyle brand memberships and ensure you stand out from the crowd. Since your eCommerce store includes home decor products and furniture, you will require efficient, safe, and reliable logistics partners to ensure customer satisfaction.
Here’s why you need to work with the best logistics partners:
- To ensure timely delivery of your home decor products
- For a better brand perception
- To optimize cost
- To ensure efficient management and operations
And here are some factors you must consider when working with logistics partners:
- Timely delivery
- Safe handling of your home decor products
- Reputation and reliability in the market
- Specialization, for example, choose partners with experience in home decor sector
- Pricing
- Region coverage and location
7. Ensure efficient customer support
How good your customer support is can directly impact your business growth and revenue. This stands true for your membership programs as well.
Your members have engaged with you on a long-term association, and hence, they would expect the best customer support from you.
For instance, they may have questions about new products, or their orders or regarding your membership programs. If your customer support teams answer their queries, help them, and provide a pleasant experience, it would lead to customer satisfaction.
Here are some factors to ensure the best customer support:
- Provide multiple ways to get in touch with you
- Make it easy for them to contact you
- Offer multiple channels- SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, email, etc.
- Provide quick support and resolutions
8. Make membership tracking easy
Customers like easy and seamless eCommerce experiences. Now, if you make your membership program too complicated to understand and use, customers might prefer to stay away from it.
Instead, try to make your membership program as easy as possible. This is one of the best strategies to apply across your membership journey. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Create a dedicated page for memberships on your website
- Provide a one-on-one experience or point of contact
- Create a memberships app so members can track, access, and enjoy the benefits
- Create a robust membership dashboard so members can get an overview of their membership in one place
- Make customer support extra easy and accessible to members
Get started with your home decor and lifestyle membership strategies
Let’s face the truth. You might want to implement all of the above and many more strategies for your home decor and lifestyle membership program. But to do so and to ensure they run seamlessly, you will require the best digital tools for your Shopify website.
That’s where Appstle Memberships App comes in!
Considered as the best Shopify memberships app by merchants, the app stands out in the market for the many features and capabilities it provides.
Appstle Memberships App – Key Features:
- Unlimited membership plans and tiers
- Unlimited and highly customized member perks including discounted pricing for members
- Customer and order tagging for segmentation
- High end customer-centric approach
- Customizable member portal
- Member billing with billing options
- In-depth analytics
- Voluntary and in-voluntary member churn control
- High security and stability
- Hands on onboarding and complimentary migration from other memberships apps
- Efficient 24x7x365 customer support
- Seamless app integrations with Shopify and Shopify Plus apps
Install Appstle Membership App on your Shopify home decor store today!
