What to Do About Low Membership Enrollment Numbers – Episode 75

melissa: So we are going to start with Kari. 

Kari: Hello. So my question is I need some advice on how to figure out why I did not have a great open enrollment period this last time.

melissa: And you know, I, it started by not having a great challenge enrollment, but it actually ended, but the metrics are even worse when I actually looked at my open enrollment metric compared to a year ago. And it was literally 0.5% of my newsletter. People signed up for my membership a year ago when I had my last open enrollment, which was actually, it was in June, I think 2%.

 And, on top of that, I've like really improved my whole email sequence. I've improved my sales page and I've got metrics up the wazoo, but I still can't figure out what my lessons learned are so that I know what to fix. And so I'm looking for advice.

paul: So has anybody had a situation where they've had a launch and it didn't go as well as they thought it was going to go, even though the tracking all the numbers. Does anybody want to jump in and either ask questions and, or give any thoughts?

 Let's go with Meg first 

Meg: I think we all have to think about how this season or this, summer, or this spring, I've noticed the same thing. Like I did really well in January and I'm in the fitness industry. So that makes sense. Right? Not that I believe in that, but just as restaurants do, I think we need to forecast and keep records  Paul and Melissa, we say do the, the, well, right. So what went right? What does it stand for? Improve and it's the last one? 

paul: Learn 

melissa: learn. 

Meg: I don't have my glasses on 

 Just the timing. And then just whatever you could have learned from that, keep notes and see if maybe it's, there's going to be a trend at certain times a year. I think this year it's going to be a little different, a little wonky for everyone 

 Just don't be hard on yourself. I think that could be part of the reason that's just my 2 cents. 

Kari: I mean, maybe you're quite possibly are right. Because I have an older population, so they were probably even more into, I mean, cause I had the rest of this year, previous year, you know, the previous three quarters were fabulous for me. Right. But those were like flash sales. And so I go to like this full, open enrollment and I'm like, whoa, you know, I'm trying to just figure out again, I don't want to overreact right to it, but I also don't want to just put my head in the sand also in that process.

Meg: Right. I agree with you. And I think some of the, you know, really well known people , and I know this for a fact from, you know, people that I've known that I could trust have told me that they've had, they're having really wonky years. Like I don't think they really want that information out there, but so you're not alone.

Kari: Okay. Thank you. 

Meg: You're welcome. 

paul: Thank you, Meg. Let's go over to Cheryl. 

Cheryl: Hi, and hi, Carrie and hi everybody. So basically what Meg . Said I had a small backend launch and it went great in . June when they were all hot and on fire ending the course, but I've done a relaunch of it the last week to crickets.

And I know my audience is very motivated. They've done a big course with me. They really want what I'm offering and they're not even watching like a killer videos that normally they'd be all over. So I'm wondering also how much of it's kind of July, August, let's go play outside. Let's not do anything else.

So that was a similar sort of observation I was going to share as well. 

Kari: Thank you. Thank 

paul: you, Cheryl. So it's gotten rid of a challis, 

Cheryl: so . Kari, . What I was thinking is if there was a way you could compare your previous launch with this launch and see what you did . Different. And then 

Kari: I have, and that's where I said, oh, really improved things. I've done have actually improved certain things. okay. I'm a, I'm like a metric fiend. Right. I have like every, I have exactly what I've done in these lodges and I'm like, okay, it's interesting, but not necessarily informative. 

Cheryl: So maybe the next launch, you could just go back to what was working your improvements probably didn't quite do what they want. 

Kari: Yeah. I mean, here's the interesting thing. Okay. So like I've had all of my email sequences reviewed by the ad coaches. So I actually went and looked at some of the different metrics I did like a early flash sale in June because that was my normal thing to do.

And my open rate was higher in that group, along with my click rate. Right. So, so that tells me that the email sequences were working better right. Than what I had had before. But then I took that same email sequence and went to my larger newsletter group. And I mean, it was really low in terms of now, again, it's not as hot of an audience, so I would expect it to be lower. But my suspicions are it's even lower than you know, what it should have been. So, 

you know, I mean, cause that's why I had gone in with like a great deal of confidence because I'm like, wow, I've tested it with this flash sale, everything, you know, the metrics were showing me what I was thinking was, you know more successful item.

But again, I do think it might be with just that whole timing thing. I think my potential customers are playing now and not on the computer. 

Cheryl: Did you change the sales page?

Kari: I actually, I've done two changes of the sales page from a year ago. Both I think from feedback from the adaptive coaches.

Yeah. it's a stronger sales page. sometimes it's hard to look at it objectively, but it reads better. It flows better. It was somewhat sloppy before as well, I will say. So I don't really want to go back because I'm not sure that's the right answer.

But again, I'm sorta just confused. 

paul: No, no, no. That's, that's good. And we have some feedback. let's go over to Elisa. 

Elisa: Carly I'm in the quilting niche too, like you and I noticed cultures don't read long sales pages.

I don't know if that's your experience today. Still ask me the questions that are on the sales page. So actually experiment with the super short checkout page for my membership, that I just did a founding member launch this weekend and they're reading some of it, but not even all of that either. So I don't know if it's the whole format, the long sales page.

That's not really clicking with them. Cause I'm sure you still get the same questions that's explained on your sales page, right? 

Kari: Oh, of course. You only a percentage that read a percentage. 

paul: That's great feedback. Yeah. Long and short sales pages are always good to do a test against both versions with your audience.

Elisa: Just to see if one does resonate more than another. What I'll do is I'll, I'll follow up one on this. There's a couple of different things I want you to think about. Cause I, we know very well how detailed you are with your metrics. And so it's something that what I want you to do though, is I want you to separate those people that were on your email list last year, during that launch, compared to the new people you brought and grew into your list because you're comparing a percentage of people.

But keep in mind that one and a half percent, like the other 98.5% already heard this offer before they made a decision not to take it before. And did you grow incrementally, like out of your growth, did you get a high percentage of conversion? Like the people that have never heard your offer before?

Because we're just looking at everybody, like they're all equal while some of these people are groomed to get free, that newsletter from you and get free content. And they're just tickled pink with that. And they've consciously made a choice over this past year, year and a half to say no to your offer before.

Kari: Yeah. 

paul: So it's like, we're keeps reshaping that trade. Now here's the thing. And this is what I want you to think as well is out of the flash sales that you've done. Did you technically shake the tree of the new people. Did you actually get them in advance before you did your big launch? Like, did you actually like take the people that were willing to buy?

They were part of your newer audience that you've slowly incrementally built and grew. So this is the interesting thing for a lot of us, there's a saturation point when you, go back to that, well, over and over again, there's a certain point. You just basically squeezed all the opportunity that you have out of it.

So we either have to introduce new opportunity and bring new people into this audience. Or we need to give a new offer that would be of interest to a different part of that audience, because the 98.5 that did not buy your offer on that previous launch probably did buy something in your niche in the last so many months, but it wasn't your offer specifically, but it probably was something else.

So are you willing to put a different offer in? 

Like right now in the moment of us recording this. We have, as, as you mentioned, cause you're, you're part of the membership, you're an adaptive membership, right? So that's like one of our core offers that we have now in the past, we had our Facebook ads course that led people into that.

Right. It was interesting. We keep hearing this rhythm of people asking because they see us over and over again, doing very successful launches with our challenges. You know, whether it's an affiliate launch with like you know, big promotions and or if it's our own launches, they see it. And we keep getting, you know, six-figure launches over and over again.

So then it's like, at what point do we stop? You know, ignoring people, keep asking us about our launches and say, well, hold on. Our audience is basically telling us. If you put this other offer into the marketplace, we most likely will buy it because we want that knowledge from you. So what we're going to do pretty soon as we're going to put that launch and we're going to do a challenge on challenges basically, and then that'll lead into a challenge course, which would then on the backend lead into the membership.

So in a way we're changing our front end offers. To attract the same group. We're going to go back to our same audience because our audience has already said, Hey, we'd like to have different or more from you. But when we keep repeating, when you keep going back to the well, with the same offer over and over again, you might hit a saturation point because you'll get the trickle, you'll get the people that are ready, willing, and able now.

But then it's like, we either had to bring in a new bucket of people in there. So this is outside of what everybody else has already taught. Cause we always have to be market aware or there's social things going on. There's going to be seasonal things that go on. There's going to be other elements that we always want to be externally aware, but not be controlled by external because then every market and every situation in every niche, there's still people making a lot of money in every niche, no matter what externally is going on, you know?

So we want to lean into those opportunities. But I would just say 

Kari: we do and like another like I have an intro course. That's probably like four years old now and I've had a lot of people take it. Some who have converted to the membership, some of haven't. Right. And I had sort of wondered if I should do maybe a part two, because there's some people that just don't want the whole recurring membership payment thing, you sort of get that, but maybe, yeah.

I mean, I had, that was one of the things I was playing with was, is okay. Do I need to, you know, create a, essentially a part two to the intro course and then try to. Re -grab some of those people that took the intro course and never moved right beyond that point. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Great suggestions. Yeah. 

paul: Yeah. hopefully get the marketing part of this, not the cause there's, there's going to be, we have several people that are in fitness and health on here, but I'm going to give a good and bad example at the same time. There's billions of people that are going to McDonald's every day, but they still do a promotion for the Shamrock shake every year to get different group of people, to show up there.

And every once in a while they re-introduced that Mick ribs thing or whatever it is, we don't go to McDonald's. But I just want to use this as a point of reference just, but they still put in a different promotion. That'll bring a whole bunch of people in, you know what I mean? So it's like, what is that next hook that you can put out to the pull the other group of people through your world?

Kari: Yeah. I also decided to take your advice in terms of maybe doing a monthly flash sale for you. Hmm, you know, 48 hours back. That's going to be my submission this week.

paul: So but you know, just thinking, okay, maybe I can at least you know pick up some people were just, timing was bad. Right. And you know, that type of thing to do that, but yeah. But part of me is like, yeah, do I need to have something else? And, and I also just need to be thankful. I benefited hugely during the pandemic.

Right. Because I was offering an online thing to people that, that really were afraid to leave their houses. So, you know, some of me says, okay, just get over it and move on. 

I would just say, keep us up to date and just look at the new historical data, because definitely the data that you have was during very unique times, and for that same group of people, you might start seeing other repetitive patterns that are happening in future launches.

You're doing, and it might actually reveal more cause yet you still small sample that you're going up the data, you know, that we really need a full cycle of different things happening for you to see what is the real average and all of that. 

Kari: Thank you so much. 

melissa: Welcome. Awesome.