Building a membership business (Part 1)

As specialists in recurring payments, it is often that subscription-based services or clubs (perhaps even yours!) have the greatest need for our products. We refer to these clients as membership businesses and while they operate in a broad variety of fields and service different demographics, at PaymentHub we have observed that successful membership businesses share a common set of qualities.

Membership businesses are generally built around the following concepts:

• There is a common purpose or interest bringing a group of people (for example sailing, breeding canaries, sport or reading)
• Members are willing to pay an ongoing fee to be part of this group
• Members are provided with some material that identifies them as part of the group (for example a shirt, badge, certificate or piece of equipment).

We’ve been fortunate to speak to a number of successful membership organisations over the past five years and the list below describes the key activities they’ve undertaken to build their memberships from one member to thriving communities.

1. Identify the key common needs of the group and go out of your way to deliver on those needs.

Successful membership organisations are not built over night, but the fundamental element of any successful organisation or club is that they have identified the key, common need of the membership base and they deliver on it. Remember people don’t have to be part of your club, so unless you are delivering on that thing that made them become a member in the first place – they will leave.

2. Provide a group identity

This is important whether you are a football group or a member of an exclusive club. Members like to be recognised by other members and other people who share their interest. A strong form of membership identity whether it be clothing (an AFL club), a membership card (a golf club) or some other trinket that provides an identity for the club or membership organisation (for instance BNI provides a badge and business card holder) is a common element in all the successful membership organisations we have observed.

3. Reduce the barriers to entry

The goal of most (and I use the word most rather than all) membership organisations is to grow their membership base. Quite simply, the more members a club has, the greater its resources to fulfill the common needs of the group. Make it easy to sign up for club, collect an ongoing subscription fee rather than a large upfront fee and reduce the time taken to process an application.

What strategies have you implemented, what worked and what didn’t? We will add to this list of the upcoming months and would love to hear your thoughts on growing a membership business or club.

Also if you have any questions about PaymentHub and how our direct debit and billing solutions can assist your club, please do not hesitate to contact us.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 6:22 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.