The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue

Membership and community are related and overlap, but they aren’t the same. Membership, as we’ve discussed, is about a formal, ongoing relationship between organization and member. Community is about connection and communication among a group of people with shared interests.

Everyone wants to crack the subscription code. The challenge is that subscription models require discipline and consistency, tempered with constant tinkering.

The Membership Economy is all about putting the customer at the center of the business model rather than the product or the transaction.

Leaders in the Membership Economy know how to work membership into people’s days.

Now that you have a strong message, you can determine the types of campaigns to run. You want to reach prospects at a time when they’re willing to buy. It doesn’t matter how good your pitch is or how much I’ll need a parka next winter, I’m just not going to buy one while I’m sitting on the beach in July.

The more the organization understands its customers’ needs, wants, behaviors, and attitudes—that is, much more than their raw demographics—the better it can serve those needs.

A chute is the same width at the top and the bottom, and things move quickly from the top to the bottom of a chute. By narrowing the funnel—that is, by focusing awareness at the top and maximizing the number of prospects that stay in the funnel at each stage—an organization can have more of a chute.

Membership is a concept that is timeless, important, and powerful. It is part of our innate humanity to gravitate toward community. Once trade economies developed, we proved we were willing to pay a premium for connection, and the Membership Economy was born.

When you price for value, you focus on what the member wants, which is best for everyone. The challenge comes when the perceived and actual needs of the member change over time—which they always do.