The Boss Blog

Most association executives know automation is coming. They've read the articles, sat through the conference sessions, and quietly wondered whether their organization is falling behind. But when it's time to actually do something, the same fears take over: Where do we even start? What if we pick the wrong thing? We don't have an IT department.

So nothing happens. And another year goes by.

Here's what we've learned working with associations of all sizes: the first automation doesn't need to be big. It just needs to work.

Start Where the Pain Is

Every association has at least one staff member who answers the same questions every day. What are the membership dues? How do I register for the conference? Where do I find the member directory? These questions are genuinely important to the members asking them — and genuinely exhausting for the staff answering them.

That's your starting point. A well-configured FAQ automation can handle the majority of these inquiries without human intervention, often saving 100 or more staff hours per year. That's not a rounding error — for a team of three or four people, it's the difference between staying late on Fridays and actually leaving on time.

Why Small Wins Matter More Than You Think

When you automate one thing and it works, something shifts inside your organization. Staff who were skeptical see that the tool isn't there to replace them — it's there to handle the repetitive stuff so they can focus on work that actually requires a human. Leadership sees a measurable outcome. And suddenly the next automation conversation is a lot easier.

That momentum is everything. Associations that wait until they're "ready" to do something comprehensive often never start. Associations that take one small step build the confidence and organizational knowledge to keep going.

You Don't Need to Figure This Out Alone

The Contensive platform is built specifically for organizations like yours — associations, nonprofits, and membership groups that need real technology capabilities without the overhead of a dedicated tech team.

We manage the platform. We handle the implementation. And we guide you through each automation step in a sequence that fits your team's capacity and your members' needs — starting simple, building as you go.

No consultant-speak. No six-month implementation before you see anything. Just a first win you can point to, followed by a clear path forward.

Ready to see what automation could look like for your association? Schedule a conversation with our team and we'll show you where most organizations start — and how fast the first results tend to come in.

You’ve recognized the value in adding a membership site for your business, non-profit, or association. It’s an important step in the journey of your organization and must not be taken lightly. A great membership site can make the difference between staying operational or having to close the doors. It’s exciting to implement membership in your organization, but it can also be a little overwhelming. Before you jump right in and start setting up your membership site, here are a three things that you should consider:

Free vs Paid Membership

A lot of people incorporate membership sites to their organization in order to gain more recurring revenue. Given that as a basis, it makes more sense to have a paid membership instead of a free one. However, if you remember from a previous blog post, we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of free vs paid memberships. We concluded that for the best results it’s highly recommended to use both. There are a lot of benefits to offering high-quality content for free. It’s the perfect way to offer a sample of your membership to your prospective members. The more people get a sample, a taste of what you have to offer, the higher the chances that they will purchase a membership. Consider incorporating the free taste model to your membership site in order to encourage those who are on the fence to make a decision and trust that you will deliver and exceed their expectations.

Recurring Subscription vs One-Time Purchase

Another major thing to consider when setting up your membership site is which payment model you’re going to adopt. There are basically two ways of handling a paid membership, either through a one-time purchase fee or a recurring subscription. Deciding which model to use depends heavily on whether or not you have enough content to keep your members coming back for more very frequently. For a recurring subscription model to make sense to a member, they have to see the value in receiving fresh, new content on the topic, subject matter or ideology your membership espouses. As a general rule of thumb, if you have a product or course to sell, it is usually more appropriate to charge a one-time fee. On the other hand, if you have a ton of content that can be distributed with a certain frequency or if your membership is based around a cause, an idea, or a recurring service, then it is advised to use an ongoing recurrent paid subscription model. However, do your due diligence as there are exceptions to each. You could have a product, but a part or feature of the product requires a monthly payment. In that case you can’t offer a one-time only fee. So be mindful of what your particular situation is and what being a member of your organization actually means in terms of what is received in exchange for being a paying member.

Where to House Your Membership Site

It may not seem obvious at first, but the location of your membership site makes a difference on how well you can run your membership. You can either house your membership platform on your own website or have a separate platform on an entirely different website. There are pros and cons to each. The main advantage of having your membership management platform on another site is that usually the membership software will come out-of-the-box and ready to use with minimal setup. Most of the work has usually been done for you and more than likely you can choose between different packages to suit your needs. That being said, your situation might be unique. Cookie cutter products or services, though they might serve the masses, are not always a perfect fit for some. If that is your case, Book A Demo with the MemberBoss Team.

As you build your membership site, keep these in mind and come back to The Boss Blog for more helpful tips on how to make the most of your membership.

The experience your members are receiving from your membership site is super crucial. Yeah, sure, losing some members is pretty unavoidable, but the member experience you provide greatly reduces that. As a business owner, you should strive to keep your members extremely satisfied and give them an experience that is strikingly beyond expectations. As you plan your strategy for providing a world-class experience for your members, here are 3 quick tips that will help you supercharge the experience your members have :

The Free Taste

If you’ve been to a membership-only warehouse club like Costco or Sam’s Club, you’ve most likely seen some vendors offering a free sample of their products. People have different reactions to it. Some people say no. Some people try the sample and leave. Others try and buy for various reasons, and occasionally you’ll get that person that sees the free sample and buys without trying it. The concept is the same. No matter how you slice and dice it, without experiencing the free sample, a lot of potential buyers would have been lost. Give your audience a free taste of your membership to help those interested figure out that you are right for them. You can offer a limited-time free access or offer free content via a podcast, a blog, or any format you deem appropriate. Whichever format you choose, your free taste should be so impressive that over time the person would want nothing more than be part of your paid membership.

The Social Network Infusion

There’s a reason why social media is highly prevalent. We are humans. Inherently, we are social creatures. We all have a deep-seated desire and need to socialize and communicate with one another. It’s in our nature. Why not cater to that and provide, at the very least, a semblance of a social network to your membership. Infuse communication tools in your membership. Give your members the chance to really connect with others. It goes beyond giving your members a voice, an opportunity to be heard. You are giving them the gift of the perspective of other people who are having the same experience. That is quite invaluable in the scope of things. The range of possibility is remarkable when you implement this notion. You can start with a forum, and end up providing a Facebook-like experience centered around your cause, your mission or your vision. Think big and the reward will be endless.

The Gamification Application

If I say dating app, you’re most likely thinking of Tinder, and rightfully so. It is the most famous and popular one. Do you know why? It’s certainly not exclusivity, novelty or people’s innate desire to date. The reason is seemingly complex, but quite simple. Fun. They’ve made the process of finding a date fun. Ok, maybe I should say as fun as you can make it through a screen, but that’s besides the point. The point is they took some of the best elements of playing games and applied it to make it all fun. Moreover, just like playing games, it can be quite addictive. Just ask Quagmire from Family Guy. He knows. By gamifying their app, they’ve disrupted an entire industry. Apply gamification concepts to your membership experience. Reward your members with points when they finish an onboarding task. Show them a progress bar. Prize engagement in some way. Surprise your members with fun new little things that are part of a larger narrative. Make your membership experience fun.

Know what else is fun? A demo of MemberBoss, our Membership Management Platform. You can book one here, and if you like this article, subscribe to The Boss Blog. It’s free!

The recent events with the pandemic have caused a stir in almost every industry.  Lots of businesses have been affected by the pandemic protocol, and few businesses and industries have been affected as much as the restaurant business has.  With the dine-in experience being severely diminished, restaurants have been closing in droves and forced to come up with innovative solutions to not only compete, but to stay afloat.  In this webinar, we present to you the solution to beating the current climate and gearing up for what is next in the restaurant business.  Enjoy!

While it’s understandable that you want to grow your customer base, how do you retain your current customer base who are likely to buy from you again? One way can be to say thank you by offering loyalty membership benefits. While it’s good for your customers, what are the benefits for your business? There are many possible financial and non-financial upsides.

Learn all about memberships and how they can help your business from our first hand experiences and other real world examples.

There comes a point, when you have set up a membership program for your business or your association, where you have to decide to either give free access to your membership or charge a fee for accessing your membership content. This decision can prove to be quite difficult at times. Hopefully after reading this, you’ll get a clear idea on how to differentiate between the two and which model would best suit your needs.

Paid Memberships

The most glaring and main benefit of paid memberships, other than providing much needed content to your members, is the added revenue it brings to your business or organization. You can charge a one-time fee for members to receive access to the exclusive members-only content or it can be a recurring fee, monthly, yearly, or whichever frequency would suit your organization better. A paid membership can act as a barrier to entry for those who aren’t seriously committed or genuinely interested in what you have to offer. Being able to keep low-interest people out is beneficial and useful in maintaining a community that is involved, dedicated and productive. On the flip side, though your member-base is more potent, you also will also have a higher turnover rate than free memberships. Not everyone will stick around for the long haul, so you do have to develop a strategy to keep attracting new members on a consistent basis.

Free Memberships

The free membership model has its own benefits and disadvantages as well. The most obvious benefit of a free membership is that access is given to everyone who wishes to get to know more about your organization. This will increase the likelihood that the people who are on the fence about purchasing your product or services will do so. Oftentimes, prospects who are adamant about not shelling out any coins would purchase from your organization because of the simple repeated exposure to your business or organization. Offering free membership access should also be contingent on who your audience is. If your products and services are geared towards a group with limited buying power, pre-teens or stay-at-home parents for instance, then it would be smarter to have free membership access since the purchase of your product or service, though used by your audience would be done by someone else or would be a big purchasing decision for them. It would be erroneous to charge membership access to a kid who might get Dad to buy that video game soon.

The Best Strategy

You’re probably wondering now what the best strategy is for your business. Do you offer paid memberships or free memberships. The great thing about offering paid and free memberships is that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive strategies for your organization. You can mix the two. That is actually the most optimal strategy to implement. Unless your organization requires you to have one or the other for some reason, it is best to have a mixture of the two. Your business can offer free membership with free content that will attract new members and pull in your audience. Then you can add a paid membership section with exclusive content only available to those who pay the fee. This strategy allows you to have the best of both worlds, a pool of interested people and a core base of dedicated members.

Knowing the difference between paid memberships and free memberships, and knowing the advantages of each is but the first step in your journey. Once you’re ready to implement one of these two or both for your business, feel free to contact us and Book a Demo to learn more about MemberBoss. As always, don’t forget to subscribe to the Boss Blog for more helpful tips pertaining to you and your members.

There are infinite kinds and varieties of membership models that any group or business can use to maximize revenue and value offered to the world. You can have an education-based membership, a community-focused membership, a service membership, a subscription, a customer loyalty program, or other types of membership models. Most, if not all of these membership models do require a website to be functional. When properly executed, membership websites can be a great source of additional revenue for your business. Let’s take a look at a type of membership model that may not seem obvious, but that any business can make use of: education-based membership.

Membership Sites

Before we dive into what an education-based membership model entails, we need to clearly identify what a membership site actually is. To put it plainly, a membership site is a website with content that is usually protected by requiring a user to login in order to access the content. Most of the time, the content on a membership site would only be available to those who have paid a membership fee, which can either be a one-time fee or a recurring fee. One of the benefits of having users log in to access their content is that you can tailor the content to be user-specific, and truly personalize each member’s experience. Such personalization enhances the user’s experience and engagement with your membership website. With the advancements in technology, nowadays, there are very few limitations on the products or services any member can receive. We pretty much live in an age where if you can conceive it, you can achieve it. A membership website can go hand in hand with almost any industry. Restaurants, podcasters, dry cleaning agencies, plumbers, to name a few, can all implement a membership model to supplement their services.

Education-based Membership

A membership site is not one-size-fits-all. As mentioned earlier there are varying kinds of membership models that can suit a business, an enterprise or an association uniquely. A quite popular membership model is the education-based membership. An education-based membership is a model that almost any business or entity can adopt. As long as you have something to teach, you have the potential to offer online courses and grow your member base. Let me reiterate, every business or organization has something to teach via online courses. The simple fact that you have something to sell, a product or a service, makes you an authority in that domain. Share the knowledge that you have through an online class or several online classes.

The beauty about creating online courses is that you can set up the format any which way you’d prefer. They can be audio courses or video courses. It can be a one-time class or several classes that culminate in the dissemination of multiple certifications. The courses can even be pre-recorded or live. Although online courses configurations can widely differ, there’s a commonality among them all: a protected online area that only the course students have access to. This protected online area will house all the course materials, videos, workbooks, etc. Once your course students have purchased access to the course or courses, they can log in and receive the education that you have provided for them.

One of the cool things about teaching someone something is knowing that you have given them something valuable that will stay with that person for the rest of their life. Knowledge truly is power, and in this case, profitable power. As you go about your business, take into consideration implementing an education-based membership for your business or association. You might just change someone’s life. If you’d like to learn more about the various tools we offer to help you implement online courses in your repertoire, feel free to Book a Demo and don’t forget to subscribe to The Boss Blog to get more helpful tips for you and your members.

As we move towards the future, online businesses have become more and more prolific. So much so that there are essentially two types of businesses in our current times: traditional businesses and online businesses. Traditional businesses are your brick-and-mortar businesses. They are the type of business that have a physical location. There are advantages and benefits to having an online business that your traditional business doesn’t have. The good news is that most traditional businesses can move online or at the very least increase their online presence and enjoy the same benefits that an online business would have. Nowadays, especially with the coronavirus lockdown, traditional businesses need to think outside the box and adapt to our changing environment. Let’s take a look at how a traditional, brick-and-mortar business can benefit from moving its business online:

Global Reach

More often than not, traditional businesses have a limited reach. Location, location, location. You may have heard this mantra before. It usually refers to the location of a home being one of the most important factors that dictate the value of a home. This concept holds true for traditional businesses. Not so much because of the real estate value of the business, but more so because it is a direct reflection on how much reach the business will have and how many quality customers would walk through the door. Most traditional businesses are limited to a local area. Moving the business online is a fantastic way to eliminate this restriction. Online businesses have a global reach. Anyone in the world, as long as they have internet access, can do business with an online company. Once your business is online, you can attract customers from all over the world. This leads to an increase in revenue.

More Effective Promotion

When moving to a digital space, the traditional business doesn’t necessarily have to close its doors. You can still keep your brick-and-mortar location, and become more visible than ever. Your business being online can be a great complement to the traditional business. Now that you have greater reach, you can promote to a greater market area that is not confined to your geographical location. Being online, also allows your business to perform more targeted marketing. With the help of online sales funnels and paid online advertising, including social media advertisement, you can target your ideal customer. Most businesses, if not all businesses have a specific demographic that describe their most interested customers. By being online, you can choose to zero in on that demographic population and advertise to them. Promoting your business directly to the kind of customers that is more likely to buy from you is invaluable.

Lower Administrative Costs

Adopting an online business model can prove to be quite cost-effective when it comes to administrative expenses. You may experience less of a need to keep inventory on site. This helps tremendously in reducing the costs for storage. You can also make arrangements to have your products shipped directly from your vendors to your customers. Not only does this result in less paperwork on your side, but it also allows for faster delivery of your products. Additionally, certain processes can be automated and consequently there would be less of a need for an employee to manage those processes. You know what that results to? More money in your pockets.

As we progress into a world that is ever-increasingly becoming digital, brick-and-mortar businesses need to seriously consider going online. If you’re ready to make the next step in this transition, get in touch. MemberBoss and the Contensive Team have all the tools you would need to get you started in the right direction, from e-commerce solutions to online ordering systems for restaurants. Feel free to contact us to learn more, and subscribe to The Boss Blog for more upcoming helpful tips.