Why would I want to offer a membership programme?
Membership packages, purchased on a regular recurring payment basis, are extremely valuable to all businesses at all times, but with the challenge presented by a situation like Covid-19, they can be the lifeline that makes the difference between a business surviving or not.
In fact, this was a major theme in the webinar I ran last year entitled How to Monetise your Therapy Skills Online and Build New Covid-Resistant Online Recurring Revenue Streams. You can still sign up to attend a recorded version of the webinar here.
Most successful businesses find ways to incorporate recurring revenues into their business models and I've written an article at the following link which details the advantages of creating recurring revenue streams, as well as goes into more detail about the sorts of packages you could create within a physical or manual therapy business.
A therapist colleague of mine, Vicki Marsh, also wrote an excellent article detailing lessons she's learnt about implementing a membership model in her own therapy business. You can find that article here.
There's a short article/help post here showing a Massage Membership Sign-Up page that I built in my own Co-Kinetic account, that I put together as an example to help you get started.
Here are just some advantages of a recurring revenue business model:
Recurring customers have a significantly higher lifetime value, in fact they spend more than twice as much as a pay-as-you-go customer.
You get a greater opportunity to build a longer term relationship with a recurring revenue customer which builds trust and makes them more loyal and therefore more likely to refer to you.
It allows you to predict ahead of time the demand for capacity, allowing you to plan more reliably and smooth out demand.
Regular subscription/membership income is more reliable and predictable.
There’s no need for invoicing which makes cashflow easier to manage.
It creates ‘stickier’ customers who stay around for longer, and this gives you more opportunities to upsell and cross sell other services and products.
By increasing the services you provide online, or by offering a blend of online and offline services as part of a membership package, you are better able to mitigate the impact of threats like Covid-19 on your business.
Recurring revenue streams (ie. subscriptions/memberships) have a 3-4 times greater resale value than non-recurring revenue if/when you come to sell your business (in other words it makes your business worth more).
This is exactly why I built a feature within Co-Kinetic during 2020, to help you take sign-ups to, and manage, a subscription-based recurring revenue stream.
What Could You Offer Subscriptions To?
They could come in one of three forms:
Online - you could provide content or support (or both) to a community of people with a common ‘pain’ or problem – this could include people for example who are suffering from long term conditions like chronic pain, specific forms of arthritis, mental health issues, dietary or nutritional issues, MS…the list goes on. Alternatively you could offer a mentoring service to other health professionals.
Offline - the obvious choice here would be a commitment to an ongoing package of treatments/appointments with some sort of incentive such as a greater discount to sign up.
Blended Online and Offline - or you could offer a combination of online and offline services and support, for example how about a Running Injury Prevention club which gave members access to regular running injury content along with a two weekly or monthly maintenance massage. The content could come from your or a third party, the important thing is that you curate it and perhaps add your own spin on things. This can easily be delivered using something as simple (and free) as a private Facebook Group.
How Might You Sell Your Subscriptions/Memberships?
You could produce your own information leaflet explaining about the programme, and then link people directly to one of your Co-Kinetic sign-up pages where they can set up their subscription.
You could write a social media post talking about your membership offer (and use paid advertising to promote it) with a link to the subscription sign-up page.
You could email, write or talk to your customers personally and again giving them a link to the subscription sign-up page.
You could run some kind of conversion event (such as the ones we discuss in this post) and offer your attendees the chance to join a membership after that event.
What Do We Provide Through Co-Kinetic To Help You Do This?
Sign Up Pages through which you can allow people to purchase the subscription - you can use either the Blank Event pages or the Customisable Web Pages to allow people to sign up to a recurring subscription payment.
A simple Membership Management area where you can manage your memberships, including Facebook Groups.
Flexible Subscription/Payment Options
The payment options are totally flexible, you can make it an ongoing payment until terminated or it can run for a fixed period which you can define and for any amount that you define.
We connect directly with Stripe so you can set up your own payment processing account and the money comes straight into your own bank account.
Stripe is an international payment processor, and the currency used for your payments is the currency set in your Stripe account, in other words this system can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world.
Advantages to Using the Co-Kinetic System
The sign-up pages are already created for you, all you have to do is to edit the text appearing on the page to suit your needs, giving you a professional looking sign up page that's quick and easy to create even if you have absolutely zero technical skills.
You don't need to subscribe to (or learn to use) other membership management software or pay additional fees for any payments taken through these software providers (which is the usual format).
In fact it won't cost you anything because the ability to run a membership/subscription group is already included in all our subscriptions.
Which Co-Kinetic Subscriptions Include This Feature?
All subscriptions include two blank Event templates which can be used for the purposes described above or you can purchase individual customisable web sign-up pages for a one-off cost plus a small monthly recurring fee to cover web hosting and support (you can cancel as soon as your event is finished if you wish to).
Clinic Growth (Full Site) subscribers have access to unlimited blank Event templates and all the customisable web pages already included in their plan.
More Help and Resources
To learn how to set up and manage these memberships scroll down to the HOW TO: Build and manage subscriptions/memberships using Co-Kinetic at this link >