Upsell Tricks for Membership Sites

Membership sites are great at delivering all sorts of digital content but the really smart online marketers are using their membership sites to do more than simply stream video, audio and written content. Today’s top marketers have all learned to upsell their members with some easy to implement, yet highly effective, upsell tricks for membership sites.

Using a membership site to upsell a customer is really where the "rubber meets the road" for me because I know how hard, and how expensive, it is to find a customer in the first place. So when I’m lucky enough to get someone into the spending mood, I want him or her to be as free flowing as possible with their money and buy more during the initial purchase and then buy more as follow up products and services.

Naturally, this means I need an effective software automation tool to guide my customer through an effective upselling sequence in order to maximize my sales volume. And while there are many ways to upsell a customer when selling a standard product, there are some very specific upsell tricks for membership sites that I find work far and away better than anything I’ve ever used or tested.

These upsell tricks for membership sites might seem like they’re a bit "pushy" to some people so I want to first convince you that your customers will actually appreciate you more when you provide an effective upsell to them.

Let me provide a simple upsell example to demonstrate how you can add revenue to your bottom line and create happier customers at the same time.

Most large gas stations now have a car wash attached to their business. And when you buy gas, you’re always offered a car wash as an upsell and this comes with a discount on the price per gallon of gasoline.

This discount on the gasoline obviously makes the customer happy and the gas station comes out ahead by increasing their revenue of a high margin product i.e. the car wash.

In this everyday example, it’s easy to see that both parties come out ahead, and fortunately for you, this is more the norm than the exception. All you need to do is think about adding reasonable value to your customer so they benefit and are happy to add reasonable revenue into your sales process and business.

Let me tell you about my favorite upsell trick for membership sites. Keep in mind that not every online membership software has the power to pull this off but I would never use any membership software that cannot perform this trick because it works so well.

Here are the simple steps to pull this off:

1. Create a membership site with a 2-tier structure. Tier 1 is free with instant access so no purchase is required. Tier 2 is a paid membership structure.
2. 2a. Create an offer on your website and tell people to opt-in for instant access to your membership site. This is an effective list building process that allows you to follow up with automated auto responder messages.

Or

1. 2b. Create an offer on your site that provides access with "1-click" and no opt-in requirement. This maximizes membership site traffic but at the expense of list building.
2. Inside the membership site, have a group of designated content that is accessible to free members using instant access.
3. The main group of content will be visible but protected with access control.

When a person is inside your membership site, they will be able to access the free content but when they progress to the protected content, they will receive a message telling them, "this is protected content, please upgrade your membership now to access this content".

Assuming your content is top notch, this "free trial" upsell trick for membership sites is one of the most effective methods of converting "free sample" visitors into "paying customers"... my favorite kind.

About the author: As a web marketing coach and consultant for over a decade, Andrew have decided to share his experience and insights with online business people so that they can know more about smarter business automation system available in the market and save hell lot of money, time and energy.

As a web marketing coach and consultant for over a decade, Andrew has decided to share his experience and insights to help online business people become about business automation systems available in the market to save money, time and energy.