Running a membership site without a proper email strategy is risky. Even if you get signups, most members lose interest within days or weeks.
This leads to lower renewals, wasted acquisition effort and unstable revenue.
Most membership site owners may think this is a content problem. But let us burst that myth right now. Because the real problem is email marketing.
Yes, email is still one of the most powerful tools for growing membership sites. So, if you’ve turned a blind eye to it, now’s the time to give you a wakeup call.
The statistic shows email marketing campaigns deliver the highest ROI for membership sites, driving over $35-$45 for every $1 spent. Plus, with over 4.7 billion global users checking their inboxes daily, it remains the most reliable way for membership retention, engagement and renewals.
If you’re just starting out and don’t have members yet, email marketing also helps convert your first users through lead capture and onboarding sequences.
In this guide, we’ll cover how to run an email campaign for membership sites in the easiest way possible so stay tuned.
TL;DR: To run a successful email campaign for membership sites, you must use the right marketing tools with ARMember, automate key member journeys, segment subscribers based on behavior and regularly optimize campaigns using performance metrics.
What is Email Marketing For Membership Sites?
In Email marketing, you have to make targeted email campaigns to engage and retain members for growing your subscription based business.
It’s a great way to grow your membership site. And the best part? You don’t need a massive email list to get started. Just start with what you got and watch your sales roll in.
Email marketing membership campaigns are more than generic promotions. Think about it like this: If you only send a promotion email to your potential members, they soon will get bored, and will start treating your emails like spam.
But, on the other hand, if you send something that helps, like guides, eBooks, newsletters, and more, you can guide members’ decisions through their entire journey, from onboarding to active engagement and renewal.
Not to confuse this with regular email marketing, membership email marketing is built around:
- Member retention and long term value.
- Personalized communication based on user activity.
- Automated sequences that lower churn.
- Continuous engagement to stop drop offs.
In simple words, it is the system that keeps members active, informed and subscribed for longer.
Why Email Campaigns Matter For Membership Sites
Email campaigns are important for membership sites because they directly impact your membership retention, engagement and recurring revenue.
Most membership businesses don’t fail because of lack of signups, but because members lose interest after joining. And it’s way more common than you.
Let’s say you run a fitness or gym membership site. Did you know, on an average, 50% of new members in the subscription model cancel their membership within the first six months? Moreover, the membership industry suffers with a massive drop off happening in the first 90 days only.
Email marketing membership campaigns solve this by:
- Improving member retention through consistent communication.
- Less churn with timely engagement emails.
- Increasing renewals with reminder and value driven messages.
- Maximizing lifetime value of each member.
Without a structured email marketing strategy, even high quality membership content can go unused and undervalued.
Types of Email Campaigns For Membership Sites
Running a membership site means your communication must be evolved around the member’s journey.
There are different types of email marketing campaigns used by membership sites. Each email campaign has a specific role in guiding a person from signup to long term retention.
Here are the key types of email campaigns you should be running to grow:
- A welcome email campaign: It’s triggered right after a member signup. This confirms that the member finally logged in, shows the platform and makes expectations clear from day one.
- An onboarding campaign: This follows next. You can send emails such as how to use the platform, where to start and what content or features to explore first.
- An engagement campaign: This is where things start getting interesting. This type of email marketing campaign is all about keeping members active over time. Send new updates, resources and useful content that make your membership site interactive.
- A retention campaign: This one is going to target inactive or at-risk members. Here you have to focus on re engagement, valuable reminders and personalized messages to bring members back before they cancel.
- A renewal campaign: This is triggered near subscription expiry. It reminds members about renewal, shows them the value they have got and encourages them to continue their membership.
- An upsell or upgrade campaign: Now this email marketing type campaign is used to increase revenue per member. It promotes premium plans, exclusive content or higher tier benefits.
6 Steps to Successful Email Marketing for Membership Sites
Running a successful email campaign for membership sites means creating a system that keeps your members informed, engaged and connected to your platform all the time.
We’ve seen many membership site owners mostly focusing on getting more signups. But once members join, communication slows down. That is exactly where email marketing becomes important.
The best membership email campaigns feel helpful, personal and well-timed, not like overly-promotional, spam emails. And here’s how to make one for your membership site:
Start With the Right Email Marketing Tools
Before you run any email marketing campaign for your membership site, you need the right tools in place.
No proper setup = no membership management.
Afterall, at the core, every membership site needs:
- An email marketing platform
- A membership management system
- Automation tools for workflows and triggers
Your email platform should help you collect subscribers, segment members, automate campaigns and track performance from one place.
For membership sites, automation matters a lot. For example, when someone joins your site, renews a plan, becomes inactive or upgrades their subscription, your system should automatically trigger the right email sequence.
This creates a smoother experience for members while lowering manual work for you, making it a win-win situation of convenience for both sides
Many membership site owners start with simple email marketing tools such as MailChimp or ActiveCampaign, and expand later as their audience grows. The important thing is choosing tools that can support automation, personalization and member segmentation from the beginning.
If you’re using WordPress for running your membership site, you can use ARMember as this WordPress membership plugin can make this complete process much easier by integrating with 15+ popular email marketing tools and automation platforms.
ARMember is an industry-leading membership plugin for WordPress that lets you create, run and connect your membership site with your email workflows easily, even if you’re a non-techie person.
A well connected email system is the foundation of membership growth strategy.
Create a Strong Welcome and Onboarding Experience
The first few emails you send after someone joins your membership site can decide whether they stay engaged or disappear right away.
We’ve seen many membership businesses on their early growing stage losing members early, not because the content is bad, but because newly joined members feel confused, overwhelmed or unsure where to begin.
That’s exactly why a proper welcome and onboarding email sequence matters so much.
As soon as a member signs up, send a welcome email that:
- Thanks to them for joining
- Explains what they can access
- Helps them get started quickly
- Sets expectations for what comes next
Now continue the member onboarding with a few guided emails over the next couple of days. During this period of time, you can share popular resources or courses, explain important features and recommend the next action to take as well as answer common questions.
The goal is simple: help members experience value as soon as possible.
A good onboarding sequence makes sure your members never feel abandoned. Plus, it increases the chances of long term engagement, retention and renewals.
Send Valuable Emails Consistently
One of the biggest mistakes we’ve seen membership site owners make is only sending emails when they want to promote something.
Because of this, members stop opening those emails after some time as they’re expecting every message to be a sales pitch.
Successful membership email campaigns work differently. They deliver value….consistently.
Your emails must make members stay connected to your platform through:
- Useful tips and insights
- New content updates
- Tutorials or guides
- Newsletters
- Community announcements
- Feature highlights
If you’re always gonna sales pitch, your emails are gonna sound spammy. The goal of membership email marketing is to remind members why they joined in the first place.
The best part? If you’re a part of the ARMember community, you can send automatic notifications via Email, WhatsApp and SMS.
Segment Members Based on Behavior
Not every member is at the same stage of their journey. That is why sending the same email to everyone is never wise.
The smart way is to segment your members. Divide them based on the following:
- New Signups
- Active or inactive users
- Course or content activity
- Membership level
- Renewals or upgrades
A new member needs guidance and onboarding. An active member may want updates and fresh content. An inactive member needs re-engagement before they lose interest completely.
Thus Behavior based segmentation is the smartest email marketing strategy. You can send more relevant emails based on what members actually do on your site.
This makes your emails feel more personal and timely.
In most cases, according to statistics, better membership segmentation leads to:
- 14% to 30% higher open rates. And with Behavior-based personalized emails, it can go as high as 42.36%.
- 100% higher click-through rates according to MailChimp research.
- 9.37% to 25% fewer unsubscribes compared to unsegmented email campaigns.
In the end, the more relevant your emails feel, the more likely members are to stay connected to your membership site.
Use Automation to Reduce Manual Work
As your membership site grows, manually sending emails to every member simply becomes impossible.
The max you can go for manually is 500 emails per day using a personal email account or 2000 per day with a paid Google Workspace account. However, for a membership site, your absolute manual limit is closer to 50-100 emails daily.
That is where email automation becomes one of the most powerful parts of your membership marketing strategy.
Automation helps you send the right email at the right time without doing everything manually. Your membership system handles it automatically in the background.
You can automatically trigger emails when:
- Someone joins your membership site
- A member becomes inactive
- A subscription is about to expire
- A member upgrades their plan
- Someone completes or abandons their online course
Track What Is Working and Improve Over Time
A successful email campaign is never something you set up once and forget.
Furthermore, the most successful membership site owners always monitor and track how their members interact with their emails and improve their email marketing campaigns based on that data.
Thus if you want to run a successful email campaign for your membership site, make sure to track all these important metrics we listed below:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- Unsubscribe rates
- Member engagement
- Renewal or conversion performance
These insights help you understand:
- Which emails members actually read
- What type of content performs best
- Where engagement starts dropping
- Which campaigns lead to better retention
Sometimes even small changes, like rewriting a subject line or making your email content simple, can boost your results in the way you never expect – that’s the best part of email marketing.
Thus over time, these improvements help create stronger member relationships, better engagement and more stable recurring revenue for your membership business.
Final Takeaways for Membership Email Campaigns
A successful membership email campaign is built around creating better member experiences.
When done correctly, email marketing helps you:
- Keep members active.
- Reduce churn.
- Improve renewals.
- Build stronger relationships.
- Create more predictable recurring revenue.
In the long run, email marketing becomes one of the core systems that helps your membership business grow effortlessly.
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