The member journey – think it through

A clear sense of purpose and well-defined audience are the foundations of a great online membership service. With these building blocks in place, it’s time to go a little deeper and start planning your member journey.

Planning has a number of aspects to it – all of which inter-relate. As one strand of the plan becomes clear it feeds into another. For me, I like to start by outlining what’s known as the ‘member journey’ – which is a step-by-step view of what it feels like for a customer who uses your online membership. Once you have this, the content needed and the other tasks to set it up all ‘hang off’ the steps in that journey.

Let me give you an example. Suppose you’ve decided to create an online training course for people wanting to get the best from their blogging. Your member journey might look a bit like this:

Search on Google for ‘courses on blogging’
Find website and watch intro video
Click for more information
Sign up – receive confirmation e-mail
Access to the site – log in e-mail
Welcome pack sent
Follow up e-mails to help get started
Complete first module
“Well done” e-mail
Issue challenge to create a blogging plan
….

And so on. Can you see how, to make all this happen for your customer, all sorts of actions are coming up?

Write website copy
Film an introductory video
Create the contact form on website
Register and set up online payment system
Set up membership site
Develop a welcome pack
Write follow up e-mails
Decide what to include in each module
Develop the videos, worksheets, podcasts, guides, etc., for each of the modules

And so on…

You’ll find that tasks won’t occur to you in a nice, neat order. For example, having made this list, I then thought to record the video I’ll need to write a script; and it will need to be edited afterwards.

At this point, sequence doesn’t matter; you can organise that once you’ve got everything written down.

This process may feel a bit alarming at this stage – all that stuff to do – but remember that your members are getting this level of service from all their other online memberships. Also keep in mind that, while there is a lot to be done, it doesn’t all have to be done before you launch (more on that in another blog). What’s more, once it is done, other than fine tuning, everything you develop will be relevant for every member, so it only needs to be written once.

By thinking properly about the journey your members go through before you start creating content, they’re going to get more from their experience with you and stay for longer.

Longer, more successful memberships are what it’s all about.

If you’d like support outlining your member journey, we can help. Book a call to find out about our content planning services.