How to get the ‘recurring’ into high value, B2B membership revenues by MPG BO Team, on 29/06/2021 It is now quite common knowledge that a strong, validated high value B2B membership proposition is of great interest to senior executives in B2B media/events businesses. Strong recurring revenues generated by memberships are usually equally interesting and exciting to both existing and potential new investors. But, it is important to keep an eye on the key word here, which is ‘recurring’. Successfully launching a new membership product that your customers are willing to pay quite a lot to access doesn’t guarantee the revenue will be recurring. If you are not able to consistently retain your paying members at the same or higher annual yield, you will need to continually ‘top up’ with new members. This ongoing push to acquire new members can be costly and unpredictable. Don’t get me wrong: member acquisitions are an important part of a membership growth story. But, without the renewals (and ideally upsell) piece working well, your growth is likely to be unsustainable at best, and negative at worst. According to The Membership Guys, “it costs 7-10 times more on average to win a new member than it does to hold on to an existing one”. So, when do you prepare your member retention marketing and sales strategy? This must be done before you even start your member acquisition campaigns! One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when launching a membership product is only paying attention to member retention a couple of months before the renewal date – or sometimes even later. To secure properly recurring revenues your investors will love (and expect!) starts the day your member is acquired. MPG focuses very much on marketing to grow membership revenue, but as marketing, sales, product, account management and customer experience need to be well integrated for member retention to be successful, this blog looks at all of these aspects. Here are the 5 key areas MPG recommends for focus to achieve good retention of high value, B2B members – to achieve that much sought after consistently recurring, and growing membership revenue: #1 Onboarding Once your customer has taken that all important step and decided to purchase a membership, you need to remind your new member why they made this purchase and how to get the most out of their investment. So, you need a ‘member onboarding programme’, which should be the first step in member retention. Here are three things to consider when putting this together. Send a highly relevant welcome email: this is your first opportunity to delight a new member, so don’t waste it with a generic welcome email that makes them feel like they’re just being pushed into your production line. Wherever possible, personalise this communication. Ideally have a real person they’re likely to engage with in future (their account manager, or customer success manager) compiling and sending this email, which should include a product tour or demo video (even if they’ve already seen it) and signposting to relevant content and product features they can immediately start benefiting from. New member interview: make sure you really understand what ‘success’ looks like for every new member i.e. why did they decide to spend the money on the membership? What would a good return on investment look like for the member, and in what timeframe? This is likely to differ by customer and is especially important in the early stages of your membership product life cycle as you gather valuable customer insight. This intelligence is essential to help you further refine and enhance the membership value proposition, while also engaging with every precious new member on a personal level in a way that is likely to be perceived by the member as very good customer care. Keep it simple for your new member! Don’t bombard your new member with an excessive amount of communication and requests for their time and attention. Consider how you give your new members the required amount of time and balanced support to explore your membership offering at a comfortable pace and ‘self-serve’ as much as possible, so they are fully enabled and empowered to make the most of what they have bought. #2 Content Your content is likely to be one of the main reasons a member signs up. The membership is seen as a means to solve a problem, or a series of problems. These usually include at least two of the following: acquiring new skills, getting valuable intelligence, and accessing a precious, highly relevant network. If you consider these as ‘content’ – joined up and served up in an easy-to-use way, you’re thinking in the right way! Strong, regular member engagement with your content is important to ensure members get the level of value that is likely to make them renew. To ensure you are serving up the right content, at the right time, in the right formats for your members, consider how you incorporate the following into your workflow and offering. Relevant, visible, timely content calendar: make sure what you are serving up is relevant and timely to your member’s ‘jobs to be done’ (e.g. an annual planning and budgeting process) and also make sure your members can see what is coming up. Keep reminding them of what they will get in future at critical times so they see their membership as a key part of their own workflow. Choice/flexibility: not every member will want to consume your content in the same way, so serve it up in a variety of formats. For example, an intelligence report can be delivered as a PDF, with a highlights video, an accompanying webinar and a Q&A session in an online chat group. Not only will this mean different preferences are catered for, but it also means your high-quality content is likely to work harder for you as it is repurposed. This also helps you achieve the ‘quality over quantity’ balance right, making the quantity look & feel substantial enough, while ensuring the quality content is highly accessible. Ongoing member research: ask questions as members use the product to find out what they like and don’t like about how you have packaged up membership features and benefits, and what they find most valuable and useful – and why. If you can combine a series of automated mini-surveys with personalised conversations to work out if your members are achieving their work goals via your membership, you’re likely to get the best kind of intelligence that will help you have exactly the right kinds of sales conversations to retain and upsell members, and improve the product as you go along. “The closer you can align the way you package your value to the goal that your customer has, the more likely your customer is to trust you for the long term.” Robbie Kellman Baxter – Membership/subscriptions advisor & best-selling author #3 Engagement Having the right content is just one piece of the retention puzzle. The next piece is ensuring members engage with the content. Here are a few ways to do this: Nurturing: using email nurture campaigns, personalised to the members’ content needs, are a great way to boost engagement, and therefore retention. Incentives: if you can find a way to gamify membership usage in a way that rewards your most highly engaged members, you’re on to a winner. Maybe you could unlock some exclusive content or higher value features for members who ‘give the most’ to using their membership? Engagement scoring: this is simply a way to categorise your members from least engaged through to highly engaged based on specific actions that they take. You want as many members as possible to be within the highly engaged category, as these members have the highest probability of renewing and probably also buying a bigger package e.g. with more users/seats in their licence or a multi-year deal. Those that are least engaged will need some extra attention well before their renewal date. Data insights & analytics: using analytics tools can provide you with insights into what content your members are most engaged with and also how they are using your content and platform. Insights around your top performing pages and site navigation can provide you with ways to improve platform design to quickly help your members get what they need – faster and in a better format. The easier your membership product is to use, the more your members are to use and get value from it! #4 Pricing Overly complicated membership pricing plans can often lead to higher member churn. You need to ensure your members are aware of what it is they are signing up for. There should be no nasty surprises in terms of what is expected and then included – or not. When considering renewals, there a few options and considerations to build into the initial planning and evolution of your pricing: Upgrades: consider how members can move up the value chain over time – in terms of what they can access and how much they pay. A strong upgrade path may attract more members and enable longer term revenue growth. Downgrades: having a cheaper version of your membership, with less access to certain features or content, is a great way to retain members who may struggle to justify or afford a full renewal every year. Pauses: if you can enable a pause to a membership, your customers will thank you. Giving them the option to pause rather than cancel, can be better for overall retention. Auto renewals: having an auto renewal in place that is properly communicated at the time of signing up helps by removing any friction in the renewal process. The member doesn’t need to do anything to renew and only needs to act if they want to cancel at renewal stage. Mid-term upgrades: you don’t need to wait until a membership is about to expire to offer upgrades. This can be done anywhere in the membership cycle. The members that engage well from the start may present your best opportunities for upgrades ahead of the official renewal date. This could be individual users with high engagement scores or companies that have multiple members on your platform. Incentives: building incentives into your membership marketing strategy can help secure early renewals. In an annual renewal cycle, an incentive scheme can start from as early as 3 months out from your expiry date. Types of incentives you can offer include: remaining membership period for free on renewal; access to exclusive pieces of content; or invitations to community roundtables or networking events. Incentives are not just for current members, they can also be a useful tool for re-engaging with lapsed members. #5 Measurement As with all other marketing efforts, keeping a close eye on the metrics that matter most is essential! We recently published a blog on the key strategic KPIs for membership marketing and sales – presenting the core metrics for both acquisition and retention. Below are the main areas your retention metrics should be focussed on: Onboarding Engagement Sales Renewal cycle/timing DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY OF THE FULL STRATEGIC KPIS Whether you have recently launched a membership, already have a strong membership offering, or you are in the early stages of planning, we have some upcoming blogs in the series that will provide you with practical approaches for your membership marketing strategy: The ideal member acquisition process: how to build a marketing and sales funnel that becomes a powerful feeder of new business – to achieve strong membership growth over an extended period of time. The best way to build events (in all forms) into your membership offering: to achieve strong member retention rates and to act as a reliable growth engine for membership revenue. So, if you have not already signed up to MPG Insights – now is a good time! Subscribe here to get an email every time we publish a new blog like this one, or create another resource (e.g. webinar or report) that you will benefit from. Launching a new membership offering or wanting to grow strong recurring revenue for an existing product? Team MPG creates and executes on robust membership marketing strategies that support both acquisition and retention growth. Find out more about our approach – get in touch. “I was very impressed with the marketing strategy MPG developed for Environment Analyst. The level of thinking that went into this strategy and how it was delivered has created great value for our business. My marketing manager and I now look forward to working with MPG to execute great marketing together.” Julian Rose, Director & Co-Founder, Environment Analyst Continue Reading Topics: Audience acquisitionCommunity marketingMembership marketingSubscriptions marketing
ABM: Looking beyond the buzzword! by Sharise Wilkinson, on 20/05/2021 Account Based Marketing (ABM) is not a new concept in B2B marketing. However, as an important integrated B2B marketing and sales approach, we don’t think it is widely understood or used as it should be in B2B media/events businesses and professional membership organisations. Regardless of the size of your organisation, product types, or the sectors you serve, every senior business leader and marketer should be embracing ABM and integrating it as part of their overall marketing strategy. If you’re keen to learn more about ABM – what it is, why it is important and how you put it into practice, read on! This article is ‘part 1’ of MPG’s 2 part blog series, created to guide you through a strategic approach to ABM implementation. Next week we will publish part 2, which will be focused on a step-by-step approach to doing ABM well. What is Account Based Marketing (ABM)? Simply put, ABM is a marketing strategy to identify, target and engage a specific set of high-value accounts by creating highly personalised messaging and customer experiences for key individuals within these accounts. ABM can also be viewed as a practical application of the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule), whereby 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers. The return on investment from this form of marketing is delivered through: Higher conversion rates: of prospect to lead, and lead to sale, within your most valuable accounts (i.e. those likely to also renew and deliver a strong lifetime value). Shorter sales cycles: your sales team can be more efficient as they have less work to do to convince all decision makers and influencers to sign off on a deal. Alternatively, if an e-commerce deal, this should happen faster due to quicker internal approvals. Higher average order values: because all decision makers and influencers are well persuaded by very relevant marketing that their purchase will deliver good value. Many marketers are already conducting a form of ABM, without calling it that! Sending targeted messaging to specific market segments/data sets via email applies the basic principles of ABM. Recipients get more personalised messaging that addresses their specific challenges and needs. ‘Proper’ ABM is about applying this practice more extensively, and across more channels. ABM typically has the greatest impact for high-value sponsorships, memberships or subscriptions products, or where you need to have specific companies in your audience and/or at your event to satisfy sponsors. It can also apply to acquiring new sponsors/clients for your events or marketing programmes. Why is ABM more relevant now that before the pandemic? Several factors have driven the increased importance, and usage, of ABM in recent months. Unsurprisingly, the seismic shifts seen over the past 14 months is the common thread. Here are the main factors at play: #1: As many marketing budgets are reduced and marketing teams are smaller, marketers are under significant pressure to deliver campaigns that positively and visibly impact revenue generation. ABM focuses marketers on the accounts that are going to give them the highest return, and as ABM can shorten the sales cycle, in the shortest possible time frame. #2: Increased investment in tech and data management, typically to facilitate virtual events and other online offerings, has the knock-on effect of making ABM far more viable and easy (as possible!) to deploy. Successful ABM relies on well organised customer data within a digital infrastructure that enables automation; as well as engage individuals and groups across digital channels, cohesively. #3: ABM has filled the gaps left by live events. Crucial in-person touchpoints have, by necessity, been replaced by deeper, multi-channel digital engagement within well-engineered and creative campaigns. #4: Across the board, marketing is becoming more important. Marketing is now playing a much more important role in the rapid digital pivots of brands, products and communities, and overall digital transformation organisations. Marketing is also leading the charge in defining the sales and operations strategies – a role reversal from just a few years ago. Organisations have realised that investment in marketing is essential to building and monetising engaged audiences. This was already happening before the pandemic, but has been thrown into the ‘Covid-19 accelerator’ for full disruption mode! Why ABM is key for customer experience ABM allows you to deliver more consistent and compelling customer experiences for your most coveted accounts. In very crowded markets, where there is so much digital noise, ABM can make all the difference in securing the customers you need via a compelling and relevant journey towards your brand and product. At its core, ABM is about making marketing and sales even more aligned. By defining and actively targeting high-value accounts, and making this integral to both your marketing and sales strategies, you can make your conversion funnel more efficient and cost-effective. Most importantly, your customers will have a much better and streamlined experience as they hurtle towards the bottom of your funnel. How should ABM be put into practice? In part 2 of this blog series, we’ll be sharing a step-by-step guide to implementing ABM in your marketing. Subscribe to MPG Insights to be notified when it’s released. MPG have been a valuable marketing strategy partner to Kademy’s leadership team. They have helped us decide how best to invest in marketing based on the stage we’re at with our business, and have also given us very practical advice on various marketing initiatives around ABM, content marketing, social media, PPC and website optimisation. Having MPG’s marketing expertise plugged in to our business gives me confidence we’re moving our marketing function forward in the right way. Alex Hentschel, Managing Director & Co-Founder, Kademy Do you need help developing your ABM marketing strategy? Team MPG can help you work out how best to use ABM and deploy this approach for maximum impact. Here are the reasons clients choose MPG for ABM: As experts in all things B2B marketing, Team MPG has the toolkit to ensure your sales team gets focused support to target and convert your most coveted customers. MPG will also help you better integrate your sales & marketing. When using ABM, processes need to be well mapped out and joined up for ABM to have a consistently positive impact on your revenue growth. Team MPG will develop your bespoke, robust strategy, and set up martech/salestech & processes for ABM success. We can also help you execute ABM campaigns for best impact, and measure this impact with MPG’s unique marketing performance dashboards. Get in touch Continue Reading Topics: Account based marketingCommunity marketingContent marketingEvent marketingMembership marketingSubscriptions marketing
The Marketing Mix | The Best of MPG by MPG BO Team, on 26/02/2021 At MPG’s ‘virtual HQ’, we’ve been working hard at creating and sharing the resources we believe are essential for: Transforming your marketing function – to give you the most ‘future-fit’ marketing team possible Turbocharging your marketing performance – so that your marketing investments deliver a strong ROI Your free MPG Insights blogs, webinars, e-books and guides have hopefully helped you grow your B2B audience engagement, while also enabling strong monetisation via events, memberships and subscriptions. We’ve created every resource to deliver actionable and practical insights and tips to make your marketing work better. This newsletter collates for you The Best of MPG – a summary of all of our most popular blogs and resources into one easy to read email digest. Please pass this on to your colleagues and friends! We’re also delighted to let you know about our free Strategy Chats Webinar Series, taking place on the first 3 Fridays in March. Joined by an exceptional line up of guest speakers, these quick-fire briefings will cover ‘all things marketing strategy’ for B2B Communities, B2B Memberships and B2B Events. Register for free today. Our top MPG Insights Blogs Blog B2B Community Marketing: MPG’s Strategic Approach Tags:Community marketing, Event marketing, Sponsor acquisition Blog What marketing skills do you need in your business? Tags:Digital marketing, Skills training Blog The 15 metrics that really matter in digital marketing for B2B Tags:Analytics and intelligence, Digital marketing Blog PPC for B2B virtual events – a step-by-step guide Tags:Digital marketing, Event marketing Blog 5 truths about virtual events you can’t afford to ignore Tags:Digital marketing, Event marketing, Virtual event platforms Blog Social Media Week case study: lessons from virtual events, launching the ‘Netflix for Marketers’ and what’s coming next… Tags:Event marketing, Virtual event platforms Blog Where are B2B media & events brands investing in 2021? Tags:Event marketing, Subscriptions marketing Blog 4 Things you should be doing for a high performance website Tags:Community marketing, Digital marketing, Event marketing, Membership marketing, Subscriptions marketing Useful Resources resources Free e-book: how to create an effective marketing strategy for your virtual events Tags:Event marketing resources Growth Marketing Hacks: 8 things you can do to convert free subscribers to paying subscribers Tags:Subscriptions marketing Not to be missed – upcoming webinar series FREE WEBINAR SERIES MPG Strategy Chats: Marketing for B2B Media and Events 5th, 12th & 19th March 2021 March will see MPG hosting a series of free webinars focused on strategies, ROI metrics and key success factors for B2B community marketing, B2B membership marketing and B2B event marketing. To find out how to ensure marketing is a key success driver in your business, come along to this ground-breaking, 3-part Strategy Chats series. MPG’s marketing strategists will be joined by the following expert guest speakers: Andrew Brown – Co-Founder & Chairman, FUTURE INSIGHTS NETWORK Mike Hepburn – MD, FT Forums & Board Director Programmes, FINANCIAL TIMES Anna Knight – VP Licensing, INFORMA Tania Marshall – Global Marketing Director, FINANCIAL TIMES LIVE James Mayes – Co-Founder & CEO, MIND THE PRODUCT Laura McQueen – Managing Director, LEADERS IN SPORT Carolyn Morgan – Managing Consultant, SPECIALL MEDIA Simon Murray – Head of Marketing, Money 20/20, ASCENTIAL Julian Rose – Director & Co-Founder, ENVIRONMENT ANALYST FIND OUT MORE AND REGISTER Get essential marketing training for your team Whether you’re looking to upskill your whole team through tailored, in-house training, or want to join fellow marketers from around the world on one of our open courses, MPG Academy has a training solution to fit your needs. MPG recently delivered very relevant training for me – helping me a lot with my marketing planning and practical implementation of best practice marketing. The course materials they provided were phenomenal. Claire Clilverd, Global Head of Commercial Marketing, INFOPRO DIGITAL Your B2B Marketing Partner Community Marketing Do you have a B2B community you need to engage, monetise and scale? MPG can help you develop a strong marketing strategy and then execute well to build a valuable community. Subscription Marketing Does your B2B subscription product have strong growth potential? MPG can help you achieve sustainable, repeatable revenue growth with data-led and digitally-enabled marketing. Membership Marketing Do you have a professional membership community you’d like to grow? MPG can help you attract, retain and upsell your members to create strong, repeating membership revenue. Event Marketing Are B2B conferences or exhibitions an important income generator for your organisation? MPG’s strong audience acquisition and commercial marketing can help you grow your event revenue fast. GET IN TOUCH TO FIND OUT MORE Our Areas of Marketing Expertise Delivering winning marketing strategies, outsourced marketing and training to help B2B-community focused organisers engage, monetise and scale their target markets, audiences and customer base. Marketing strategy Audience acquisition & development Database optimisation Marketing technology Online event technology Marketing performance analytics & reporting Website build and optimisation Messaging and copywriting Lead generation Branding and design Marketing automation Email marketing Pay-per-click advertising Social media Content marketing Advocacy marketing Media partnerships Account based marketing Direct mail Telesales campaign management GET IN TOUCH TO FIND OUT MORE MPG are true experts in their field. The work they have done for our business to date has been of tremendous value. Robert Stead, Managing Director, SENSE MEDIA Continue Reading Topics: Community marketingDigital marketingEvent marketingMembership marketingSubscriptions marketingVirtual event platforms
Growth Marketing Hacks: 8 things you can do to convert registrants (non-paying subscribers) to paying subscribers by Sharise Wilkinson, on 04/02/2021 Download My Guide It’s fascinating just how much faster things move in a mostly digital world. Meetings done via web calls seem shorter and snappier, events and training courses are compressed into hours rather than days, and marketing campaigns are being planned and executed at lightning speed. ‘Hacking’ has become a buzzword again. Marketers are being asked to make ‘short cuts’ and ‘quick wins’ to deliver a rapid and strong return on what is often a low marketing investment. Growth marketing hacks are certainly being sought in the world of B2B subscriptions. From the work MPG has done in the B2B media community, there is no doubt that subscriptions are an important growth area and – without much additional marketing investment – have also been growing faster than pre-COVID-19 times. But with so much competition from free online content, how will this growth be maintained? Two key things marketers can and should do to maintain and ideally further accelerate strong subscriptions revenue growth are: Identify the prospective subscrib