Should your membership have a waitlist

So you’ve built a list, what’s next?

You should nurture your list as it grows, send out teasers and sneak peeks to your list, to show them what they’ll be getting if they decide
to join your membership.

Explain why you’re an expert in your industry and your insights, what can you offer that will benefit new members?

Give them homework! What can they do to get prepared? This could be something as simple as installing software or buying some baking tins.

Your waitlist is full of people that have said ‘I am interested in your membership’ use that to your advantage, ask them for feedback and what they’d like to see from your membership website.

The process generally goes like this:

• The user signs up for your waitlist and receives a thank you email explaining your membership.
• You send the user a couple of emails explaining what’s inside your membership and some exclusive sneak peaks
• You launch your membership website and get people to sign up with an exclusive early bird offer

Wait! But what is a waitlist?

A pre-launch waitlist is a simple stand-alone holding page at the front of your website while it’s under construction. It should be one of the first things your developer builds so you can put your best foot forward.

A pre-launch waitlist usually captures people’s name and email address using a form, your logo and some bullet points to let people know what your membership site is all about.

A pre-launch waitlist can yield strong results for any new membership website. They can help get your first members through the gate, give people a tangible thing to look at and use, rather than just trusting your word as well as give you the confidence to push forward with planning and building your membership website.

How do I build a membership waitlist?

You can use paid traffic via Google or Facebook to drive people to your site or if you have one you could leverage your current
email lists to ask them about their interest in your membership and to sign up to your new list by providing a link to your new site.

A lot of people who decide to launch a membership website have a big following on social media; they have usually been providing
free content for a while, so their members will know exactly what they’re signing up for. Are you one of them?

Others have Facebook groups that they can use to their advantage! You can promote your membership everywhere, make sure you’re not breaking any rules for a Facebook group, they’re usually in a pinned post at the top of a group.

You may want to consider contacting Influencers and bloggers to sign up and give them free access to your site when it launches in
hopes that they will promote your membership to their followers.

You can offer people a free download of a PDF with valuable information that goes hand in hand with your membership, by providing a free PDF you’re already proving that you’re an expert in your field.

Ideas for a membership waitlist

• A video explaining your membership website
• A countdown timer. We recommend adding a countdown to your membership waitlist page so prospective members can see exactly how long they’ve got left to wait for launch.
• Any value they get for joining your waitlist such as a free download or an early bird discount.

A membership waitlist page should not be overcomplicated; it should be easy to read and understand with minimal distractions. Not everything will work for your prospective members. You have to figure out what works best for you and
your members.

A little bit more information

Pre Launch Waitlists are a slow-burning but effective way to build trust with prospective members and enable them to help shape your
membership into something that they’ll want to be apart of.

A lot of people build a big waitlist but do nothing with it until they launch, turning cold customers even colder.

If you nurture your waiting list as soon as people start to sign up, cold customers become warmer and are more likely to sign up to
your membership once it has launched.

Some final thoughts

• Where does a waitlist fit into your launch timeline?
• Is a waitlist the right thing for your membership?
• The larger the waitlist the more likely you are to get sign ups when you launch your membership website/
• Can you offer a free value gift that actually benefits your members and won’t be forgotten about?
• Will you put in the effort to email your waitlist or will it end up sitting stagnant and alienating the people who signed up?

Waitlists aren’t for everyone or every membership and thats fine. You’ve got to evaluate your individual situation and act accordingly.

Did all of that sound good? Do you think you could benefit from MemberLabs services? Click here to book a demo call to find out more.