This is a guest post by John Haydon, who will be hosting a full session on Membership Funnels at this year’s Membership Growth Online Summit, taking place from April 4th – 8th.

I know you’re familiar with the idea of a marketing funnel. Here’s one going from awareness to close, but if we tweak this model for membership, it might look like this:

The pull through: From email to membership

The funnel (shown above) begins when a member of your target audience joins your e-mail list and ends when they become a member. They might be Facebook fans and Twitter followers, but until they join your email list, they won’t be a member any time soon.

Everything changes when they join your e-mail list. At that point you can use e-mail marketing tactics to increase the likelihood that they’ll become a member.

Step #1: Capture

The top of the funnel represents the initial point when they joined your email list or campaign. They’ve opted into an email list in exchange for something valuable, like an e-book, or a giveaway. Or maybe they signed a petition.

Step #2: Nurture

The middle part is where you nurture fresh emails, gently nudging them towards becoming a member.

For example, let’s say someone signs a petition, and then receives an email encouraging them to share the petition with their friends. This can be set up as a simple follow-up or drip campaign in any email marketing software.

But then you want to ask ONLY people who shared the petition to become members. For people who didn’t share, you can ask them to share it again (with a mention of signing up to become a member as a P.S.). This approach will increase your conversion rate AND lower your unsubscribe rate.

Step #3: Conversion

The bottom part of the funnel is where people actually become members. But this doesn’t mean you’re done.

Survey your members. Understanding what makes them tick helps you retain them as a member. Plus, you’ll have more fodder for creating ideal marketing personas!

Step #4: Learn More at this year’s Membership Growth Summit

Use this as a starting point to make your own funnel, but keep it simple. I’ll be diving even deeper into how to build out your marketing funnel at the Membership Growth Online Summit on April 4th.

Join me at the summit, by clicking the link below.

SIGN UP HERE

John Haydon is the author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies and Facebook Marketing All-In-One (Wiley), and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, and npEngage.