If you run a membership, you spend a lot ot time thinking about how to attract more members. There are three well-known methods, including:
- Scarcity: Limiting the number of people who can join
- Urgency: A looming deadline that necessitates a decision to join now or wait until a future opportunity
- Status: Being a member builds self-esteem, or esteem in the eyes of others
I've tried all three. In the first two years of The Lab, we had a 200-member cap. It was really effective in driving signups, because those spots filled up fast. But that cap proved to be too small—we wanted to increase geographic and topic density, meaning we want more creators within driving distance of one another and more creators focusing on Instagram, podcasting, or selling physical products.
So, we removed the member cap and instead implemented an invitation-only approach. Now, you must be vouched for by another member or apply for membership. This was fundamentally to ensure that we created a consistent experience—the Standard and VIP tiers of The Lab were intended for professional creators who already had traction. This way, we ensured the conversation was relevant and useful to all members. But it also elevated the meaning of being a member, adding esteem.
But what about urgency?
Given that the membership is evergreen (i.e., people can be invited at any time), why would someone join today rather than tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year? This is the biggest challenge for evergreen memberships. What is the mechanism for getting people to join now?
When you have an open-and-closed-door launch cycle, there's clear urgency. If you don't join now, you will have to wait until the next opening. But, if you don't want to do launches, what are other ways to create genuine urgency for fence-sitters?
I recently ran an experiment.
🎯 Goal
To attract new members to The Lab.
🤔 Hypothesis
I believed running a live cohort would create genuine urgency by giving people the opportunity to participate in a time-bound experience.
The program was available to all membership tiers of The Lab at no additional cost—an additional $399 value.
By pricing the cohort below our lowest membership tier ($699/year for Basic), some interested students may choose to join The Lab vs. just the cohort. Then, at the end of the program, students may be more likely to join the membership to continue the community experience.
🧪 Experiment
On October 28, I decided to sell a new cohort learning program over Black Friday, to be delivered in December.
This was my Signature Product Bootcamp, a four-week, live course for developing YOUR signature product (that you can sell with confidence for years).
The bootcamp was priced at $399 and sold via a Google Doc. We added a bit of scarcity (50 spots available) and made it available for purchase from November 25 through December 1.
The Bootcamp ran from December 2 through December 29, at which point students would be invited to roll their investment forward into The Lab.
📓 Results
Depending on how you interpret this data, we either sold out the Bootcamp (or came very close).
Bootcamp enrollments
We had 47 students enroll in the Bootcamp, totaling $18,454.
We also had 15 creators join The Lab's Basic tier during that period, totaling $8,785.
Lab upgrades
After the Bootcamp, 13 students upgraded to The Lab's Basic tier, totaling $2,587.
1 student upgraded to The Lab's Standard tier, totaling $1,499.
If these members renew, that's $11,086 in annual recurring revenue. But even more importantly, that's 14 more potential advocates for the membership.
Totals
- 47 Bootcamp students
- 29 new Lab members attributed to the Bootcamp (15 before and 14 after)
- $31,325 total revenue
Conclusion
This was an intense experiment because I was developing and presenting the curriculum for the first time—while also providing feedback to every student each week. That wasn't limited to the 47 Bootcamp enrollments and the 15 new Lab members, but also nearly 100 pre-existing Labmates!
This experiment showed:
- Live learning creates genuine urgency (for program and membership sales)
- 30% of Bootcamp students joined The Lab already
This data is fascinating because when I worked at SPI and developed those accelerator programs, that's the same conversion rate I saw then—about 30% from a time-bound cohort to the evergreen membership.
And the feedback was fantastic! In my post-Bootcamp survey, we found:
We may still see Bootcamp students upgrade to The Lab in the future—I allow anyone who has purchased something from me in the past to roll their investment into their first year of The Lab membership.
A big reason for running this Bootcamp was to create a forcing function for ME to get this out of my head and into a format that future members of The Lab could benefit from. So, on that front, this was also a major success—this material is now recorded and available for all current and future members of The Lab interested in developing their next product.
Ideally, instead of developing a new curriculum for this strategy, you could tap into existing curriculum, whether you've taught it live before or not. For example, I plan to add some new material to Build A Beloved Membership this year (membership sales and marketing), and it's likely I'll run a live cohort around that program in the process.
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