Terms

"For us, membership is an integral part of all we do. There is no way to be a side hustler in the field of member; it needs to be the primary focus of your business," starts Dan Carson, our Head of Product. "If you're serious about establishing a membership it is our opinion that we have the most comprehensive set of options. While we started with WordPress as the sole access point for those options, this is no longer an option."

Dan clarifies that we're not going to eliminate all of the capabilities that were originally available for example, like integration to WordPress: "If that's how you want to construct your website for membership, it's as possible as it was prior to us - we're simply offering an easier on-ramp now."

"There are a bunch of individuals employing third-party applications However, it's not always just because they'd like to. It's because they felt that it was the only option," Dan adds. "People may have WordPress, but they've just created a basic site or have MailChimp, but don't use 50% of the options."

The people who need to sign up simply require an opportunity to make it easier for people to sign up and then be able email them with no nonsense cloud enterprise version. "Maybe they had signed up with Mailchimp in 2014 and so they are still using it as this is where they are. But are they still the target market for where Mailchimp is headed?"

"We believe there are individuals out there that would, if they could do it easily enough, they would simplify all these different tools into a single place and have it be more closely integrated, as long as it still did all of the tasks they wanted it to do," Dan says.

Our tools for email will include all the features that you want. The author adds: "We're not trying to help enterprise marketing teams. We're interested in serving creators who want an affordable and straightforward method to share information and distribute content to their audience."

For us, it's less about the products you have, and more about the things you're trying to do. If you'd like your customers to to subscribe to your newsletter, we'll simplify and make it cheaper as you do not have to pay for external tools.

This is dependent on the individual use case, of course. Certain people would like the capability to piece together several combinations, while others are concerned that it's expensive and more difficult to control, particularly as an individual user. "Previously we were kind of only creating for one of the groups. Today, we're building both of them," Dan says.

If you're a particular type of user that you are, the version 2014 of MailChimp is actually what you need; it's the one you fell in over. "If I want a simple site, I might prefer not to utilize WordPress. It's true that Squarespace could be too much as a website that relies on subscriptions. The site isn't tightly integrated with membership at the basis," Dan adds. Then we asked ourselves: 'What could you do if you created a product that was entirely created around it?'.

This is our approach to podcasting or online communities too. "We're not building a new version of Libsyn. We're going to be building the basic version, which is easy to use and covers 80% of what you need, along with all your other stuff all in one location for the same cost," Dan believes.

It seems to be a law of nature that the more time software has and the longer it is in existence, the more it would like to grow. It is always looking to get more complicated and complex.

The addition of new features isn't necessarily bad, but it becomes a bad thing for clients if the customer that they're building for has changed and is not you. "People want software that does just what they want and isn't trying to be any more than this. As with jazz, there are times when is the note you do not have to play!" Dan laughs.

Simple things can be extremely difficult. Dan says: "It's about paring down to its essence. One of the easiest things for us would be to simply put everything in there and then make it a setting and customers can find it in a settings panel somewhere." We do not believe that's what our customers want. We want to combine all our experience over a decade of developing membership tools, incorporating customer feedback, and distill that down into simple tools.

"It's easy to undervalue the power of basic tools. Being easy to use is an underserved need. Many things are more complex than they should be," Dan adds.

The dashboard is updated.

The most obvious change this quarter is how we've reorganized our dashboard. Instead of having each option accessible at the top as well as the features separated by feature, we stepped back and thought, "Why not organize everything according to what you're working on during the time and then organize everything around that?.

Based on our experience, and talking with people who manage membership-based businesses generally, your work is something that is a part of the four categories that include designing and building your site, creating exclusive content, directing the activities of the members of your site, and growing the revenue. Dan explains: "Everything you're doing as a membership operator is going to fall into one of those four categories. Therefore, we decided that this was a logical way to organize the features of ."

Website

This is designed for those who wish to build a membership website. Historically you may have needed to make use of WordPress or something specific to. Now you can utilize our website builder natively. This first section is for creating the website in the first place as well as customizing the appearance. and setting up your public-facing web content. "You're setting up the space for your audience to and visit," adds Dan.

Content

The other is to publish content. A modern-day membership business usually involves publishing exclusive content for members. This includes emails, posts as well as podcasts, downloads and posts. "The second job is creating contents or sharing special benefits. It's all about generating value that your members get from your membership," Dan explains.

Members

The final task is to manage your membership. "Part of running a strong membership is having a really tight connection with your audience - that's part of the reason they're a part of your team," says Dan. You need to be able to provide customer service to these people, including understanding their history of working with you, as well as troubleshooting the issues that are not working properly.

Revenue

"If you're building your own membership site with you're looking to create revenue and there's a million things to consider: setting up your website, understanding what to charge as well as monitoring the health of your organization to find the things that are working," says Dan. This is a section that covers discounting for retention and run acquisition campaigns as well as referral programs.

"We've added a lot of new features throughout the years. The lack of organization caused it to be difficult to find the right things, particularly those who were new. We wanted to cut down on the amount of learning required," concludes Dan. This provides a better framework that we can build upon as we add more innovative features. As we'll be able to more easily put things - this will make it easier for users to locate and explore these additions so you can gain value from them immediately.

Builder for websites

The other major change this quarter was around the web builder. "We'd began to create these new tools last year and wanted to thread the needle of introducing this new capability, however, we didn't want to disrupt existing techniques of utilizing it ," says Dan. "We tried to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is seeking to create the membership-based website."

In the present, enrolling and joining the program is significantly easier; we give you a much more advanced start point with standard settings, membership plans already designed and the layout of your website designed. What you need to do is create your Stripe account, and then you can start your site in a matter of just a few minutes.

Now, the editing user experience resembles the modern WYSIWYG (What It is You see is What You get) website builder, direct interaction with your website for membership. "You are able to type directly on the screen, drag things around, hide and display elements and will be able to view what the page looks as soon as you open it," says Dan.

Dan explains that this is only the beginning for further website-building developments: "We had to redo the basis of everything in this manner, and now, we are able to step up the gas in terms of adding the new features."

We've discussed the idea of blocks. Blocks are in essence content modules. We have at present an element of content that is basic and a title banner block which can contain text or an image that has buttons. Now this framework exists, we're working on new block types, creating different kinds of content for the page. You will be able to arrange those on the page and you are able to control who sees the content based on which members are enrolled to.

Dan states: "It's everything you need to build a full-featured website for membership. The site is fully linked to subscriptions. The membership component is at the center of the whole." What you get is a web-building experience that's simpler to start with, more intuitive, and is more in tune with what people nowadays expect.

Final: A fresh way to make use of

"We have been described previously as the glue that keeps your membership together," Dan explains. Dan. "But if an equipment is critical to your company having components bonded together isn't always an ideal situation. In some cases, you'd like them to be welded together, like steel - you need that it be the same part, not two parts glued together," Dan says. Dan. These two pieces that were built at the same time the membership element was always a part of the very beginning.

If you're someone with your own successful WordPress website or millions of people who are on your MailChimp list and you want to use to simply add subscriptions rather than start all over again, it's feasible. There's still a tool available to drop in, to connect it. However, we do not believe that's the only option people have to build anymore.

" is for people who want a place for their people to come together on the internet, as a central point for their followers and users. Today, anything you could like, from making it look like your brand and having everything you have to share in one place could be what you build with this software ," Dan concludes.