The holiday season is the most important time for businesses and organizations to connect with the communities around them. Over the last decade, as we’ve run art institutions, music venues, and small businesses like video game arcades, late night snack shops and bars, we’ve found that by running a membership drive, we can make almost twice in the one month between Thanksgiving to Christmas as we could make throughout the rest of the year.

One month, double the annual revenue.

This year has been an unprecedented challenge for every business, but this is an opportunity to end 2020 strong. A surge is projected in online spending, and the sentiment for small businesses and cultural spaces is high*, and that's why running a membership drive is even more important than ever.

*according to Google, searches for “support local businesses” are up 2000x this year

Memberships are key to sustainability

If you’re already running a membership program, skip to the timeline below and let’s get to work!

If you’re not yet utilizing recurring revenue to build a more sustainable budget, then this is the perfect moment to do so. You’re going to put a good amount of work in promoting your holiday campaigns and all you need is a fraction of them (8%) to make that payment monthly and you’ll double the return you’re getting. Make sure the time and resources you’ve invested in getting their attention to good use!

...but the monetary value of the membership itself is only one piece of puzzle. Businesses are increasingly relying on the loyalty of their community to help them thrive, and members are shown to return at 1.5x the rate of regular customers. By giving them the opportunity to become a more intimate part of your organization, they in turn will help a space that feels more and more like a home away from home.

This means, instead of starting from scratch every year, you can cumulatively build on all the progress from the year before. However successful you are with your membership program in 2020, you’ll build from there in 2021, and again in 2022. This is the key to truly thriving; as a business and as a community.

Timing is everything

If you’re not prepping for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and the whole holiday month - get started now! You can set up a membership drive, offer delivery subscriptions, share gift memberships, and much more with an account on Withfriends, but whatever tool you utilize, the approach is the same.

Set up your memberships, get feedback from your team, finalize your materials, and then go hard on promotion! Withfriends has put together this easy timeline to help you map out your strategy.

Preparation

• Week 1 10/26: Start setting up your holiday membership drive

• Week 2 11/2: Get feedback from your team

• 11/4 @ 5 pm - RSVP here to workshop your plans with our team

• Week 3: 11/9: Finalize your membership and promotional assets

Promotion

• Week 1 11/16: Launch your membership drive

• Week 2 11/23: Holiday Season Officially Starts

• Thanksgiving is November 26th

• Black Friday is November 27th

• Week 3 11/30: Holiday Season Continues

• Cyber Monday is November 30th

• Giving Tuesday is December 1st

• Week 4 12/7: Keep up the momentum

• Week 5 12/14: Don't stop yet!

• Week 6 12/21: Last weekend before Xmas

Need help with your content strategy?

It’s not hard to get your community to rally around you in this moment, but only if you’re organized about it. It’s about sharing all the compelling stories behind what you do, and keeping that narrative consistent throughout the six weeks of the holiday season.

Sharing your membership drive | Support withfriends

Launch

On Withfriends, you can easily launch your membership drive to your past customers and followers by uploading past contacts, connecting your store (Square, Eventbrite, Shopify, or Squarespace), or utilizing our Mailchimp integration.

Themes

We’ve put together a series of promotional templates for you to utilize during this holiday push.

Special deals or benefits

Withfriends has promotional pricing available for membership levels (“if you buy a membership before Friday, it’s $2 off!”) and special benefits that you can offer exclusively during the membership drive to push engagement during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Giving Tuesday!

Gift memberships

Highlight the benefits of being a member and encourage them to share those benefits with someone they love.

Member testimonials

Hearing a member describe what motivated them to sign up is so much more powerful than hearing you tell them to do so. Withfriends automatically collects these testimonials as they sign up, so make sure to share those voices in your newsletters and social media!

Year in review

Take a more to engage with your community about what you’ve overcome this year, and what you were able to achieve. These stories help them identify with what they would like to be a part of as a member.

Plans for the coming year

Paint a picture for the prospective member of what you intend to build next year; what they might become a part of, even what might be possible because they sign up (or get their friends to sign up). This vision of the future is compelling, and can be a great cap to your campaign.

These themes are meant to inspire you, so feel free to take them in whatever direction you find most resonant. The most important thing is to send a newsletter every week, and to try and post at least once a day on social media during the membership drive. Withfriends has social media integrations that can make that last part really easy!

Don't Forget About Your Members; those are your VIPs!

If you already have members, this is the right time to write to them directly. Write to the members at your lowest level, and appeal to them to consider going up the next level. Do the same for your middle level, and encourage your top level members to consider a gift membership or showing their support by promoting the campaign.

While it’s easy to focus on talking to the masses, these are your most ardent supporters, and you should find ways to help them help you during the holidays. This is the biggest opportunity for growth that larger institutions utilize, so make sure you continue developing these relationships!

Withfriends can make this easy with our dashboard messaging tools, so you can share those appeals by tier or by individual members.

Other Features

The insights we’ve covered here are universal, and should help guide you as you make the most of the holiday season, but there are a few key features that Withfriends offers are impossible to find together anywhere else.

Integrated Checkout

Withfriends offer memberships with every sale in your store (Shopify, Square, Squarespace, etc), so you can focus on promoting your products, and memberships will grow automatically

Subscription box sets

These are perfect as a holiday gift, and a great way to turn a once-a-year purchase into a year-round one. By connecting your store, Withfriends can automatically generate pricing and help you manage fulfillment on your deliveries

Membership drives

Motivate your community by presenting a financial goal and deadline for your community to rally around and help you reach before the season is over. Plus, add special incentives only available during the drive period!

Gift memberships

The gift that keeps on giving! Buy it during the holiday season, and they’ll keep getting benefits all year round.

Automated Renewals

Since members continue to pay, monthly or annually, your revenue grows cumulatively!

Honorary Memberships

Consider offering free memberships to VIP community members as holiday gifts (especially towards the end of the campaign, if they haven’t paid for one), and when the membership runs out after a month, automatically offer them an upsell to a paid membership

Highlighted Organizers

We’ll be highlighting participating businesses and organizers throughout the holiday season, and would love to include you, once your campaign is live!

Let’s build a more resilient community

Start your holiday membership drive at withfriends.co now.

Join us for our holiday workshop on Thursday, Nov 4th at 5pm to discuss strategies with other organizers. RSVP here.

Let’s make the holiday season about supporting our local communities. This is how we show love to one another and make the landscape of independent culture more resilient in 2021.