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The Membership Blast — 024

Share Your Best Member Retention Tip (Let’s Help Each Other)

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Hey everyone,

Every winter, I ask myself the same question: Why do you stay in Chicago?

Yes, the winters are really cold, but the summers, spring baseball, the food, the culture, and the people make it worth sticking around.

As a membership business owner, you should be asking yourself the same question. Why do your members stick around?

Retention is one of the most misunderstood parts of running a membership. Not because it’s complicated, but because it’s easy to focus on the wrong things.


The economics alone make it worth paying attention to. Multiple studies have shown that it costs 5 to 7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

For example, if it costs you $100 in marketing and onboarding to bring in a new member, keeping an existing one might cost only $15–$20 in ongoing support and engagement.


That $80+ difference per member adds up quickly.

Once someone joins, keeping them is one of the highest-leverage ways to grow a membership business.


And yet, many memberships still struggle to keep people around because they focus on marketing to new customers instead of retaining the ones they already have.

That’s why retention often comes down to engagement and perceived ongoing value.

Here’s what we see from top membership businesses:

  • Clear engagement, like commenting, posting, liking, live events, or other regular touchpoints that remind members why this subscription is worth keeping
  • Community and accountability, where members are surrounded by like-minded people working toward the same goal, making the membership harder to walk away from
  • Commitment signals, like annual or lifetime plans, that reduce monthly decision fatigue and help members commit beyond a single billing cycle

When members feel progress, connection, or a sense of commitment, the membership stops feeling like “just another subscription” and starts feeling much harder to cancel.

There’s no single tactic that works for everyone. Some memberships retain through ongoing new content, others through community.  Most successful ones use a mix.

Let’s help each other out:
 

👉 What drives your member retention? (Let’s all share tips)

Share your answer, and see what others are saying.
Join the conversation →

The discussion lives inside MemberSpace. If you’re not a MemberSpace customer, create a free account so you can comment and read everyone’s responses.

Until next time,
 

Marvin
Chief Growth Officer
MemberSpace