Magazine clubs, video clubs and recipe clubs are excellent products to upsell customers into super clubs, but it requires an integrated system
We recently wrote about why magazine clubs are on the rise.
A magazine club is reminiscent of the book club model where you pay one price and gain access to a bundle. For example, you pay one price for a print and digital subscription to a magazine where you also get access to an extensive archive organized by both issue and article indexed by topic. Or you subscribe to a video club, and you get access to an archive of videos, or in the case of a cooking magazine, a recipe club where you get access to a bundle of premium recipes.
Publishers who are already taking advantage of selling these clubs are now offering the next best product in line: super clubs.
A super club is an all-inclusive membership revenue model that can offer everything from total access to print and digital magazines, to video training, to digital access to books and archives, to event discounts, VIP registration, exclusive discount packages on other products and any other club benefits that seem appropriate to the audience being served.
If you already offer a series of other clubs, a super club might include a magazine club, book club, pattern club, recipe club, video club, course library, reference library and any other subscription-based product you offer or can imagine.
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The more you include, the better the value, and it doesn’t need to cost you more to produce.
And when it comes to digital products, you can keep adding to the list without adding any monetary risk. Beyond including your magazine clubs, video clubs, recipe clubs and other existing clubs, you can include:
- Access to an archive of downloadable products and ebooks
- Discounts for physical products in your store
- Access to a member-only community
- Access to a primary editor to ask questions and submit feedback
- VIP invitations to events, and discounts on events
- Direct access to a mentor or advisor (such as those in the investing niche)
The biggest add-on as a source of increase in sales for super clubs are video clubs which offer archives and training libraries. One of our clients who serves the professional craft world decided to include such a product in their super club. By adding the club, their goal was to optimize revenue by leveraging existing premium content and products with an all-inclusive, all-access membership product and offer.
The price point is between $4.99 per month for a Standard Membership to $9.97 for a Silver Membership, or $12.97 for a Gold Membership. The higher the tier, the more it includes, like two magazine clubs, a recipe club, a video club, member discounts, gallery services and other member benefits only available through the super club. The only difference between Silver and Gold memberships is access to the beautiful print editions of their magazines, and the cost increase simply covers the cost of fulfilling it.
The video club, which is a streaming service, is a huge draw for the bundled product. It’s where their subscribers can go to learn new techniques for their chosen trades. It’s a total on-demand source of how-to videos, and the archive is robust. When purchased alone, an all access subscription to the video streaming service is $8.97 per month, so it’s a no-brainer to choose a Silver or Gold membership, which includes the video club and ultimately turns a “maybe” buyer into a “definitely” buyer.
The launch of the super club has been incredibly successful generating order conversion rates across all platforms that are exceeding the performance of all of the subsidiary clubs. The new super club also represents an opportunity to upgrade or upsell magazine club members into this new elite service level.
Orders for this super club now account for 34% of all subscription/continuity orders. 72% of those are Gold membership orders, 26% are Silver, and 2% are for their Standard membership.
But without a fully integrated Learning Management System, this client would never have been able to bundle all of these products together and offer the user a single log-in. It would have been a convoluted process that would have thoroughly confused the subscriber, increasing customer support requests and time.
Choosing a video learning management system that is compatible with super clubs
When considering launching a video and course-based product, many publishers are failing in a big way by using a third-party learning management system. You’re likely familiar with these third-party systems and if you’ve ever used them, you know how difficult it is for one of your products to be off on its own island away from your customer and email database. It’s extremely inefficient, especially if you want your product to grow quickly.
As part of our Mequoda Haven CXMS, we have a Learning Management System that is fully integrated with Haven. This means if you decide to launch a video library or training courses, you can do so more easily than other publishers.
Haven Classroom, our Learning Management module, in it’s most current deployment, fully interfaces with your audience development system and leverages your existing unified customer database. It’s also integrated with the SFG fulfillment system. So whether a user subscribes to a magazine, or to your video training courses, the transaction is processed the same, the tracking all works the same, and your customer’s profile and login remains the same, it’s simply one more product to which they have access.
Alternatively, if in addition to selling subscription access to all your video training courses, you want to offer subscription access to individual training courses, you have the ability with another enhancement, Haven Gate, to use contrast pricing.
If you’re considering adopting the club model for your multiplatform publishing organization, I’d love to talk to you more about it before you begin planning. Schedule a call with me to see how we can help make it a seamless and profitable experience for you.
