How to Leverage User Psychology for Membership Site Success

You must have been out shopping. Seen a product and instantly got clicked with its offer or ad. This made you connect with the product and eventually shop. 

Irresistible and unavoidable. How to make your membership offers feel exactly so? How to make the visitor’s grab your membership just like a product on the shelf? Let’s ask social psychology!

Using the key principles of customer psychology that reliably get many consumers to spend more on your membership platform may be your key to encouraging new purchases and customers.

What attracts customers? Firstly, understand that your customers are a diverse bunch, and things that work for one target audience might not work for another. So perform varied A/B tests and experiment with offerings targeted at different psychological principles and different customer types.

Budget-minded people are normally attracted by the following:

• Low prices and discounts, such as limited time offers on specific courses or even particular lessons.
• Free or freemium models.
• Loyalty rewards.
• Bundled services.

What about value-driven customers who are ready to pay more for the quality? They prioritize:

• Superior products and exclusive services.
• Long-term benefits.
• Value quality in terms of superior customer experience.

Now, let’s take a closer look at various such tactics with examples.

The Principle of Scarcity – ‘Almost Sold Out’

Social psychology suggests that when you say that something is in ‘limited supply’ or ‘seasonal’ its desirability tends to increase. When people know that an item or an offer is never going to come back, they would leap at the idea of availing it. 

In other words, people may start panicking about not getting what others get at a discount. This is a popular tactic that works on the new and existing members, which in general marketing is commonly referred to as FOMO or simply a bandwagon effect.

You might use this tactic as an illusion of scarcity or the actual scarcity by creating the limited spots to webinars or courses.

Using limited editions and special prices is one of the ways to make people feel not wanting to miss out on a luxurious or generous proposition.

Let’s get down to practice a bit:

• Time-bound memberships

Exclusive content, access to webinars, or benefits only for a limited time. This can be a special, once in a lifetime membership offer. 

• Early bird discounts for new content

If you are planning to launch new content, it’s great to start teasing around it and provide early bird discounts. Provide a discount for new or existing members who sign up before a specific deadline. This will increase your pre-launch sign-ups and also create a buzz around the launch. 

• Limited-tier membership availability

Open up your higher membership tier only to a specific number of users. This exclusivity and feeling of superiority will draw the value-driven or status-driven users to subscribe for this level. 

• Waiting list for popular offers or tiers

Open up a waiting list for popular tiers. Let users subscribe to the waiting list for free. Like this, you get their details which can be used for further marketing of your offers. This creates a sense of commitment, investment and excitement of anticipation.

• Limited-quantity bonuses & prizes

Create a quiz, questionnaire, or assign a specific task to offer bonus content or exclusive gifts. You can plan a social media giveaway and encourage your folowers to participate for personalized discounts and offers. 

While it’s hard to advertise digital products as ‘almost sold out’, you can manually limit the number of seats and add waiting lists, even more emphasizing their exclusivity.

Exclusive Content and Perks to Draw in Members

Try applying the reciprocity principle, which has a strong psychological effect, which suggests that when people receive something valuable or beneficial, they feel compelled to give something in return, such as loyalty or a recommendation.

But what exactly can you do?

1. Provide access to exclusive content or resources based on a specific criteria.
2. Create exclusive merchandise or experiences for members of specific tiers.
3. Offer opportunities for members to contribute content, share insights, or co-create with the platform.
4. Create promotions where members can invite friends to join them in exclusive events or activities.
5. Provide bonus content to those members who took part in various social interactions.

Foster a Sense of Belonging

It is a basic human need to belong to someone, something, a cause. That’s why various types of support groups are very popular. Creating extra, more intimate, or expert communities that require a fee to enter might sound attractive for people searching for more community belonging and exclusivity within small groups.

Even more so, people feel they are part of a select group tha they are able to join, enhancing feelings of prestige.

• VIP Membership Groups
• Mastermind Groups
• High-level Professionals, Thought Leaders, or Influencer Networking Groups
• Group of People with Similar Passion or a Problem

Strengthen the ‘Friendship’ Feeling with Customers

Friendship psychology principles like gift-giving and deepening contact is a great way to foster stronger connections with your members. For example, real friendly connection with customers will encourage loyalty, engagement, and referrals at a greater rate.

Here are some ways to implement these principles into your membership site promotion tactics:

• Freebies and welcome gifts

Example: Sign up today and receive a free e-book or exclusive toolkit.

• Surprise gifts for long-term members

Example: As a thank you for being with us for a year, enjoy this special offer or access to a private event.

• Collaborative challenges or group activities

Example: Join our 30-day wellness challenge and connect with other members on their journey!

• Personalized thank-you notes

Example: Thank you for being an active part of our community! We couldn’t do it without you.

Friendship-based psychological principles are your way to create stronger, more emotionally connected relationships with members. When they feel you are personally involved in making theory membership experience better, they would stay on for longer. This would also act as a motivation to promote your services to their immediate social group. 

Maximize Social Proof

Want to make your offerings more attractive for first-time comers so that they don’t doubt for a minute whether you are the right place to start?

• Make your membership look as popular as a superstar – highlight the number of members who have already joined.
• Highlight key achievements of people using your memberships to make prospects feel they are buying a product that truly meets their needs.
• Demonstrate your long-term commitment to the success of your members.
• Ask your current members to provide you with testimonials, video or text, and publish it on your Website. 
• Use live-activity pop-up tools like TrustPulse to promote sales with social proof. 

Leverage Gamification to Hook the Members

Have you pinpointed processes that feel tedious for your members?

For example, do they lack progress tracking when working with your content like courses, articles, or videos? If not, that can make them feel lost and bored, never leading to purchasing more subscriptions or upgrades within your membership.

In this regard, we highly recommend leveraging gamification to make the activity and processes on your membership sites more enjoyable. The underlying psychological principle of gamification is to make the learning or interaction process with your site more enjoyable overall.

It triggers the following positive psychological responses in the human brain:

• Feeling of accomplishment
• Rewards
• Progress

​​Moreover, when content within your membership isn’t formatted consistently (e.g., some videos require a specific player, some articles are PDF downloads while others are web-only), it might be really daunting for members to follow these formats and your task is to make it all easier for them.

Going even further, try to identify areas where you can implement gamification into a process to make members stick to your content even more.

Conclusion: Leveraging User Psychology for Membership Site Success

Let’s sum up our tips on how to drive more success to your membership site with the use of psychology:

1. Use gamification to make daunting processes more enjoyable, encouraging you to use more of your services.
2. Implement scarcity or the illusion of scarcity to make people act faster by triggering the “limited availability” mindset.
3. Promote a more intimate sense of community and belonging by creating smaller paid groups.
4. Create waiting lists and short-term deals to give people the excited anticipation of new experiences, skills and knowledge.
5. Leverage friendship psychology principles like gift-giving and personal touch.

These psychological approaches would bring together more members and establish a very strong community. Did you try any of these? Let us know your experiences! Comment to get any of your doubts solved in a jiffy! 

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