3 Changes You Can Make Today to Reduce Churn in Your Membership Community

How is your community doing? Have you built a space you're proud of, but noticed people canceling their membership or leaving? Or is your overall member retention rate declining?

Member churn can be downright scary, and it’s hard not to take it personally. But I want to offer you some peace of mind about churn:

• It’s rarely about you.

• It can be your greatest teacher.

• You CAN reduce it.

I’ll show you how.

What’s a Normal Churn Rate?

By definition, community churn is the percentage of your total community that is leaving or inactive in your community over a specific time period: usually month over month or quarter over quarter.

In your membership community, this means that churned members withdraw from your community, or stop paying their membership dues altogether, which is an existential threat to business success. It’s crucial we pay attention to this metric. 

Ideally, you want to keep this number pretty low—under 10% month over month.

If your churn rate is above that ideal threshold, don’t panic just yet. You can never eliminate churn, and in fact, you don’t want to. But member retention can be improved. The first step is to understand why it’s happening in the first place.

Six Reasons Why Community Churn Happens

Here’s what I’ve learned from 15 years building and managing communities, as well as from a super insightful study called “Why Lurkers Lurk” by Blaire Nonnecke and Carol Preece:

1. Community Dynamics  

People leave when they aren’t making the connections that they had hoped to make or are not getting access to the type of information they need.  

This is a major issue that you should troubleshoot as soon as possible. People join a community to make progress alongside connection. If your members aren’t getting what you promised, they simply won’t stick around. 

2. Characteristics of the Community  

Your community is perceived as clunky, poor quality, or disorganized, and it’s deterring people  from wanting to participate. 

This negatively impacts user experience and is something you should address as soon as you can. Content quality, cumbersome technology, poor moderation, and delayed or no response to questions can all decrease member retention.   

3. Too Confusing or Overwhelming 

You may think that creating tons of content will make people happier and more satisfied. In reality, less is more.  

If people get even one or two fantastically valuable pieces of content per month, they will often feel gratified. On the flip side, if there’s too much information, people feel overwhelmed when they can’t utilize it.  They will ask themselves: Why pay for a membership I don’t fully use? Churn will result. 

4. Lack of Accessibility

These conditions have very little to do with you as a leader but they do have to do with accessibility. If people can’t afford the membership anymore, don't have the time to participate in what you offer, or they can’t make any live events and don’t want to (or can’t) rely on replays or written resources, they will opt out.  As a leader, you can design for a range of accessibility needs—visual, motor, auditory, scheduling, and financial.

5. Personal Reasons  

These reasons for churn have nothing to do with your skills as a leader, entrepreneur, or creator. Like accessibility concerns, people’s personal preferences are not something you can control, but they are something you can design around.

For instance, people might be shy, aren’t getting what they thought they might get (and something you never promised them) or may be having trouble keeping up due to language or other barriers you have no control over. 

I’ll talk about steps that you can take to make your community more accessible to these folks below. 

6. Healthy Churn  

This happens when someone either isn’t a fit for your community or they've reached their goal and are ready to move on.  

Not everyone will be a fit for your community. Some people are going to check out your community and then move along. Some amount of churn is healthy and expected. 

If people have learned what they came to learn, consider that a success! I highly recommend you reach out to those folks for a testimonial, a case study, or simply to hear their story. You can—and should—stay connected. Your relationship with these participants should continue beyond your community; this is about transformation over transaction. And from a business perspective, if they had a great experience, they are likely to refer others. 

Three Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Member Retention

So now you’re probably thinking:  what can I do to prevent community member churn and improve member retention? Here are some tactics to implement immediately: 

1. Pre-screen or qualify members more rigorously

This reduces some of that healthy churn that comes from people checking out the site and then realizing it just isn’t a right fit for them. 

Creating friction through interview or application processes increases member retention by ensuring they’re committed to your community. This makes them more likely to match your ideal participant persona, and by extension, more likely to stick around. 

2. Institute an onboarding process

Another thing you can do to prepare to meet people’s needs is to ask them questions about their preferences and needs right away. The easiest way to do this is to ask during the onboarding process. You can implement a short onboarding survey that someone fills out when they first confirm membership. 

Ask about things like language preference, learning styles, when and how often they want to be checked in with, etc. This can then guide your future interactions with them. 

3. Increase high-touch interactions

Immediately offer opportunities for one on one connection through personal DMs welcoming new members to your community. Consider check-ins via private email, encouraging regular feedback, and celebrating milestones and achievements along the way.  

These are critical because they provide an opportunity for you to deepen your relationship with members, letting them know their presence really matters.

4. Get members connected right away 

You can do this by creating buddy systems or accountability programs. It can also be done through many-to-many live events such as roundtables or mastermind discussions. This is a great way for members to meet and interact. Do not shy away from sending out reminders for events and reassurance that all are welcome.

These are the top four methods I recommend to any community builder experiencing member retention issues. They're proven, and you can start applying them today. But be patient with results. It takes time and consistency to move the needle on churn. I usually see an impact take effect after about two months of applying these methods.

One important caveat though…

If after making your best effort at reducing churn, people do decide to leave - let them go with grace. Remember offboarding is just as important as onboarding. Having an automatic feedback survey or arranging an exit interview are great ways to measure what’s working and what’s not. The more you learn, the better you can serve your community.

So remember, your goal is to reduce churn, not completely eliminate it.

If you’re looking for more valuable tips and tutorials on how to build meaningful, and authentically connected communities check out my YouTube channel here!

For more awesome tips on building an engaged and robust online community, come and visit me on IG @carriemelissajones