Eric Turnnessen

Eric Turnnessen is the founder of MemberMouse, one of the premiere WordPress membership plugins out today.

He has also architected business systems for Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, Sony Pictures, Barnes and Noble, and British Airways.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Eric’s success

Choosing the right membership software

Result if you follow the steps in Eric’s session

 The right software for your membership website that matches your business and goals

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

The fact of the matter is, there is a lot of software on the market to handle membership. And a lot of them are good. You know, a lot of them in my mind, I categorize them, okay, this software is great.

If you’re just going to get to 500 members, I do it based on number of members because I imagine a ship crossing the ocean like, if you get in a boat that has some holes in it, it can still carry across the ocean because it’s still sea worthy, but if you put more weight on it and the holes go beneath, it’s now your problem.

So I put it in terms of like, are you doing just 0 to 100 members, 0 to 500, 500 to 5000 above. And I usually work and talk to and focus on people who are more doing the, you know, 1000 and above mark, because when you’re hitting those numbers, the planning and the tools, you have, become much more important.

If you’re below 1000, you can still kind of sail a ship with holes in it, you know, in that sense, you can use any software that’s on the market that works for you, that you think because there’s always going to be trade offs. With software, there’s always trade offs, no one piece of software does everything, even Membermouse, you know, there’s some platforms that do stuff better than us. We do stuff better than other platforms.

So, you know, if you’re below 1000, sometimes it can be about pricing. Like maybe you just need something that’s a one time purchase, you know, and that’s what we want to do. But the thing to really keep in mind is one day, if you get successful and you break that 1000 member mark, if your software doesn’t allow you to grow and give you the flexibility to grow, then you’ll need to switch. And that is a very costly process. And sometimes it’s not even possible to do. So that’s why the beginning is such an important time to make the correct decision.

I found a couple of things here with your specific software Membermouse. This is a software that people could use, right from the very beginning, not sure you know, what kind of size they may grow to, as well as obviously the thousand plus as you mentioned, is that true?

Oh, yeah, for sure. It’s designed to be worked from the beginning. And it’s actually priced that way. I mean, when I started, we didn’t have a plan below $99 a month. And our lowest plan is $20 a month. And we did that you know, and sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that’s the value. That’s how we’re valuing the software but it’s really under priced at that level.

And so the reason we did that is because we wanted to support people who are just getting started in building their businesses and be able to start so the pricing is designed such that it ratchets up as you grow. So ideally the situation is you have enough members to cover the cost and then when you need more members, you again have the members to cover the costs.

And like I said, the tools that are built into the system are designed to help you know, which I think a lot of other speakers you have will be talking about designed to help increase lifetime customer value like, we’re not the only software that does this but if you’re looking for a software, definitely get something that has the ability to do one click purchases, you know.

Because if you get somebody in the door as a customer, you spent so much money to get them through your traffic funnel, through your optimization of your set, your track process, you know, now they’ve purchased something and now it’s easier for somebody who has bought from you once to have them buy from you again.

And the lid, the smallest amount of friction that you can have at that point in time will result in higher conversion. So that’s why one click purchasing after they’ve given you their card is so valuable. So that’s certainly like just a no brainer, just like, have that feature.