The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue

Everyone wants to crack the subscription code. The challenge is that subscription models require discipline and consistency, tempered with constant tinkering.

The approximately 20 percent of customers who have visited a business 10 or more times drive 80 percent of the business’s total revenue and 72 percent of total visits to the business. The most loyal customers are less price-sensitive, more likely to be up-sold, and much more (70 percent more) likely to talk up the business.

Membership is about connection and access over privacy and ownership—and not everyone values these the same way.

organizations that think about membership tend to focus more on providing long-term value, which ultimately leads to better customer lifetime value. Any CEO who is not thinking about membership is missing a huge opportunity to point his or her organization toward long-term, sustainable profitability.

As individuals grow frustrated with the burdens of owning, caring for, and storing too much stuff, they are looking for ways to minimize that stress. They are also experiencing a need for meaningful connection and community.

The Membership Economy relies on trust. It’s about the consumer saying, “I’m going to stick with you, but I expect you to continue to deliver.” It’s the mutuality of the relationship that makes the model so beautiful.

The Membership Economy is all about putting the customer at the center of the business model rather than the product or the transaction. Every organization should be focused on the customer. The business model and organization need to support this customer-centric model. The

For your members, the transformation from ownership to access should result in lower risk, lower up-front expenses, and lower maintenance. If it doesn’t, they will leave. And some of them will leave—it’s part of the pruning process.

The Membership Economy is all about putting the customer at the center of the business model rather than the product or the transaction.