Grow Your Membership Without Live Launches

 

Sara: Hey, all I'm super excited to welcome al drew in for the very first interview on the launch playbook podcast, on a podcast all about launching which let's face it has a reputation in the online business world of being stressful, overwhelming and huge. It feels really fitting to kick off our interviews by talking about launching quick and easy without something she has done really well. But first, go ahead out and tell us about you and your business.

Elle: So hi, I'm Elle Druon, I am a Brooklyn based stylists, photographer, crazy dog mom, and the founder of styled stock society, which is a stock photography and Canva template membership for women entrepreneurs.

Sara: Welcome. I remember when you first got started, and I'm really excited to dig into that today. We talked about that a little bit in the pre chat. But tell me something you described yourself in that conversation we had a bit as an accidental photographer. And since I know you already run a successful stock membership. Tell us a story about how it happened.

Elle: Yeah, so I never planned on being photographer. I'm actually now sort of pivoting out of the photography part of the business. It's kind of come full circle. But I started my career as a financial advisor, I worked in finance for a few years, pivoted to work in marketing. And I ended up getting a dog, my dog ended up with around 15,000 Instagram followers. And I decided around the same time that I was going to put a little more effort really think like strategically about growing her Instagram account. So we went from 15,000 to 30,000 in two months. And I was like, I could teach this to other people. So the first thing I did in my business was launch a course called celebrity pet bootcamp. It was essentially an Instagram course for Crazy Dog moms. And that essentially launched my business, I launched a few different Instagram courses. And it just got to the point where I was really burnt out on course launches, and I wanted to create some sort of recurring revenue stream didn't really know what that was going to look like. So I just took a look at my email opt ins to try to figure out why are people coming to me? What are they signing up for? And over 1000 people had downloaded the set of photos, free photos that I had offered on my website as an opt in. And so I thought, why don't I create a stock photography membership. It made sense to me because I was teaching people Instagram strategy. And I realized that a lot of my students weren't actually implementing the strategy because they didn't have photos to post, they didn't have high quality photos to post. So I pitched these thousand people the idea of a stock photography membership. I didn't own a camera at the time, I had basically just been taking photos of my dog for her Instagram, on my iPhone. But I thought if this is something that people want, I'll give it to them. And I had about 150 people sign up during our lunch periods. So it's essentially become my main source of revenue and membership has grown from there. Amazing.

Sara: I love listening to you talk about how you actually went right to what the audience was doing. And the data was showing you as like a long strategist and copywriter that makes my heart just like, grow 10 times, because we know that our clients are telling us exactly what they want, if we, you know, choose to tune in and listen. And I also really appreciate that, you know, you launched at lightning speed, right? Like you usually we think of launching has to be this big multi step process. Because that's what we're seeing those big name let's say entrepreneurs doing And though we may be we know it works. We also know doesn't have to be so complicated, especially when you're getting started. So tell me a little bit more about the steps you took to get it out in the world. So tell us about that first initial email you send out and then how you have actually executed on this once people bought.

Elle: Sure. So I essentially had the idea for a stock photography subscription. It wasn't even a membership at the time, it was just what if I took 30 photos every single month and somehow delivered them to people. So they had photos to post for Instagram. And I was like, Okay, this sounds like a good idea. Let's see if people are interested. So I sent an email, I didn't have a sales page, I didn't have a website, I didn't have anything other than the idea. And just around 1000 people who might be interested in it. And so essentially, a pitch the idea saying, No, hey, I have this idea for stock photography subscription, if you are frustrated, because you don't have photos to post every day on Instagram, and it would be helpful for you to just have 30 photos every single month delivered to your inbox. I'm not a photographer, but I think I can do this. So here is a PayPal link for you to pay me. And that works. I love it.

Sara: How has one thing changed for you since then?

Elle: I think that like the main thing that I learned from this particular launch was that it doesn't have to be as complicated as I was making it. When I had courses, I kind of followed a formula that someone else taught me, you know, it was sort of like you have this pre launch phase, and you do webinars, and you do all these, like list building activities. And you're showing up all the time and trying to get people excited and sending a million emails. And for this launch, I realized that I could just figure out what it is that I wanted to offer, create, like the most basic MVP version of it, test the waters just by saying, Hey, I have this idea. Does it sound like something that you'd be interested in? If so, here's a way that you can pay for it. And then I just figured it out from there. I didn't, you know, like I said, I didn't have a website. In the beginning, I was delivering the photos via send out I'm pretty sure just like sending people a link where they could download the files from Dropbox.

Sara: Nice.

Elle: And it was probably nine months into having this subscription that I actually took the time to build out a sales page, build out a membership site build out, like a full brand for the business. But I really spent time just figuring out what people wanted what made sense, in trying to make the subscription better, before trying to spend a lot of time actually like building it out.

Sara: I love it. You were testing it. I remember I was one of your and definitely initial customers, because I remember getting those files of photos from you, and loving them and using them. So tell me a little bit about how did people stick around? How are you finding retention during this time when you launched in the simply way, like simple way where people still sticking around? Did you have a lot of drop offs? Was it growing? What was happening with your membership numbers or your subscription numbers? To say,

Elle: yeah, so in the very beginning, I didn't have a ton. I mean, I had 150 members for the first couple months. And I don't think any of us really understood what we had signed up for, to be totally honest.

I think people thought it was a good value for the price that I was offering. I thought okay, I can take 30 photos a month, I'm gonna figure this out. But it was also nice, because it was a relatively small membership that I could actually talk to people who are a part of it and say like, hey, like so you signed up for this, like, what do you think, what do you actually need? and really get to know people and try to figure out like, what, what is this going to look like long term? I have this MVP product. I think it makes sense. People seem to enjoy it. But how do I make it better? How do I get more people to sign up? And how do I make sure that these founding members stick around. And so after having a lot of conversations, just one on one in my Instagram, DMS people replying to emails, I realized that what people really wanted was more of a stock library where instead of getting 30 new photos every month, we just built out collections of cohesive images. So if someone was, you know, doing their own launch, or you know, like building out email opt ins or creating something new for their business, they would have a whole cohesive set of photos that they could pull from and so we ended up building out the member library to try to make it easy For our members to get what they needed.

Sara: I can say as a member that I fully love how I can build out a whole cohesive Look, that's what I've done for each of my Actually, I have a launch playbook club membership. And I have definitely use this whole set in there to make it all really pretty and in brand with my my ones what I chose.

So, now that you have this built out membership, How have your lunches changed it? Or actually, you know, how have they not changed? Really, because I know that you told me you don't actually really do launches now. So can you walk us through the steps you take to get people into your membership at this point?

Elle: Yeah, so I honestly haven't really launched anything since then. I mean, like, you could technically say that like launching a new website, or, you know, we put out new collections every week, some one could say that's a launch, but I don't, I don't really treat anything we do as a launch. Because it's the same thing. It's the same membership, but it's been for the past four years. I don't close it, it's open 365 days a year, anyone can come and join at any time. Um, and really what I realized with this membership, and specifically, in contrast to some of the other things that I did prior to it, is that it felt easy. It just felt simple. And I think previously, when I was launching, I felt pressure to do things the right way, pressure to make a lot of money in a short amount of time, pressure to do all these things with like a projected outcome. And then I do feel afterwards like there's like this high when the launch is over. But then also like that low that like I'd have, essentially a launch hangover after every launch. And I hated that feeling. I hated it to the point where there was a couple times where I did back to back launches, like literally close the doors and open the doors the next day to something else because I wanted to avoid the come down. And that just wasn't sustainable for me. And so I was like, This isn't the business that I want to live. This isn't the life I want to live? How can I make launching easy? How can I make it fun. And for me, that really just turned into having a business model where I don't really launch things, I'm sure I add new content, or we'll do things like update our membership site. But I don't treat it like a launch, I don't feel like it's this thing that I have all this pressure in because I have recurring revenue all the time, I'm not dependent on launching a few times a year to bring in a lot of revenue. So most of our members come through a couple different funnels. They're finding our free stock photos, either through Pinterest, or Google searches, or social media or various like affiliates and different collaborations. And they're really just coming into our ecosystem. We have a lot of automated, like email sequences, and I'm just really my happy place is in a spreadsheet, I could spend all day long, looking at our numbers, looking at our KPIs and trying to figure out, how do I increase our conversion rate by 1%? How do I get just 100 more people to click open on this email? How do I get 100 more people to click opt in from our opt in page. And that is where I'm happy. And that's where I find the most energy in my business. And so I realized that I can do this, I can build out the funnels. And I can spend time on the marketing in such a way that I don't have to launch. And it's it's honestly been game changing for my energy. And just like overall happiness in my business.

Sara: I love that you shared that that's something that I have seen for myself as well. And then even for the launch clients I've had over the years, I had this one client that every time we did a live launch, I swear like her internet would go down, she would have strep throat, she would feel sick. And finally I'm like let's change this. It doesn't have to be like this launching. We think as you said it has to be all this like step by step into a webinar and into all these like multiple video series. But it really can be any way that works for us and protects our energy and really just brings people into our business. Right. 

Elle: Exactly. Yeah. I'm so protective of My energy now. And I realized that doing things like live streams, showing up, like physically showing up for people at specific times. It's just something that was very, very draining for me. And I'm an INTJ, who just wants systems and analytics and numbers. And so, budgets are my best friend. I know, I don't want to talk to people, I want to talk to a spreadsheet.

Sara: I love that in our, again, our pre chat, you called yourself a math nerd, which I love. And so it's so often I see people, you know, starting their sales pages, or their funnels from scratch, because they think it's not working, when really the numbers may have told a different story. So tell us a little bit more about how you use numbers in your business.

Elle: Yes, I love numbers. I literally went to math camp as a child. That's, that's how much of a math nerd I am. But proud of it. So I am big on KPIs, I have 12 key numbers that I look at every single Monday, my assistant pulls the numbers on Fridays, it's the first thing I do every single week. I'm constantly looking at, you know, I, I think most people think of like revenue. As an obvious number. Some people might track things like followers and website traffic, I don't know, I don't really care about those things. I care about very specific numbers that I know, affect my membership conversion. So I'll look at email opt ins, a look at like conversions from our email sequences. I track things like our cost per acquisition, and like membership, retention, and churn, all of these numbers together are what tells like the health story of my business that gives any given point in time. And I just, I think it's so fascinating how the numbers tell the story. And if you want them to tell a different story, all you have to do is like play around a little bit. I find this to be fun. And I know there are a lot of people who are like, I have no idea what my KPIs are. I don't track them. I hate numbers. And and I get that I I just I love numbers so much. I could talk about them all day long.

Sara: Will you tell us what KPIs are for people who maybe aren't such math nerds or math fans? So we can hear Understand?

Elle: Yeah, so KPIs or key performance indicators. And there's some that are probably going to be relatively the same for most people who have online businesses. But I think they'll be different depending on what your business looks like, like. So for example, someone I used to work with, she did a lot of in person like speaking events. And that's how she found a lot of clients. And so she would track things in relation to people who signed up for the event, people who showed up live, people who followed up after the events. Where's for me, were more tracking people who sign up for our free stock photos and people who are going through various email sequences.

Sara: Right. And I love that you're tracking every single Monday, I feel like I've never heard people track that more often. Often. It's like once a month, or once a quarter. So why every week?

Elle: Honestly, partially because it makes me happy. I'm partially because it's something that I do every Monday, it's sort of just like, center me and start the week off on like, a happy note, which is weird, because like the numbers aren't always happy to be totally honest. But also because we run paid advertising. And things change really fast. So I need to be on top of it in terms of you know, if we need to switch something up in terms of the creative or the copy or make adjustments to who we're targeting, things like that. It's not really something that you can look at every month.

Sara: Part of our goal on the launch playbook podcast is be real about the things that aren't working with scaling a business. So what's a time that you looked at the numbers on a Monday morning, and you saw that something had gone sideways or wasn't really working? What did you do and how did you recover from it?

Elle: Sure. So there's actually a couple weeks ago, I looked at our numbers. And so it was like I was looking at the numbers for the end of August, I realized that our retention, or really our churn rate was higher than normal. And it wasn't devastating, but it was definitely significant compared to the past couple of months. And so I do the thing that I really like to avoid, but you got to do it. So when members canceled membership, we have an exit survey, we basically ask two questions. Why are you canceling? And that's a multiple choice. And then what could be better about the membership? What could we do to improve it? So I generally avoid looking at the survey results. Now, it's hard to see that stuff.

Sara: Now, it's hard to see that stuff.

Elle: Right? No, no one really wants to see that. And I realized that I avoid it. Because I think that, you know, someone canceling is this indicator that like, they don't like me, or I'm doing something bad. And I just don't want to confront that. And I have anxiety around it. So I have it on my to do list to do once a quarter. But other than that, like, I don't want to look at it. So I realized it had been a while since I did that, I pulled up my results. And I realized that almost everyone who cancelled in August cancelled for cash flow reasons. And that has nothing to do with me personally. Not at all. It doesn't. And honestly, like, it was good to see that feedback, because I just realized, like, you know, what, it's a weird year, there's a lot going on, it's affecting a lot of people's businesses, the fact that more people are canceling and this one month, one out of one month, 910, you know, um, it's not something that's going to affect the long term for my business. At the end of the day, it really wasn't that many people, even though percentage wise, it was higher than normal. I realize like, this is just something that's happening this year. It's not anything I really need to worry about. But the thing that I did also realize at the same time was that we had a few people who had upgraded their membership from like a quarterly membership to a lifetime membership. And our system was treating that as a cancellation. So my churn rate wasn't actually as high as I thought it was.

Sara: That's a great surprise.

Elle: But I wouldn't have known that unless I was tracking it. And then trying to uncover what the numbers were trying to tell me.

Sara: Now, since you don't do let's say, these live launches, let's say, a time like this, when the turn rate has been a bit higher. And we know it's been a year. How could you, let's say have a boost in revenue? If you needed to do that, without these live launches? What would you do?

Elle: Yeah, so we do a quarterly what I call conversion campaign.
One might call it a launch, whatever, but I treat it as is a very low stress, low pressure conversion campaign. So two of those quarterly conversion campaigns are sales, we do an anniversary sale in June, and then a Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale in November, December whenever those days happen. And for those, it's it's, it's the same every year, we send out some extra emails and post on social media. But those two events tend to three to four x our membership, versus like a normal month.
So those are great months. And then the other two quarters will do something either like a price increase, a bonus opportunity, like a bonus that's expiring, or some sort of other promotion, I guess it's really either a price increase or bonus, I can't really think of any other promotion that we've done.

Sara: One that works better than the other for you in terms of another sale opportunities, but also like letting people know prices increases coming, or do people do you find like to get more things? What What have you noticed there?

Elle: Honestly, it has depended on the here and the specifics, because I think that earlier on, we weren't really increasing the price by that much. And so it didn't make a huge difference. There was like a little spike in sales, but it wasn't like 100 new people signed up because they wanted to lock in their price. I did find that some bonuses have also worked better than others. We've tried maybe four or five different bonus opportunities over the past few years. And there was one that got maybe two sales and that was not ideal. But then we had others that brought in dozens of new members in like a day. So it really has depended on the specific offer for those types of campaigns.

Sara: Will you tell us a little bit more about the one and only brought into sales here?

Elle: Yeah, so I think it was two years ago, we had the bonus option to request custom photo shows, if you join the lifetime membership. And I don't know how much of it was that it was the highest tier of membership that we were trying to get people to sign up for. And that also the bonus wasn't, it wasn't just like, Okay, if you sign up, you get this extra thing. Whereas if you sign up, you kind of have to do extra work to get this other thing, maybe six weeks from now. So I think there are a lot of issues with it. And like, in hindsight, I'm like, no wonder that didn't work. But I tried it and
learned the lesson.

Sara: Amazing. And what's one that works really well? Ooh, that's a good question.

Elle: Um, so I think that the best performing bonus was last year, maybe we did 100, like done for you Instagram graphics. And if you joined by the end of whatever month it was, you also got those hundred graphics, like in template form, so you could customize them for your business also. And this is actually what ended up pushing me to decide to start adding templates to our membership on a regular basis. Because this, very surprisingly, for me, had such a great response, people really wanted the templates. We had, like 200 members sign up and like a week.

Sara: I can tell you, as you know, part of the writing that I do, I'm writing sales pages a lot. And I am consistently sending people towards your membership, because you have those great mock ups for sales pages, which are, you know, hard to create for a lot of people and they have like, the actual shadows and dimension in it. And they make it look really good in a page. So I know, you know, for me and the people I'm working with, that was a that is a big draw.

Elle: Oh, thank you. And that's, that's very good to know.

Sara: So I want to step back for a minute to what you're saying earlier about protecting your energy, and also how there was you kind of like to put off looking at those, like why people are leaving until per quarter? Do you ever think about letting someone else on your team do that? Or look at the numbers? Or why is it important for you to do it, even if it may be as uncomfortable?

Elle: I think it's important to get uncomfortable sometimes. Um, I think for me, I think part of it is just like, confronting it. It's never as bad as I think it's going to be. And I find that if I if I compartmentalize and I say okay, this is something I'm going to do once a quarter, I'm gonna put it on my to do list, sign it a due date, it's really not that bad. It's it's definitely never bad is a I think it's going to be because I will build up that anxiety in my my head. And honestly, I think that it would be worse if I had someone else do it. And then tell me what it was. Because I'd want to know, I just I I'm a little bit of a control freak. And I would, I would want to know, no matter like what it said, um, but I think it'd be worse for me to like find out from someone else. Even if it was the exact same result.

Sara: It's almost like if we did that it would build it up to mean something more than it is right? Because it's not about as you said, You them canceling because they didn't like you or anything about, you know, ask when people cancel or don't buy but the more we make it feel like that or add meaning to it, the more we take it on into ourselves. Exactly. So when I dig into it, I find there's usually something really unexpected or unusual that work to make launch or maybe your conversion campaigns, in this case successful. What do you think was one of the things that you've done that's kind of really unusual that have made your membership successful, putting it out there and bringing in.

Elle: So I think that for our conversion campaigns specifically. I'm not sure how unique This is. But the idea that we do the same like to sales every year, we don't really change anything about them. Honestly, we repurpose a lot of the same copy every time. And it continues to work because the rest of the year. All we're doing is focusing on Legion. All we're doing is focusing on getting more people into our ego system so that when we do do these conversion campaigns, we have more people to sell to. And other people will join in between these. Again, conversion campaigns, not launches. Anyone can join at any time. But sometimes we do find that there are people who are just looking for something to encourage them to take action. And so having something that's like, three or four Day Sale, is really what they need to just push them over the edge. That sounds negative.

Sara: People need something to sometimes remind them to take action at times they've been thinking about it. 

Elle: Yes, exactly. Um, and so to go back to your question, I think the thing that, again, maybe not, isn't the most unique, but it's that instant instead of creating, like the hype for the launch and the pressure around watch. It's, it's, we're just straight up like we do two sales a year. This is when they are. And we'll let you know when it happens. 

Sara: Another question about your churn rate to like letting people stay and be part of the membership? What do you think that you're doing really well, to keep your members engaged and active?

Elle: I think that for our membership, in particular, the biggest thing that we have found is that people need fresh content all the time. And I hesitate to say that, because I think with most other memberships, that is not the case. Most of the time, people don't need more content. They don't want it, they're not finishing the content you're giving them It can quickly become very overwhelming. And so I'd say for most people, if anyone else has a membership, and they're listening, the answer is not more content. However, my membership is a bit different. Because I don't have a community, I don't have any sort of like live component, I don't, you know, do any sort of training outside of the products, the downloads that people get. So for us, shifting to a schedule, where we're putting out new photos, new templates, every single week, so people are always getting something new, they have something to look forward to. That has been a big difference in terms of having more people login or a membership site. And the more people log in our membership site, the more they realize the value of it and stick around for longer because they think before we were adding collections, like once a month, and then we went to once every two weeks. And then once we switch to every single week, I immediately saw the engagement in terms of people actually logging in and downloading photos go up.

Sara: That's great. And I love that you called out for most memberships. That isn't the case. But it seems that you don't have that community aspect that this is where you're putting your energy to the creation, whereas other who might be putting into the life or the trainings or things like that instead, as an outsider, one thing that I have noticed about your membership as well is that you and your team send emails reminding me about what's there and how to use it and what's new. And in my experience, I've been in a lot of memberships, where people have kind of forgotten that one to one buys that we still have to actually maintain that relationship and get people taking action and going in and using the content.

Elle:  I'm glad you noticed that.

Sara: And Was that something that was always the case? Or is that something that you've increased over time? Tell me a little bit more about that? actual like customer nurturing and retention bras?

Elle:  Yeah, absolutely. So I think that starts from the moment that someone clicks by the moment that transaction happens. We have a new member onboarding sequence with a series of emails like welcoming them to the membership. Letting them know like there's a video walkthrough of the membership site we share tips on like customizing your stock photos using the Canva templates. We really want to make sure that people know how to use what's actually in the membership. And then from there, we do send regular emails, letting people know what's new, the new collections that we've added the new templates that we've added, like updates to anything that's happening in the styled stock society world and just showing up regularly and people's inboxes I realized is enough for our members, you know, they don't need me to show up in a Facebook group and like talk to them. They don't need me like constantly on Instagram being Hey guys, like what's new. And it's just so refreshing for me because it means that I can be behind the scenes, I can schedule these things way in advance. And I can energetically work when it makes sense for me to work and not work when I don't feel like it.

Sara: I feel like that's the big dream when we start our businesses, right and doesn't always end up like that it takes time to get there. But it sounds like you have gotten to a place were able to really sort of have the life that you're wanting and protect your energy.

Elle: It does, and I you know, will be completely transparent and say that it took years for me to get there. In the beginning, I honestly had no idea what I was doing. And once I kind of figured out what I was doing, I still didn't really have clear, like, balance in terms of how often I was doing it. And when I was working, and I kind of felt like I always had to be doing something. And now I think the combination of just being in business for a few years, having more experience having a team, we figured it out, we were in a good place where you know, we're working a couple months out, like in terms of new content. So you know if something happens next week, and this actually happened earlier this year, I was sick for basically, all of March with COVID. And I did nothing didn't didn't do a thing. It was fine. Because I had a team, who was still making sure that things were getting done, we are already scheduled out in advance. So it wasn't like, you know, things needed my attention for next week. It was like alright, well, I'll deal with that next month. And it was fine. But I could not have said the same thing, like three years ago.

Sara: Amazing that you've had that now you have those systems in place. And that constant lead generation happening, that you were able to, you know, take care of yourself during this year and with COVID. So thanks. I'll share with our listeners where we can find you online, and how we can get a taste of your membership.

Elle: Yeah, so you can find styled stock society at styled stock society.com. And if you want to get a free taste of the photos and membership, just go to styled stock society.com black, backslash LPP, and you'll find a set of 20 free stock photos. We're also on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest everywhere at styled stock society. Thank you and where can we find your dog's account? So you can check that out? Because that was your beginning. 

Sara:  Thank you and where can we find your dog's account? So you can check that out? Because that was your beginning. 

Elle: She was. So she is on Instagram, mochi and the city.

Sara: Thank you so much Elle, we really appreciate having you here today on the launch playbook podcast and sharing all about memberships. Be sure to go check out the style stock society and dig into Elle's beautiful stock photos. And those templates which are going to be amazing for your sales pages. Thanks so much.


If there are two big takeaways I hope you got from this episode, it's that you consider making looking at your metrics a regular part of your business. Looking at your numbers is one of the best ways to see what's working and what's not. So you can use the data to make the changes that matter. And there's a reason that one of the very first episodes of the launch playbook podcast was with L. You see a lot of business owners think of launching and they believe it's a high stress live in person, high stakes situation. And I hope that this episode is your permission slip to step away from live launches, and find a different way. If live launching doesn't bring you joy. Thanks for tuning in to the launch playbook podcast. If you want to get weekly launch secrets in your ears. I hope you'll hit subscribe on iTunes so you'll never miss an episode. Because who knows? It could reveal just the thing you've been looking forward to make your next launch a success. And be sure to leave a five star review in iTunes, telling me how this episode inspired your launch plans. Until next time, friends. Keep putting your big ideas out into the world. I'm rooting for youEl