Boost Your Email List: Unlocking Growth with a Video Membership Site

Building an email list can be challenging. Pop-ups often disrupt the user experience, and traditional lead magnets are not as effective as they once were.

As a result, many business owners find themselves in a dilemma: they desire more subscribers but are hesitant to irritate their website visitors.

At CanadaCreate, we’ve found a more effective solution. Instead of using pop-ups, we provide free video training as a lead magnet through our video membership site, allowing users to sign up for the lessons that interest them the most.

This change has revolutionized our subscriber acquisition strategy. It has also enabled us to foster stronger connections, boost conversion rates, and cultivate a highly engaged community.

The greatest advantage? This strategy is applicable across various niches, whether you’re offering cooking classes, marketing tips, or home improvement advice.

In this guide, we will detail how we leverage a video membership site to expand our email list, enabling you to create a lead magnet that your audience will truly appreciate. 🙌

To assist you in navigating this article, here’s a list of topics we will explore in the upcoming sections:

Let’s Begin Your Journey.

The Importance of Creating a Video Membership Website

In summary, videos enhance engagement and facilitate the development of enduring connections with your audience.

Videos are the most captivating type of content, and creating a membership community around them allows you to transform that engagement into meaningful relationships.

Research shows that users are more likely to complete a video course compared to other forms of online training or educational resources.

At CanadaCreate, we aim to close the knowledge gap by providing free WordPress video courses to help beginners master WordPress.

As Syed Balkhi, Founder and CEO of CanadaCreate, explains:

I am frustrated by self-proclaimed ‘blogging experts’ who charge exorbitant fees to teach WordPress. I believe that fundamental education should be accessible for free. I started CanadaCreate to provide the resources I wished I had when I began my journey.

Syed Balkhi – Founder & CEO of CanadaCreate

Here are some advantages of operating a membership website.

• Establishing authority in your niche – A membership community allows you to position your brand as a trusted authority in your field.
• Generating income online – While we do not monetize CanadaCreate videos because we believe in free basic education, you can adopt our approach to monetize your membership site and create a steady stream of revenue for your business.
• Growing an Email List – A membership community can help you build an email list and capture leads to expand your business.

The online membership subscription market is a multi-billion-dollar industry projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2025.

Additionally, over 48% of individuals are willing to pay for a subscription to access exclusive content. (Source: Creator Economy Statistics)

Our marketing playbook provides the tools you need to create a thriving video membership site and establish a steady stream of recurring revenue for your business.

How Our Video Membership Site Functions

As previously mentioned, we believe that basic WordPress education should be accessible to everyone for free. This principle drives the creation of CanadaCreate’s video membership site.

Users can easily navigate to the CanadaCreate Videos website, where they can explore individual videos from our YouTube channel or enroll in our free WordPress courses.

Once they create a free account, users gain access to all of our WordPress courses. In exchange, we add them to our email list, where they can subscribe to our weekly CanadaCreate newsletter.

These courses are crafted to be thorough and well-organized, allowing users to progress at their own pace and switch to different courses whenever they choose.

Let’s explore in detail how we leverage our membership site to expand our email list.

1. Establish Authority Through a Video Membership Website

We utilize MemberPress for our video membership site, which is the leading WordPress membership plugin available. It simplifies the process of building an online subscription-based community.

Additionally, it includes a built-in Learning Management System (LMS), enabling you to effortlessly create and sell online courses.

For further details, check out our comprehensive MemberPress review!

Why We Choose MemberPress

• It is extremely user-friendly and straightforward to set up. This is crucial for us as we prefer focusing on content creation rather than software management.
• MemberPress Courses feature allows us to easily add and manage our courses.
• Courses are displayed in a user-friendly format, which is essential since most of our users are beginners.
• It seamlessly integrates with various tools and services, including email marketing platforms, contact form plugins, popular WordPress page builders, and more.

Adding Courses in MemberPress

With MemberPress Courses, creating online courses is simple. You can design a curriculum with sections and lessons, incorporate quizzes, assign tasks, and more.

Another beneficial feature for course creators is the ability to drip-feed content rather than releasing everything at once.

Exclusive Access for Subscribers Only

MemberPress, our chosen membership plugin, allows us to restrict course access to those with a free membership plan, and we can also offer paid subscriptions with free trial options.

Users must register and log in to access these courses. Once registered, they are added to our mailing list to receive weekly updates from CanadaCreate.

Offering exclusive content for premium subscribers helps us cultivate a dedicated user base and positions CanadaCreate as a trusted resource for all WordPress-related information.

2. Grow Your Email List with a Dedicated Audience

At CanadaCreate, we utilize Drip for our email marketing efforts.

One of the main reasons we transitioned from Mailchimp to Drip was due to its superior automation capabilities and seamless integrations with other WordPress plugins and tools.

Why We Choose Drip?

• Drip provides robust automation features that enable marketers to design workflows that enhance user engagement.
• You can tailor emails based on user data and their interactions on your site. When personalization is paired with automation, emails become more relevant, meaningful, and advantageous for customers.
• User segmentation allows you to target individuals based on the information they provide and their behavior on your site.

Integrating Video Membership Subscribers into Drip

MemberPress integrates seamlessly with leading email marketing platforms, including Drip.

This feature enables automatic addition of new users to your Drip email list upon registration.

You can also use tags to categorize users of your video membership site, allowing you to send tailored messages and onboarding emails.

3. Transform Visitors into Leads with an Effective Signup Page

MemberPress excels at showcasing courses, but we still needed to create dedicated landing pages for our video membership site.

With our in-house design and development team, we can invest in a custom theme that aligns perfectly with our brand’s aesthetics.

If you prefer to design the page yourself, we suggest using a robust WordPress page builder plugin like SeedProd.

Several of our partner brands have successfully built their sites using SeedProd and have had positive experiences with the tool. You can find more details in our comprehensive SeedProd review.

Why We Recommend SeedProd

• SeedProd features an easy-to-use page builder that simplifies the creation of custom landing pages on demand.
• It also offers numerous landing page templates designed for optimal conversion and sales. Just swap in your text and images, and you’re all set.
• Easily incorporate registration, user login, and sign-up forms into your site. It seamlessly integrates with leading email marketing platforms, allowing for effortless addition of users to your email list.
• SeedProd is compatible with any WordPress theme you choose. It also allows you to design custom WordPress themes without any coding skills.

Turn Your Pages into a Powerful Lead Generation Tool

We utilize landing pages for various sections of the video membership site.

For instance, we feature videos from our YouTube channel on the main landing page.

These videos are always accessible on the CanadaCreate YouTube channel.

Presenting them here gives users instant access to free content. They can watch the videos directly on the page without navigating away.

The landing page also includes calls to action encouraging users to join CanadaCreate Academy, our subscription-based course.

Clicking the sign-up button directs users to our registration page. If you operate an eCommerce business, you may be familiar with the issue of abandoned carts.

Many users tend to leave at this stage before completing their sign-up. To encourage them to join our video membership site, this page highlights testimonials, course features, and includes a sign-up form.

This helps us elaborate on the advantages of our online videos and encourages individuals to register for these complimentary resources.

For additional details, check out our comprehensive guide on crafting high-converting landing pages.

4. Design Distinctive Sign-Up and Login Forms to Improve User Engagement

As a website administrator, it’s essential to ensure a smooth and consistent user experience across your site.

Standard WordPress themes do not come with customized sign-up or login forms, which can negatively impact user experience due to inconsistency.

We utilize WPForms, the leading WordPress form builder available, to design personalized sign-up and login forms for our video membership platform. It also enables you to create various types of forms for your site, including login and sign-up options.

Interested in learning more? Discover all its features in our in-depth WPForms review.

Why Do We Choose WPForms?

• It is user-friendly and produces visually appealing forms that perform well on all devices.
• It allows us to create tailored login and registration forms, which we implement on our video membership sign-up landing page and login interface.
• It integrates with major email services, enabling us to effortlessly add contacts to Drip, the email marketing platform we use.

How We Utilize WPForms

Our sign-up landing page features a custom registration form created with WPForms.

For step-by-step instructions, refer to our guide on creating a custom user registration form in WordPress.

We also have a personalized login form on the login page of our video membership site.

This page was designed using the block editor along with WPForms, but you can also create custom login pages using SeedProd.

5. Leverage Bonus Tools to Increase Leads on Your Membership Website

In addition to the technology stack we’ve discussed, you can utilize the following tools to further enhance new sign-ups.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the leading lead generation software available today.

It enables you to encourage users to sign up with visually appealing marketing campaigns, including lightbox popups, slide-in popups, countdown timers, sticky headers/footers, and more.

At CanadaCreate, we use OptinMonster to showcase special offers through popups and banners. For an in-depth review of the platform, feel free to check out our comprehensive OptinMonster review.

2. PushEngage

PushEngage is a powerful push notification software that enables you to send tailored messages directly to users’ browsers, regardless of the device they are using.

It features advanced personalization and targeting options, allowing you to craft effective, customized messages. This helps you re-engage users who have left your website and encourage them to return.

We personally use PushEngage to send push notifications. Check out our detailed PushEngage review for more insights about the software.

3. Smash Balloon

A video membership site enables you to cultivate a dedicated audience, which you can then direct to your social media profiles to increase your followers.

Smash Balloon allows you to integrate your social media feeds into your WordPress site. We utilize it on our community tab to display our posts from X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. It is also compatible with Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

For detailed instructions, check out our tutorial on integrating your social media feeds into WordPress.

Don’t forget to read our comprehensive review of Smash Balloon for deeper insights into its features.

4. All in One SEO for WordPress

All in One SEO for WordPress is the top SEO plugin for WordPress, offering an extensive toolkit for optimizing your website’s search engine performance.

In addition to standard SEO features, it includes advanced XML sitemaps, a redirect manager, detailed schema markup support, Link Assistant, search statistics, and more. (Discover additional AIOSEO features).

We utilize it throughout our entire site, including our video membership platform, to enhance our SEO and increase traffic from search engines. You can find a complete overview of its features in our AIOSEO review.

5. MonsterInsights

It’s essential to accurately track all your marketing efforts to assess their effectiveness and make informed decisions. Without this data, you won’t know if your strategies are effectively increasing signups for your membership site.

We utilize MonsterInsights, the leading Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, which enables you to monitor site visitors effectively. It tracks conversions, allowing you to evaluate the performance of your video membership site, email forms, landing pages, and more.

For more details about this tool, feel free to check out our comprehensive MonsterInsights review.

MonsterInsights also enables you to track the customer journey on membership websites when using MemberPress. This feature helps you understand the steps users take to register on your video membership site, allowing you to leverage this data to increase signups.

Frequently Asked Questions: Growing Your Email List with Membership Websites

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the creation of a video membership site aimed at expanding an email list.

What is the top plugin for a video membership site?

We personally use and recommend MemberPress for our video membership site. It is the premier WordPress membership plugin available.

MemberPress includes a built-in course builder, robust access rules, and seamless integration with leading email marketing services. Additionally, it offers all necessary addons, such as MemberPress Courses and MemberPress CoachKit, to create and sell online courses.

Is it necessary to offer my video courses for free?

No, you don’t need to pay. We provide our courses for free as a way to expand our email list and support the community.

However, you can easily utilize MemberPress to set up paid membership plans and earn recurring income from your video content.

What is the cost to launch a video membership site?

The primary expenses include a domain name, WordPress hosting, and a robust membership plugin like MemberPress. This makes starting a business quite affordable.

You can even begin creating videos using your smartphone, so there’s no need for expensive equipment initially.

Can I incorporate videos from YouTube or Vimeo?

Yes, definitely. MemberPress allows you to easily embed videos from third-party platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo. This helps you safeguard your premium video content while leveraging a reliable video hosting service.

Next Steps for Expanding Your Business with WordPress

We hope this article has helped you understand how to use membership websites to enhance your email list and grow your business. You might also find these additional guides useful:

• How to Create a Client Portal in WordPress (Simple Guide)
• How to Set Up a Paywall in WordPress (with Preview Features)
• Proven Strategies to Expand Your Business Online
• A Comprehensive Guide to Adding Email Subscriptions to Your WordPress Blog
• Effective Call to Action (CTA) Strategies for Maximizing Landing Page Conversions
• Understanding the Costs Involved in Starting a Membership Site
• The Complete Guide to Building a Membership Site with WordPress

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