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EPISODE DESCRIPTION & RESOURCES:

Many membership owners dream of setting up an evergreen funnel to solve their sales challenges, but the reality is more nuanced.

In this episode of The Membership-Driven Business Podcast, we're exploring why having a robust, multi-faceted sales system is crucial — and why evergreen alone won't save you.

We're talking about:

🔹 The three essential pillars of a sustainable membership sales system and why skipping straight to evergreen could be setting you up for frustration

🔹 How to approach live launching in a way that energizes (rather than exhausts) you and aligns with your natural strengths

🔹 Why creating alignment between your promotional style and membership experience is crucial for long-term success

🔹 How to design promotional strategies that match your current resources and capacity (without burning yourself out)

Episode highlights:

🔸Why building “live launch” skills first creates a stronger foundation for any sales system in your business — evergreen or otherwise

🔸 How personality tools like Fascination Advantage and StrengthsFinder can help you design launches that feel natural

🔸 Why being yourself during promotions isn't just more enjoyable — it's actually better for business

🔸 The "reverse bait-and-switch" trap: how under-promoting and over-delivering hurts both you and your members

🔸 Real examples of how different personality types can approach launching effectively

🔸 The “campfire story” of how one client elevated her launches by aligning them with her natural teaching style

⚠️ HEADS UP: If you want support with creating a sales system that feels authentic and sustainable, my Mini-VIP Day, Irresistible Offer, is for you.

Inside my Mini-VIP days, I help membership owners:

Design promotional strategies that align with their natural strengths and communication style
Create sustainable launch systems that work with their current resources and capacity
Build genuine excitement and momentum around their membership without doing things they hate

The price is increasing by $900 at the end of 2024. Book before then to lock in the current rate, even if you plan to do your VIP day in early 2025.

Go to themissingink.co/irresistible for more info. 🌱

Links and Resources:

Contact Natalie: themissingink.co/connect
See how you can work with Natalie: themissingink.co/services

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PREFER TO READ? HERE’S THE TRANSCRIPT:

Note: transcripts are shortened for readability. For the full experience with additional details and examples, listen to the podcast episode above or in your player of choice.

Why Most Membership Owners Struggle with Sustainable Sales Growth

Often the reason clients first reach out to me is that they don't have a great system or strategy for selling their membership on an ongoing basis.

It feels like you have this machine moving along, but it's clunky - a live launch here, some kind of promo there, maybe trying out a new strategy or tactic.

These create little bursts of sales, but you pay a big toll in exhaustion, feeling like you have to get this rocket off the ground every single time.

The Evergreen Dream (And Why It's Not The Answer)

When we feel this way, it's tempting to think: "If I could just set up an evergreen funnel, then everything would be easy. Then I could focus on supporting my members and doing other things in my business."

But as someone who has seen behind the scenes and worked with many membership owners, I can tell you that evergreen is not as easy as many would like you to believe.

If you're feeling like you don't have a great process in place for getting your membership to grow regularly, I would argue that your first step should not be taking it evergreen.

The Truth About Sustainable Membership Growth

I want to talk about what it looks like to have a system for enrolling people into your membership. And let me be clear - if I ever start saying "all you need is an evergreen sales system and all of your membership sales problems will be solved," then this is a sign that I am under duress!

If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that I believe memberships are inherently effortful.

They require ongoing effort from us - and that's not a bug, it's a feature of what it means to have a membership.

Creating Sustainable Membership Systems That Work

That doesn't mean memberships should require everything from us or exhaust us - I help my clients figure that out and fix it.

But when we expect our membership to be effortless or friction-free, we're deluding ourselves. You've designed an ongoing offer that requires you to be in relationship and in community with people. Sticky situations will always arise.

When we resource ourselves properly and design our membership with intention, it becomes sustainable to deliver in an ongoing way that makes sense for us.

I'll never stop saying this: with recurring revenue comes recurring responsibility. And I believe the same is true for how we need to sell our memberships, too.

The Three Pillars of Effective Membership Marketing

Selling our membership requires ongoing effort to promote and build energy and momentum around this incredible offer in our business.

Going evergreen alone is never going to give us that. I'm not saying don't go evergreen - but let me lay out what a more complete system of promoting and growing your membership really looks like.

It involves three key elements:

Pillar 1: Live Launching (Reimagined)

Please don't throw your phone out the window! I'm going to talk about a different way to think about live launching.

We'll explore why it feels so taxing for many people, but also why, when we figure out how to make it work for us, it becomes one of the greatest competencies we can build in our business.

The issue is that we've been taught to approach launching in an extractive and exhausting way.

But knowing how to create in-the-moment excitement and momentum around our membership is a skill we can't escape when we're in business - especially when we have a membership.

Pillar 2: Behind-the-Scenes Promotions & Flash Sales

These are the low-hanging fruits we often skip over because we're doing so many other things in our business.

Think quiet promotions, flash sales (which don't mean discounting), and small enrollment pushes that don't require the full work of a public launch.

This includes cross-sells, down-sells, and upsells - thoughtful ways to create pathways through our business that get people into our membership. (Some of this can evergreen as well, depending on the automations you set up in your email service provider.)

Pillar 3: An Evergreen Membership Sales System (But it’s Probably Not What You Think)

The third pillar, evergreen, can be beneficial to explore - but it's not essential, and it looks different for everyone.

Whether you have an “always-open” membership or one that closes outside of live promotions plays a role, and it also depends on your audience, offer mix, and available resources.

My argument is this: if we haven't established your live launching system and flash promotion game plan, you'll likely find evergreen frustrating and ineffective.

We often turn to evergreen hoping it will reduce the stress and ongoing effort of selling our memberships… but the real issue is that we've never properly designed these systems to be truly supportive, or planned how they should function for the person driving the marketing and leading the promotional energy for the membership.

So, we have to start there.

Rethinking Your Live Launches as a Core Business Asset

What if you could view live-launching as an edge — rather than an obligation you wish you could avoid? I believe live launching is actually a core competency in our business.

I was listening to the Business of Fashion podcast recently, where Simon Port Jacquemus was featured. When asked about building interest and energy around his work, he shared a fundamental rule: "I need to be visible."

You can purchase Jacquemus clothing any day from their store or website, yet these companies still run campaigns and offers. They consistently seek ways to attract attention and energy to their work.

We aren’t immune to this either.

We always need eyeballs in on our offers.

This takes effort, and it takes work.

This is fine. Really.

It becomes a problem when we don’t design systems around making this work sustainable — and when we start doing work that we actually hate, because it doesn’t align with who we are.

Jacquemus went on to say,

"I don't have time to be a snob because I’m independent. I have to make noise. I would love to be invisible, hidden in my provincial castle, but I can't. I have to be visible. I have to make fun things. And there is a part of me that loves that."

This speaks to the heart of what I mean about promotional campaigns.

We must get eyes on our work, and nothing creates the same in-the-moment energy and excitement as a live launch.

What if we could get good at it?
What if we could like it?
What if it could feel like showing the world who we really are?

Aligning Your Launch Style with Your Natural Strengths

If you're anything like me, launching inherently sounds exhausting.

I work with clients across the personality spectrum - many are naturally extroverted, comfortable with webinars and video series. They have teams around them, so we have a lot of ways we can go big and create a promotion that stands out.

But I also work with many people who have a membership and are similar in some ways to me, in that they prefer to work behind the scenes. Or, perhaps they just have fewer resources and less support because their membership is still finding it’s feet, which means we need to adjust our approach.

For those who enjoy personality assessments, one of my favorites is Sally Hogshead's Fascination Advantage. My result is the "Secret Weapon," meaning I naturally excel at working behind the scenes, thinking strategically, and executing to high standards.

That's how I built my business over nearly eight years. Even producing this podcast has stretched my comfort zone, though I find it really rewarding. I wish I had started it sooner!

So, I fully recognize that visibility isn't a muscle everyone enjoys exercising. Yet I believe strongly that we must figure out how to do it in a way that works for us.

We have to make noise.

Jacquemus is reknowned for his innovative campaign ideas. A fashion show in a lavender field: why not?

Your Membership Launches Should Reflect Your Personal Style

Quick side note: If you want to design a way of launching and promoting your membership that aligns with who you are and feels naturally good to you - while acknowledging it won't always be easy - consider my mini VIP day called Irresistible Offer.

We'll work together to position your membership so its value is undeniable and create a promotional strategy that makes sense for who you are.

Letting Your Personality Shape Your Marketing Approach

Tools like the Fascination Advantage and StregnthsFinder can reveal areas where we might want to lean in more heavily, and others we might choose to de-emphasize.

For instance, I have many clients who score high on innovation and trust - they naturally excel at bold, creative communication.

Others are strong on passion, making them effective at leading with strong opinions and coaching people to take action.

My own strength in mystique means I prioritize communicating with substance, which is why I gravitate toward long-form formats like this podcast…

Are you playing to your strengths, or someone elses?

Creating Marketing Systems That Scale with Your Resources

When collaborating with my clients on a mini VIP day to plan a membership promotion, we examine their current position, resources, and realistic capacity.

What's sustainable and supportive in this moment? We need to ask these questions.

Left to our own devices, we often overcommit.

I see this regularly with my clients. We think we can handle everything, but when we break down the steps involved - when we examine who will do what and when - reality sets in.

This is why getting support to think through your promotional strategy can be invaluable.

Understanding Your True Capacity for Launching (Let’s Be Honest With Ourselves Here)

As an overachiever who loves completing tasks, you might tend to overcommit. Let's be realistic about your capacity and what's doable in this season, then design your live launch and promotion accordingly.

Live launching requires work. While you can do it alone, this should significantly reduce your expectations and require careful attention to supporting yourself during this time.

If you have parenting or caretaking responsibilities, these impact your launch capacity as well. So let’s get honest about that.

Matching Your Launch Strategy to Your Support System

The scope of what you can execute varies dramatically based on your support system:

Working solo with a VA creates one set of possibilities
Having a community manager expands your options
Access to copywriters, designers, ads managers, and tech support transforms what you can achieve

We can brainstorm wonderful ideas, but we need to be grounded about your vision versus your current reality.

Sometimes it means we scale things back so you can show up without burning yourself out.

Scaling Your Marketing as Your Business Grows

Working with clients running multi-million dollar membership companies who have substantial teams is exciting - there's room for us to play with bigger ideas.

Yet I still ask the founder: Where are you in your life right now? You're at the center of this launch. What resources do you need? What would be energizing versus potentially exhausting for you?

You will always need to ask yourself these questions, no matter how big your membership grows.

The Alignment Between Member Experience and Your Marketing

When people hear "live launching," they often envision someone acting as a perpetual cheerleader - constant Instagram lives, endless social media posts, an unrelenting flurry of energy.

They picture webinars, free video series, and non-stop, high-energy promotion.

For some people, this approach feels natural because it matches who they are and the support they have. But when that high-energy promotional style doesn't match who they are inside their offers, we see a classic bait and switch.

This explains why many large programs face high refund rates and customer dissatisfaction - members bought into one experience but received something quite different.

What a let down.

This creates an awkward situation where we feel pressured to adopt a persona that isn't genuine. If that's not who we truly are behind the scenes, members will arrive frustrated because they purchased a version of you that doesn't exist.

There's no scenario where pretending to be someone else creates positive outcomes for your business or happy customers.

The Reverse Bait and Switch: Or When We Under-Sell and Over-Deliver Inside Our Memberships

Often, we create a reverse bait and switch. We undersell our offer, not communicating loudly enough about its value or showcasing the nuance of who we really are.

We save all that for behind the scenes, where we then over-deliver.

It's the opposite of the traditional bait and switch - instead of over-promising and under-delivering, we under-promise during promotion and over-give behind the scenes!

Finding the Balance in Your Marketing Approach

What we need is middle ground - a smooth, steady alignment between the brilliance of who we are behind the scenes and what we showcase during promotions.

This alignment benefits both you and your future customers. When you can be authentically yourself during promotions, members stay longer because they've entered the relationship with clear expectations.

Example: How One of My Clients Learned to Launch Like Herself

Let me share an example from a client I've worked with for almost three years. She describes herself as a wise sage. Or at least, that’s the kind of energy she wants to exude when she’s selling her membership and serving her members.

When discussing her membership vision, she explained, "I want it to feel like we're gathering around a fire, sharing stories, with me leading conversation and sharing wisdom from thirty years in this work. People should leave feeling filled up and encouraged."

Having seen her membership from the inside, I can confirm this is exactly how it feels. Members leave her calls recharged and excited, yet in a grounding, calming way - a rare and valuable combination.

Designing Promotions That Mirror Your Member Experience

Over the years, I've supported five or six launches of her membership. Knowing she excels on calls, webinars became a natural promotional tool for her.

But rather than following conventional webinar formats, we designed these sessions to mirror her member calls - affirming, focused on next steps, less about building hype, and more about creating genuine excitement.

Drawing on her campfire imagery, we developed themes around rekindling excitement for your work. For her scaled business with thousands of members, I worked with her designer to create elevated visuals that evoked that fireside feeling while maintaining sophistication.

This allowed her sage-like presence to shine through authentically.

The result? Each promotion for her membership attracts hundreds of new members who know exactly what they’re signing up for (one of the many reasons why her retention rate is so strong, at over 96%).

Let’s Do More of What We Already Do Naturally

For someone like me, written communication feels most natural. Any live elements I incorporate are carefully prepared, allowing me to share insights and connect dots meaningfully.

Your promotional sweet spot lies in what you already do naturally.

Consider where you're at your best inside your membership:

Where do you happily spend your time?
When do you create the most powerful aha moments for your members?
Your promotions should feature more of these elements.

Good Selling is “Turning Up The Dial” On Who You Are

The best live launches simply amplify who you already are, rather than requiring you to become someone else.

They become even more effective when designed around your current support, resources, and capacity.

While I'll save our complete system of live launching, flash promos, and strategic evergreen for another episode, my takeaway for you to day is this: mastering live launching in a way that aligns with your natural style is crucial.

The challenge isn't with live launching itself - it's that we've been approaching it in ways that exhaust us and don't reflect who we truly are or how we serve inside our memberships.

When we resolve this disconnect and plan appropriately, it unlocks countless possibilities for your membership growth.

This is how I view live launching and sales campaigns - as core competencies in our business.

As Simon Port Jacquemus noted, we don't have the privilege of not making noise.

But we must make noise in a way that makes sense for us and authentically shows the world who we are.

Your Invitation to Transform Your Membership Marketing

If you're ready for the next step, consider my mini VIP day. The price is increasing by $900 at the end of 2024.

While you don't need to complete your VIP day before the end of 2024, booking before then will secure the current rate, even if we schedule for early 2025.

During our time together, we'll focus on:

Getting clear on explaining what makes your membership exceptional
Understanding who you are and how you work best
Showcasing the nuance of your work during promotions
Creating a promotional strategy that fits your resources, whether you're working with a VA and community manager or leading a full team

Evergreen Can Be Wonderful, But it Isn’t “The Answer”

Bottom line? Live launching is a muscle you can develop and a channel for showing the world your authentic self.

If you'd like support in this journey, I'm here to help.

Either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts on live launching and its role in your business.

I believe it's a core part of your ongoing sales system - you just need to make it work for you. And hopefully, this episode has given you ideas to start doing exactly that.

Thank you for joining me, and I'll see you next time.