Feature Spotlight: Memberships
Setting up memberships on your membership site will be one of the most important things you can do.
Today we will cover how to manage memberships with the Restrict Content Pro Memberships Dashboard.
In the Feature Spotlight posts, we will highlight a feature in the Restrict Content Pro plugin and share a bit about why we developed the feature, who the feature is for, and how to use the feature to grow your business.
What is a Membership?
A Membership is a Customer’s subscription to a Membership Level. Alright, we successfully created the shortest and most jargon-filled definition ever! So, let’s take a minute to break this down in a way that everyone can understand.
To understand what a Membership is, first, we need to know about Membership Levels. A Membership Level is a product or service you offer to customers. For example, if your site is centered around a podcast that you host, a customer registering to a Membership Level could gain access to premium podcasts that are hidden behind a paywall.
Now let’s take a look at a couple of important things that happen when a customer signs up for a Membership Level.
- Customer Account Created – After a someone completes the registration for a Membership Level, a new WordPress user is created and they are added to the Restrict Content Pro customer list.
- Membership Created – After a payment is successfully processed, a new Membership is created and added to the Restrict Content Pro Membership list.
To summarize, a Membership is created when a Customer registers for a Membership Level.
Keep in mind that depending on how you configured Restrict Content Pro–we will touch on this later in the post–a customer can have multiple Memberships associated with their account.
How to Manage Memberships in Restrict Content Pro
In the Membership Levels Featured Spot, we created a Membership Level named Membership Army
for fans to help support our band RCP & The Memberships. Since then, we have created two more Membership Levels, Zoom Release Party
and Membership Army Elite
. From the Membership Levels menus, we can see how Memberships are associated with each Membership Level.
To get more information about the individual Memberships associated with our Membership Levels, navigate to the Restrict Content Pro Memberships menu.
Memberships Dashboard
In the Membership settings, you will find the Membership Dashboard. Each row of the dashboard is an individual membership with 6 bits of critical information.
Membership Dashboard Row
- Customer – The name of the person associated with the membership.
- Membership – The Membership Level associated with the membership.
- Status – Shows if the membership status is Acitve, Expired, or Pending.
- Recurring – If the membership status is set to renew after expiration date.
- Created – The date the customer registered for the membership.
- Expiration – The date the membership is set to expire. If the membership is Recurring, the expiration date is also the when the customer will be charged the renewal fee.
Membership Dashboard Filtering
By default, the Membership Dashboard displays every Membership, but you have a couple of options to narrow down your list.
Filter by Membership Status
- All – View all memberships. (Default View)
- Active – Only view acitve Memberships.
- Expired – Only View expired Memberships.
- Pending – Only display Memberships that are pending. You should review pending Memberships for any issues preventing it from becoming active. Check out our Members Pending Help Center article for more information.
Filter by Membership Level
You also have the option to filter the list by Membership Level. Select the Membership Level you want to review and then click the Filter button.
Membership Search
Use the Dashboard Search tool to find a Membership using User Account information or the Gateway Subscription ID.
How to Manually Add Memberships
As we mentioned earlier, Restrict Content Pro will automatically create a Membership after a Customer registers for a Membership Level. However, there may be times that you need to add a Membership manually.
To create a new Membership, click the Add New button in the RCP Memberships settings.
Next, you will need to enter the information for the Membership you want to add.
- Customer – Enter the customer’s email address. If a customer doesn’t exist with the email address entered, a new customer will automatically be created.
- Membership Level – Select the Membership Level associated with this Membership.
- Membership Status – Apply a status of Active, Expired, Cancelled, or Pending.
- Billing Cycle – Displays the billing cycle for the selected Membership Level.
- Times Billed – Enter the number of times billed so far. Typically, this will be set to 0 for new Meberships.
- Date Created – Enter the date created.
- Expiration Date – Enter the expiration date.
- Auto Renew – Check the box if the Membership should automatically renew.
- Payment Method – Select the Payment Method used for the Membership.
- Gateway Customer ID – Enter the Patment Gateway Customer ID. (Provided by the payment gateway.)
- Gateway Subscription ID – Enter the Patment Gateway Subscription ID. (Provided by the payment gateway.)
After entering the required information, click the Add Membership button to create the new Membership.
How to Edit Memberships
To edit an existing Membership, navigate to the Membership settings, hover over a Membership, and click the Edit Membership link.
The Edit Membership settings have the same options as the Add Membership settings with one additional field. After a Membership is created, RCP will generate a Subscription Key.
After editing the Membership settings, click the Update Membership button to apply the changes.
Other Membership Settings
There are additional Membership options to configure in the Restrict Content Pro General Settings.
Multiple Memberships
Checking the box for Multiple Memberships allows customers to signup for multiple memberships.
In many cases, we will want to allow people to sign up for as many Memberships. However, If you are selling tiered Membership Levels, you will probably want to prevent Customers from holding multiple Memberships.
For example, an author has created a membership site with 3 Membership Levels Bronze
, Silver
, and Gold
. Silver
includes everything that Bronze
plus a little more, and Gold
includes everything that Silver
includes plus a little more.
A customer holding more than one Membership on our author’s website means they are paying twice for some stuff. So to prevent a negative customer experience and more work for us later on, it is in everyone’s best interest to prevent the purchase of multiple Memberships.
Auto Renew
One of the major benefits of running a membership website is that you create recurring revenue. The easiest way to get people to renew their Membership is to automatically renew after they expire automatically.
Restrict Content Pro has a few different options you can use to set the default behavior for auto renewing Memberships.
- Always Auto Renew – All Memberships will auto renew.
- Never Auto Renew – Membership will never auto renew.
- Let Customer Choose Whether to Auto Renew – When selected an option to Auto Renew will be added to the registration forms.
- Default to Auto Renew – This option will only display when Auto Renew is set to Let Customer Choose Whether to Auto Renew. When selected, the Auto Renew checkbox enabled by default during registration.
Wrapping Up: Managing Memberships
Restrict Content Pro Memberships provide a ton of useful metrics you can use to measure the health of your business.
- Measure the success of your Membership Levels – The number of Memberships is how many people think the value of a Membership Level is worth the asking price.
If the number of Memberships is low, you may need to tweak what is included or lower the price.
If the number of Memberships exceeds expectcation, you may be able to increase the price of the Membership Level. Or, use this Membership Level as the model as you continue to grow your offering. - Gauge Future Income – The number of Recurring memberships can help you forcast future revenue. Having a good idea of how much revenue is coming in will you create the best plan to grow your business.
- Find What You Need – The Membership Dashboard allows you to search and filter your Memberships list, making it quick an easy to find what you are looking for.
In upcoming Feature Spotlight Posts, we will be shining the light on and showing how to use all of the revenue-generating tools in Restrict Content Pro.
Don’t have a membership site?
Now is a great time to make it happen. Restrict Content Pro makes it simple for you to create your membership or subscription site. Try for free now!