This week I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes look at how we recently migrated more than 1,000 members into a new custom Circle app for a client.

If you’re getting ready to launch a new community or move your existing customers onto a new platform, this episode walks you through exactly what to plan for. I share the full list of what we did to make this migration a success — from member interviews and beta testing, to communication plans, onboarding emails, DM automations, and how we used ambassadors to model engagement.

Whether you’re scaling an existing program or adding community to your offer suite, these are the steps that make members excited to log in and stay engaged.

Links:

• Book a free discovery call here
• Checkout Circle App with a free trial here

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• Learn more about Affinity Collective

Hello, friends.

Today I want to tell you a little bit about a project that we've been working on behind the scenes here at Affinity, where we've spent the last couple of months really preparing for this week.

So there's a bunch of things we did to make the migration successful.

But beyond just migrating platforms, this is going to be really helpful for you to make sure if you are launching a new community or if you're launching a new offer or community experience to your existing customers.

Like let's say you're adding a new community element to something that you're running or you're maybe migrating platforms or taking your program and turning it into a membership or whatever.

Like the shift and change is if you're adding community experience, community elements to what you're offering, this episode is really going to help you prepare for that and be so super successful in making sure your customers are engaged, they know what's happening, they feel a part of the decision and that this experience is really crafted for them.

So I'm going to run through a whole list of stuff that we have done over the past months with this client to make this week successful.

Okay, so just a little bit of context here.

This client has over a thousand members.

They have had a really successful program so far with in person events and an online curriculum, but their community experience has been super crickets.

Like they haven't really used this external tool that they had previously for community.

It was used like very sparingly and was kind of convoluted in its design.

So not a lot of engagement.

And so we were looking at how can we really get more make this really the hub of their full experience that they're offering because community, community is such a huge piece of it.

The in person events they do are incredible.

And it's like, how do we start to bring that into an online space that really weaves people together, you know, between these in person events?

And so a lot, a lot of clients come to us for this kind of thing because it's like, okay, how can we scale what we're doing in person to make it more accessible to people all over the world.

And so the first thing we wanted to do was really understand what do these members actually care about, what, what would make them excited to log into something.

Especially because this particular community is for a niche business coaching area.

And so they're really busy business owners and how do we get them to log into a thing or how do we make it valuable enough that they even care about this experience?

So the first thing we did was talk to members.

We talked one on one to members.

We ran a survey.

We really got to understand what was the root of what mattered to these people and what, what they cared about when it came to like connection.

What kind of people did they want to meet in the community?

What kind of loneliness or lack do they have in their personal circles that they're looking for elsewhere in these other spaces?

Why did they join in the first place?

Why do these go to these events?

Why do they take this programming and how has it helped them be successful?

And you know, what's that missing piece?

And, and this is kind of hard because really we're doing like discovery.

Like you don't know what you're going to find out.

You might find out that actually some sort of online platform is really not going to solve anything here.

In our case, it really uncovered really specific features that were crucial to help us.

So we have created a really intentional programming plan coming out of this.

We pulled in a couple of custom features so that people can really member find other members really easily because that was an important factor.

So anyways, we created this whole feature list.

We prioritized it based on the member conversations we had.

And then we ran a beta test with some members and the team at this company to really test out this platform because we were moving them to a circle and also show the team what it could be like, get some feedback, understand what works about it and what doesn't.

We had over engineered a little bit.

We had too many things going on and so we really scaled back for our full launch.

Coming out of that beta test, the next thing we did was focus on a really strong communications plan to make sure members knew exactly what was coming, that they were going to be getting access to this new platform that they like, all the features that they would now have available to them because essentially we're adding more to their membership benefit without asking them to pay more.

So that's a huge value add.

It's a great boost of energy for the community overall.

And so we wanted to make sure that number one, they're aware of it and number two that they're really excited about it.

And so we started sending emails out about two weeks before the launch, and then during launch week of course, and then we have a series of onboarding emails sending throughout the next month or so to really get members excited, get them to come in and Play with it.

Because of course not everybody is gonna dive in that first day they get that first email.

So we have to keep reminding them about that.

This thing is now available to them and hey, come check it out and come use all of these new things that you have access to.

The next one is one of the biggest, most important things and that is that we have ambassadors in the community starting conversations and using the platform as we intend them to.

So really what they're doing is modeling the behavior behavior and leading the way for other members to follow.

So we brought them in first.

So, so we kind of had like a phase of people, like bringing in different phases of groups of people into the community.

So this first phase included ambassadors so that they could start having conversations start like seeding some posts start.

There's a, there's a place to share community resources.

And so they started adding some resources to that library.

And so we have them modeling the behavior.

And then when we bring all these other people in, they're not coming into something empty.

So single space or resource that they have access to already has content populated into it.

So they're not coming into any like blank pages.

Because there's nothing worse than staring at a blank community and being like the first one to make a post.

Nobody wants to be that person so you know, make it look like a place that they're walking into and can, can join.

It's kind of like the majority of people in the world don't want to be the first ones to arrive at the party.

It's the same, it's the same thing with the community.

The next thing we did was made sure we had events ready for them to RSVP to.

And in their onboarding journey, which of course is a huge piece we really designed out onboarding, we have a direction for them to go RSVP to an event.

It's one of the first things we ask them to do because if we can get them to show up to engage in an event, then they're more likely to engage in like the forum pieces and the other things that we have available.

So we want them to RCP and attend events right away.

So that is a huge part of the onboarding experience for this particular client.

And then lastly, we have DM automations running to encourage people to use certain high priority features that we have.

So we'll say like, hey, go RCV to this event.

Hey, like start.

This is how you start a group message with people in your area.

The things that we, again, high priority features that we knew were important to our members so we want them to feel really welcomed.

We have these DM automations running so they're getting lots of messaging and direction in different places.

It's in the onboarding, it's in the email, it's in the DMs and it sounds like we're doing it a lot, but it's kind of like, think about your business, right?

You have to keep sharing the same message over and over and over again, right?

Build community to build your business.

It's going to help you build a more sustainable business.

Blah, blah, blah.

Like you've heard me say this a million times, like this is my whole thing.

And so you just have to like keep repeating your message over and over.

It's the kind of the same thing when you're building community.

It's like, hey, this is what's important.

This is what you can do here.

This is available to you.

Like come to this upcoming event.

The more you promote something, the more success it's going to have.

It's kind of like the same thing within a community.

So the communication plan, it's really important.

Getting in touch with them in different ways is important and then also kind of like trickling that down.

So yes, that can come from the organization, but also ambassadors can encourage people to come.

We have certain leaders, coaches in this, in this particular client we have coaches and so the coaches are starting group messages with people that are in their, their groups.

So we have group messages that are already happening in the app which drives people to the app.

So the events are in the app.

We're driving people to the app for their conversations and we are driving them to the app for their resources.

Now in order the for a community to be really successful, you need to have everything in one place.

So one of the things I see broken the most in communities is like disparate systems.

So like you, oh, log into Slack to have a conversation, you need to go over to this portal here in Kajabi and download your, like this is where your course and resources are and we'll send you like a calendar invite for events or you can see on this like web page or notion page where some resources are where our events are.

It's too confusing.

People are only going to log into one thing.

So make everything available in that one thing and by they'll also be more interested in one piece of your community aspect.

So like, let's say somebody's really excited about events, they're going to go in and RSVP to events and that's probably the only thing they'll pay attention to.

But because they're in the app RSVPing to an event, something else might catch their eye and they might start engaging with another piece.

And the more touch points we have with a community member, the more likely they are to stick around to be retained.

Right.

And to be successful because they're using more of the tools, they're doing more of the programming.

Whatever you're offering is the more you can engage them in multiple aspects, the more likely they are to be successful and stick around.

So.

So all of that to say when you're launching a new community experience or migrating your existing customers to something new, these are all really important factors to think about.

And modeling the behavior is super important.

Onboarding is super important.

And yeah, hopefully this was helpful to kind of give you a rundown of all the pieces we're thinking about in this launch.

And I would love to hear what you're launching, what community you're building.

If you're considering a migration, definitely reach out to me.

I am doing discovery calls, free discovery calls.

You can book one with me.

I'll drop it in the show notes.

So if you would like to chat with me about what it would look like to migrate your community or launch your experience, definitely reach out and let's have a conversation.

Okay, thanks.