One of the biggest challenges with scaling a membership is enrollment. When doors are always open, people assume they can always join later… which usually means they never join at all.

In this episode, I’m breaking down how to create real urgency inside a membership model without relying on fake scarcity, countdown timers, or constant discounting. I share examples from clients and creators like Jay Clouse and Dreamers & Doers to show how kickoff dates, live programming, challenges, masterminds, and in-person events can naturally drive enrollment.

I also talk about why your programming calendar should shape your marketing strategy, and why the best urgency comes from designing experiences people genuinely do not want to miss.

Links:

• How to Create Organic Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
• Interested in working with my team? Book a free discovery call here

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• Connect with Becky on Instagram or LinkedIn
• Read the newsletter at beckypierson.com
• Learn more about Affinity Collective

One of the biggest struggles with growing a membership and scaling a membership is membership enrollment.

And specifically that doors are kind of like always open.

Most memberships feel sort of always available, which signals always later, right?

Like, there's the always I can join later is a feeling that people have when it comes to memberships.

No matter how you frame it, people think, oh, it's a membership I can join anytime.

So this is a conversation.

I have a lot with clients around.

I want to go from a program or services to a membership model.

But how do I make sure that people are always joining?

And how do I, like, create this urgency that I had before?

With a cohort program, you have a start date.

Like that is built in urgency.

It's like if you want to join this program, it starts on June 1, then everybody's joining at the end of May, right?

Like, that's just how the cookie crumbles.

And that has its own set of challenges because your enrollment and your revenue looks like a roller coaster.

One of our clients runs a program and it's always like a lot of anxiety and stress leading up to the program start date.

And then in the two weeks before the program start date, we get all of the enrollments, like within those two weeks.

I would say that generally there's a lot of reasons, like a lot of.

If we did a pros and cons list, there's a lot of reasons to go membership over program model.

Especially if you're serving your members for, for the long term, whatever you're helping them with, goal transformation wise, or maybe it's networking in a community of practice, it's a long term transformation.

They could be in there for years.

Right?

So membership makes a lot of sense.

But the question that people come back to is, well, what do I do when I'm trying to get new people in the door?

Like, how do I create this urgency?

So I want to go through like a couple of examples.

A membership creator that I know runs kickoffs every single month.

And we've seen this work with clients as well, where if you say like on your sales page, you have, you say like, here's the next kickoff date.

And you do a couple of like sort of onboarding style calls, like a welcome call with that cohort, which is your kickoff, then you're creating this like, cohort program feel, but you're bringing people in every single month because you have a kickoff date every single month.

Some things to consider with this is that you now have this like, thing to update every month.

So that might be something an admin does for you.

You don't necessarily need to do it yourself, but you're always kind of like looking at, okay, in a sense you're like working toward a launch all the time.

Um, but I think it's something that you can repeat over and over.

It's not the same like launch push if you, as if like you did two launches per year, for example.

You also need to have some sort of like welcome call or onboarding experience.

Probably at least one live programming element for that model to work where you have these like kickoff dates.

Now other ways to do it is to just create urgency with whatever's happening in your community.

Like if you're designing a really exciting programming calendar, then you just share what's coming up in the community that month.

And you can do this through sell through sending sales emails to your list.

You actually have to send sales emails to get sales.

Send sales emails to your list every month with like, here's what's coming up next month.

This is the thing that's starting, you know, just creating a lot of fomo.

Like in a sense, your live programming is the deadline cohort experience that they're looking for with like a program start date.

It works the same way.

Challenges are a great way to get people in.

Or any kind of like special events or boot camps you might do occasionally.

These are great sort of times to push with your community and say like, hey, this is coming up this date.

If you want to get in, start by this date.

Jay Clouse, who has his membership, the Lab, he actually will share like they, they do Mastermind enrollment twice per year.

And that's when he does like a really big push around.

Our next round of Masterminds is coming up.

He talks about, he shares testimonials from people that are in Masterminds so that people can understand like what they're missing out on if they don't join by that date in order to get their group.

Masterminds typically cost a lot more than the cost of a membership.

So it's a great opportunity to get good bang for your buck by joining at that moment.

The other thing he does is he'll push when he has an offline event.

So that's what he calls his like in person retreats.

So this is a great example, like in person experiences that are membership only, member only experiences that can be a great point in time to bring people in.

So what I want you to take away from this is when you're running a membership, you're designing all kinds of ongoing program for your community.

And then for some reason, we think about our marketing as a totally separate, like, thing we need to think about.

But what you need to look at is your programming calendar and say, okay, where are my natural urgency points in this programming calendar that I can push on social, I can push in my marketing, I can push with the sales call or sales email sequence.

Like, that's the kind of stuff that's gonna illuminate that natural urgency for you.

Another model that is very effective is just opening and closing doors, which is really more of a launch model.

Um, but it can be very effective.

Great way to get people in because you can't join all the time.

So I have a friend who open and closes her doors every month for a few days.

So she's still again, bringing people in every month and she takes rolling applications.

So if you go to her website, you can, you can apply and then you find out, you know, if you get in.

And then when doors open, it's like, hey, you are.

You've been accepted.

Doors are open for the next X number of days.

I think she does three or five days.

And this is what's coming up this month.

So that they know, like, again, it kind of ties back to what we were talking about previously.

She's creating that FOMO for the events and the programming going on that month so that they don't wait until the next month to join.

But.

But that allows them to like, get in during that window where the doors are open and creates the urgency for people that have just been accepted.

The Dreamers and Doers community opens quarterly and they take rolling applications.

They also accept payment upfront, which is interesting.

So you apply, you have to put in your payment details, and then if you're accepted, you're like accepting terms that if you get accepted, your payment will hit and you're.

You're in.

So you don't have to like, basically do that conversion twice.

A lot of the platforms don't have that functionality built in, so you have to have your pricing separate, like your, your checkout separate.

So that can be frustrating, but it is something that is an option for you.

But what I want you to notice right now is that we're six and a half minutes into this podcast episode and I have not mentioned a countdown timer or a fake urgency.

Play around, discounting, whatever.

Like, I want you to create true urgency through the programming you're creating, the experiences you're creating.

This is all about member experience.

If you open and close doors quarterly, then you're designing a Very crucial moment in a member's experience where they're going to join with another cohort of people and you're going to have a whole onboarding experience for them.

It's going to be really special.

They're probably going to get their own tag in the community.

All of this is thoughtfully designed.

So whatever your intention is, if you wanna bring people in every month, you can do that.

You just need a strategy for that.

If you wanna open and close doors and do more of like a quarterly push, that's absolutely possible for you.

But it all comes down to like quality member design and then working backwards on the marketing.

So to recap, urgency doesn't come from countdown timers.

It comes from time bound transformation, cohort experiences, milestones you're working toward live moments that people don't want to miss.

Create FOMO by talking about what's coming up by also talking about what's happening in the membership.

And they're like, I can't believe I missed that.

I have to join the next time it's open or I have to join, you know, soon so I can get in.

Right.

Like we really need to be talking more about what's happening inside the membership, in our marketing and also creating that flywheel, that word of mouth marketing.

There is nothing better.

I have another episode that I'll link in the show notes about word of mouth marketing and why that's the very best way to grow your membership.

Because member led growth is the best kind of growth and what come that comes from like making really incredible member experiences.

Okay, so if you, if your membership feels like it's always open but it's rarely converting, it's probably a positioning issue and not a traffic issue.

So book a call with us, a free discovery call linked in the show notes.

We'll map where urgency should just naturally exist in your model and help you with your, your growth plan.

Okay, that's it for today.

If you love today's episode, please share it with a friend.

Make sure you're followed and subscribed and all of the things.

And again, if you're interested in talking to us about how to scale your membership and create more urgency, book a free call with us.

We would love to chat with you.