Tarzan Kay

<tarzan@tarzankay.com>

January 28, 2025

to you

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Subject:

big changes (and small tweaks) we’re making to our membership

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What I learned after running a membership for nearly 2 years

I never wanted to start a membership. 

The cohort model appeals much more to me. Most programs we offer are delivered live, and last 6-12 weeks. This way I can retreat back to my cave when it’s over. 

This membership began on a bit of a whim. For years my Email Stars alumni had been asking for a way to continue meeting on calls and getting their emails reviewed after the program was over. 

After 6+ years of customers asking for this, I said, “Fine. I’ll start a membership but I’m not committing to anything. I could change my mind at any time. Also, it’s going to cost $300/month.”

(Do I sound like a brat? I am. Big Youngest Child Energy.)

As far as memberships go, $300 is in the “high-ticket” range. It’s always felt justified because the email reviews are custom-created every two weeks, mostly by me. I’m literally writing new hooks, showing people exactly what’s wrong with their emails and what to do to fix them. It’s a super effective way to learn.

Enough people raised their hands to join that the membership has brought in about $80,000 since inception. It’s more than carried its weight for the time we put into it, especially since we brought on Tracy Duru to handle some of the reviews, a job I told myself I was the only person qualified to do. WRONG. Hers are just as good, and she catches stuff I wouldn’t. Customers love these reviews. It keeps them consistent and always improving. 

…but retention has never been awesome. 

With the exception of a few “lifers,” the average member stays around 3 months. Anytime we do a promotional push, we also sign up 2-3 people who only stay for a month or two, which creates administrative headaches like removing Slack access, updating a spreadsheet and a handful of other niggly bits. 

I’ve long suspected the culprit: 

The onboarding experience was more or less non-existent

Because the membership was created on a whim, and only for customers we were already working with, we didn’t bother to onboard any of them. We didn’t even make a checkout page, just sent them a Stripe* link and a single confirmation email.

A single email is not an effective way to onboard customers—it’s a near-guarantee you’ll get refund requests from people who don’t understand what they bought. Aggravating this issue, some customers will buy whatever I’m selling just because they like working with me and they want my latest thing. I have fans, woe is me.

It’s easy to forget what’s included once the dopamine rush from hitting the buy button wears off. Customers need reminders. 

Another issue was the name. Naming has never been my strong suit. (Copy Caboose??? What the hell was I thinking?) Naming it “The Email Membership” did little to help people understand what they bought, or what problem the membership solved. Something to do with email, maybe?

It’s taken me years to figure out what I was really selling. At first, I thought customers were buying me—my undivided attention on your emails, my years of hard-won business acumen, the feeling that Tarzan is “in it” with you. But no, that is a mastermind-level attention. No one was expecting or asking me for that. 

Toward the end of last year, a few pieces started clicking together. Several customers told me in the same week:

“I didn’t really know what the membership is/was. Like, what are we doing on this call? I can just, like, ask you anything? And what is supposed to happen on Slack, anyway?

Ugh  

That was a tough pill to swallow, but it showed me where to put my energy. Here are the changes we made, based on this and several rounds of survey data. 

  1. Added a 4-email Onboarding Sequence: Now we explain what they purchased and clarify each aspect of the membership, including:

>> Email Reviews—What to submit, where they’ll find their reviews, etc. 

>> Live Calls—We renamed these “Writing + Discussion Calls, to remind people each week what we’re doing, and outline the format. We’re no longer calling this a “Q&A Call” since that puts the onus on participants to come up with ideas for what to talk about. 

>> Slack Channel—What you can post, what you can’t, and where to find the community guidelines (simple but so necessary)

  1. Rewrote the Weekly Reminder Emails: Explaining things once in onboarding still isn’t enough. The weekly recurring reminder emails offer suggestions for what kind of emails to submit for review, when and where their custom review is ready to watch, and what we’ll be discussing on the Writing + Discussion call. 

This way people can submit more consistently, which is what’ll get them the best value and make them want to stick around longer.

  1. Changed the name to Email Review Club: What people are buying is EMAIL REVIEWS, plain and simple. The name makes it super obvious and functions as a reminder every single week about what I promised to do for them, and how to get what they’re paying for. 
  2. Finally, we dropped the price by 50%. I think this may make a big difference in sales and retention because people can afford to stay longer. The membership is easy to run and I’ve got years of call plans to draw on, so it feels safe to drop the price. Even at $150/month the membership still runs at a net profit of 24%. (Hat tip to Sandra Booker who helps me keep an eye on those numbers.) 

One thing we may yet change is the “come and go as you like” policy. At this new price, we might impose a 3-month minimum commitment, tho Sandra doesn’t like this idea and thinks we’ll still be dealing with people wanting to leave early. I’m not convinced. Nor have I convinced her, that’s why we haven’t made a change yet.

I sincerely hope these changes fix our churn problem and attract some new members. We’re capping it at 15 new members. We’ll reassess as we get a feel for the workload. The reviews are deep creative work no matter who’s doing them, and even the best of us have a limit on how much of that we can do. 

If you’re interested, check out Email Review Club —>

I’ll be sure to check in in a few months about how these changes impact sales and retention. You’re going to get a few more emails about it over the next few days. If you don’t want them, click here to say, “Not interested, thanks.” You’ll still get the newsletter and I’ll still update you on any new lessons learned from running the membership. 

‘Till next week,

Tarzan

*The Stripe thing was also a mistake. Having checkout pages in more than one software (in this case, SamCart and Stripe) is a great way to create operational chaos. It was one of my many bad ideas but Sandra must’ve been too tired to object that day. We fixed this years ago.

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