Run a membership drive

Kite begins by deciding what the drive is asking for and why it matters now. It looks at what it knows about your organization, such as what you've built, who uses it, what it costs to keep running, and what you've said about your plans. From that, it proposes a concrete message about what memberships fund.

Say you run an online forum for vintage synthesizer repair. Kite might propose framing the drive around the parts database the community has been asking for, with a goal of 200 new supporters over three weeks. It would suggest that the founder sign the emails, because the forum's members know the founder by name.

You can change any of it. You know things Kite doesn't, like the board's real budget gap or why this fall matters more than last spring. Once you settle the goal, the dates, and the message, Kite records them as the drive's plan and tracks the work against it.

Kite splits the drive into two audiences and finds the people in each one. The first is people who follow you for free and haven't joined. The second is people who used to be members and stopped.

To find them, Kite compares your email list with your list of paying members. If your memberships run through Stripe, Kite searches your Stripe subscriptions and matches each member to your email list by email address. That shows who on your list is already paying, who has never paid, and whose subscription was canceled or lapsed. If your members are tracked with a tag or field in Mailchimp or Brevo, Kite uses that instead.

Kite then looks at how engaged each free subscriber has been. In Mailchimp, it reads which subscribers opened and clicked your recent emails. A subscriber who has opened every issue for a year is a much better prospect than one who signed up once and went quiet. Kite saves these groups as segments in Mailchimp, such as engaged non-members and lapsed members, so each email in the drive goes to the right people.

The drive needs a page that makes the case and makes joining easy. Kite writes and builds that page around the drive's goal and what memberships pay for. The page lays out the membership levels, carries a note from the person signing the drive, and ends with a clear button to join. The button points to whatever checkout you already use for memberships, such as a Stripe payment link or your membership platform.

On a website Kite hosts, Kite builds the page from your site's own sections, so it matches the rest of your site. You preview it before it goes live. During the drive, Kite can update the page, for example to show how close you are to the goal or to add a deadline reminder in the final days. If your site runs on Webflow, WordPress, or another supported content system, Kite publishes the page through that connection.

If the drive also invites people to join your free email list first, Kite can send the signups from a form on a Kite-hosted site straight into your Mailchimp audience with a tag that says they came from the drive.

A membership drive email should say three things plainly: what the membership pays for, why now, and how to join. Kite writes a short sequence for each audience, in your voice, signed by the person you chose.

For engaged followers who haven't joined, the sequence usually looks like this:

• The launch email. It announces the drive, names the goal and the deadline, and explains what memberships fund, with one specific example.
• The midpoint update. It reports progress toward the goal and shares something new, such as a note from a member about why they joined.
• The last-chance email. It goes out near the end, says how close the drive is to the goal, and asks one more time.

For lapsed members, Kite writes a different message. It thanks them for what they supported before, tells them what has happened since, and invites them back. A lapsed member already knows what you do, so the email doesn't need to explain it from scratch. For a small group of former patrons who gave a lot, Kite can write personal notes and send them one at a time from your team's Kite email address, so each one reads like a letter rather than a campaign.

In Mailchimp, Kite creates each campaign, attaches the right segment, sends you a test, and schedules it for the agreed date once you approve it. Before the last-chance email, it can resend the launch email with a new subject line to the people who never opened it. In Brevo, Kite writes the content and sets the recipient lists on campaigns you've started there, and it can create a short SMS reminder for the final day.

Kite writes social posts that carry the same message to people who follow you but aren't on your email list. It drafts posts for the launch, the midpoint, and the final days, with suggested timing, and adapts each one to the channel. When your social accounts are connected and you approve the posts, Kite publishes them and sends you the links.

Some communities don't want to be marketed to in their own spaces. If yours is one of them, tell Kite where it should never post. Kite records that as a standing rule for your team, so the drive stays in your email, your website, and your official accounts.

Kite measures the drive against its goal while it runs and again when it ends. It reads the opens, clicks, and unsubscribes for each email in Mailchimp or Brevo. On a Kite-hosted site, it reads visits to the join page and clicks on the join button. If your memberships run through Stripe, it counts the new subscriptions and the renewals of lapsed members during the drive.

Putting those together shows which parts of the drive brought people in. Maybe the midpoint update, with its member story, earned more joins than the launch email. Maybe lapsed members came back at a much higher rate than new followers joined. Kite reports what it found, suggests what to change if the drive is still running, and saves the lessons in your knowledge base.

Many organizations run a drive once or twice a year. You can ask Kite to plan the next one on a schedule, and it starts from what the last drive taught it.