Retention Point: The Single Biggest Secret to Membership and Subscription Growth for Associations, SAAS, Publishers, Digital Access, Subscription ... Membership and Subscription-Based Businesses Paperback – May 4, 2018

The title of this book refers to Netflix binge-watching TV shows where, if a viewer got to episode X, they were likely in for the whole ride. Episode X is the "retention point."This is precisely what managers of membership programs must do. This book is a high level view of the main ingredients that keep members re-subscribing and feeling like part of the community.Big take-aways:-Information is like water. Too much is just as bad as too little, and most membership managers try to deluge their customers with more content in order to patch up declining subs.-Nobody “wants” a membership, much like nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill, they wanted a hole. And all too often a membership becomes just an information strip tease where something that could have been delivered right away gets thinned out over weeks months and years.-Membership is a luxury purchase and buyers need to feel like they’re having a luxury experience. Which means belonging to the club must confer status. This in turn demands that you confer recognition on members for achieving goals and hitting milestones.-The focus always has to be on the dream outcome, not the effort. People need to be reminded *much more often than we might think* what it is we’re trying to accomplish here and how good it will feel when we get there.-You must take deliberate action to get the customer to eliminate all other options, distractions, sources of noise.The book is VERY readable. Not only is it short, but the concepts are expressed in very simple stories (sometimes even parables) that underscore key points. You can read it in an hour but I took quite a bit longer to digest it. And underlined lots of elements.The most relevant section for me was chapter 15. In it he has an example of how Dave Ramsey focus his members on outcomes rather than processes. It took a fair amount of effort for me to translate this into a version of my own for my members, but it was WELL WORTH the effort. (I had a very hard time seeing the forest for the trees.)Using the concepts in this book we’ve extended our average retention by at least 30% and increased our lifetime customer value. Rob is an extremely knowledgeable retention specialist who has worked with a wide array of membership models.This book is not a granular dissection of blow-by-blow retention tactics. Yes, you can borrow lots of ideas from his example campaigns and you can infer many specific action points from guiding principles, but this is still a short overview. That said if it locks the concept of a moment-in-time “retention point” in your head it’ll be well worth the read.

I LOVED this book! Robert gives proven, clear strategies on how to grow and retain members. The book is inspiring and tactical. I plan to implement everything that I learned and have recommended the book to others. It is valuable and will help you grow!

Robert gives a lot of good information and ideas that I will implement right away to start my subscription model. I made a lot of notes to apply a step by step strategy. I am glad I found this book. Enjoy 😉!

I listened to this book on Audible, but it was so good that I decided to buy the paperback version so I can make notes on it. It was well worth the time to sit down and work through the actionable steps and the way Robert writes makes it very easy to understand how you can use these ideas in your own membership and business.

This book's central thesis is that you can retain your customers via a membership on ramp (onboarding flow). The book was fairly convincing and the author presented case studies from his professional practice as well as a whole lot common sense / intuition. In addition to the onboarding flow, he also gives us a framework for customer retention that we are expected to take at face value. Some of factors were obvious: "it's always about them", some made sense given the thesis: "relationship exists after the retention point", however others were kinda left for us to merely accept "Your value is the feelings you deliver" (as opposed to ROI).The ideas were good, but the book itself was a struggle to get through.Lots of fluffy writing. This is ironic given that one of his principles is that value isn't measured by the volume of content.The framework has an implicit business model in mind: A single recurring product/service offering. He does not address multi-feature products/services who would have complex onboarding needs.The framework relies to heavily on selling a dream - don't get me wrong the dream is important. But in a B2B world, this dream tends to be measured with ROI.Overall, very little practical advice, but the strategic message will resonate and inspire you. This book covers the What, and explores the Why. But in order to be a great book, the author would have needed dive into the How.To conclude, I will continue to recommend Ideas from this book, but I won't recommend this book.As a fun aside, the author did apply his 9 Membership Onboarding factors to his own book. Framing the book with his business success (dream) and ending with an upsell (he does link to his website for consulting services).

This book highlights lots of very useful ideas did I wish I had known 20 years ago when I first started running membership sites.Lots of useful ideas for both veterans like myself as well as those who are new. The accelerator points especially well-thought-out. Kudos to the author and many thanks for sharing Lessons Learned. This is an exceptionally intelligent book with valuable, detailed insights. This is not a basic beginners book at all, but rather a practitioner's handbook.I've been very successful in running membership sites for over two decades, and I totally vouch for the validity, intelligence and genuine usefulness and what he has written. Much appreciated!

The great thing about this book is that it outlines the needs new members have when joining a business. I had been struggling with why our new members were leaving and after doing some research I found this book. I’m glad I did because in this great read, Robert illuminated for me the reasons why my business wasn’t growing and gave me the big takeaway that I needed to incorporate a new structure for how I effectively interact with my newest customers. The book is concise and professionally written and gets straight to the point while reaffirming key central ideas and is overall an easy read.