MV TRAFFIC SUMMIT: Erin Kelly - Gamify Your Business Growth with Low Cost Offers

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Key Topics & Highlights:

Introduction to Erin Kelly and MemberVault

• - Introduction to Erin Kelly as the CEO and cofounder of MemberVault
• - MemberVault's focus on helping people use their platform to engage their audience and increase sales
• - Erin's excitement about the summit and her work with MemberVault

Strategy for Driving Traffic and Sales

• - Erin's strategy of sending traffic not only to their trial offer but also to MV Learn, where their digital content and low-cost offers are hosted
• - The effectiveness of the strategy in driving traffic to both the trial and MV Learn, leading to multiple purchases and upsells
• - The low-cost, easy-to-implement nature of the strategy, using content and resources already available
• - The success of the strategy in creating immediate impact and its ease of implementation for any business

Implementation Steps

• - Action steps for implementing the strategy, including determining the low-cost offer, what to share, where to share, and how to show proof
• - Preselling options for those who do not have low-cost offers ready
• - Utilizing tools to create and distribute unique coupons for the low-cost offers
• - Leveraging order bumps and upsells to increase sales opportunities
• - Reminders, deadlines, and creating urgency for audience engagement

Potential Challenges and Overcoming Them

• - Understanding potential challenges, such as overwhelm, perfectionism, and concerns about audience size
• - Encouragement and advice for starting small, keeping things streamlined, and not underestimating the audience's desire to engage and share valuable content
• - Considerations for businesses selling to consumers and assessing the audience's willingness and capability to share the offer

Empowering the Audience and Wrapping Up

• - Emphasizing the potential for businesses to implement the strategy across different aspects of their operations, such as podcasts, bundles, or newsletters
• - Encouraging audience participation and sharing takeaways from the session
• - Inviting participation and feedback on the summit and potential future events

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Full Transcript:

Hey, my name is Erin Kelly. I'm the CEO and co-founder of MemberVault, and I'm so excited that you have joined us for this summit. I hope you have found some really fun ideas. I work with people to confidently use their MemberVault so that they can get their content and their audience working together for more sales, more growth, and have some fun in their business. So this summit is just one of the ways that I show up and help people. And of course, I'm also behind the scenes working on the platform with our CTO, Mike Kelly. And so yeah, dream job, love it.

I'm excited to share the strategy that is working best for us and that is not only sending traffic to our trial, which is our main offer, but it's also sending traffic to our MV Learn where we have all of our digital content, and our low-cost offers, and we have a couple of bigger courses as well. And I have noticed that this particular strategy sends spikes of traffic to both because I'm asking people to share the trial. But I'm also gifting people these low-cost offers that are hosted inside of our MV Learn and so we see big spikes of traffic and our MV Learn as well. And multiple purchases. So people will get one thing for free, and then they'll go purchase the other ones that they weren't able to choose because I only giving them one thing. And then also in the purchase confirmation for the product that they get for free, most of these have a recommendation like, “Hey, you can stack your strategy and get this other Action Lab as well, for $9.” So it's low cost makes it real easy for people to make decisions. No brainer, all that good stuff.

And so I have seen not only that we have spikes, and it's really effective for driving traffic to the trial, which is what we're having people share but it also sends traffic to our MV Learn resource area in our MemberVault and creates multiple purchases, and upsell sales. So it's become one of my favorite ways for us to very easily using content that we already have, resources that we already have and not needing to do like a big push, like planning a bundle, or planning a summit, or doing anything where it requires a lot of organization. The first time I did this, I just had the idea to post it in our community like, “Hey, if you do this, I'll give you this and you need to do it by this date. And this is how you need to do it. And come back here and share that you did it”. And it took me all of 15 minutes to post that idea. And people really liked it. It was extremely successful, lots and lots of comments. And we saw an immediate impact. So this is something that you can start doing right now, it is not super complicated. And I'm going to break it all down in the action steps.

So the backstory is again, super casual. And it was something that I already had access to because I was already creating these low-cost offers that I could use as incentives to get people to share. And of course for us, they're low-cost offers that help people use our MemberVaults. So kind of like all cyclically, like is a win-win-win for everyone. Because they're getting they're sharing MemberVault with their audience, they're getting the thing that's going to help them use their own account. And it really creates this like connected, symbiotic, like fun, like gamified feeling. So it's just a total win. Your business model and offers an audience are going to be different, obviously. But I think that this is absolutely something that can work for any business. And even if you have an itty bitty audience, I want to make sure and say that this is not a strategy that you can only use if you have a huge audience, it is more about making sure that you are sharing it with your audience members who are really engaged, because those are the people who are going to be really excited to talk you up and to share this thing, and are going to be excited to get this thing from you, whatever your low-cost offer is. 

So you do not have to have a big audience, this is not something that requires a lot of time to plan and to organize, there's not a lot of overhead, and you can continue to do it, you could do it on a weekly basis if you wanted to. So it kind of depends on how many low-cost products that you have. And certainly, keeping in mind people don't see everything that you post so you could do it on a weekly basis. And people who didn't see the first couple of posts are going to have an opportunity to jump in, or people who weren't able to take advantage of it because they were really slammed or maybe they were sick or something was going on in their life. So they weren't able to jump in on your first gamification opportunity where they could share something and then earn this thing for free from you. They'll be able to jump in later. So this is absolutely something that you can rinse and repeat and do it multiple times.

So for me, I had been building our Action Labs over time, and it's something that I was creating anyway to serve our MemberVault audience in using their MemberVault accounts because I love creating strategic content, people really love having step by steps, and they are $9 offers. So if you are someone who does not have any kind of digital content, or a low-cost offer yet do not let this strategy intimidate you. Because I have also pre-sold offers. I've done this with pre-sold offers. And so the way that that looks like is you post an opportunity, you're like, “Hey, I'm creating this thing, it's going to be X amount. And if you want to get it for free, you can do the action step.” So the action step can be like, share this post on Instagram, share this post on Facebook, send this email to your list, or include this blurb in your email and an email to your list. And then send me a screenshot, or forward that email, or if they're doing it on social media, they can drop a screenshot of the post that they did on social media, they can tag you, you have to decide like how you want them to prove that they actually did the thing.

So you can get creative with this, you can pre-sell something, you can use content that you already have that's a low-cost offer. If you're feeling a little intimidated, and you haven't ever created something low-cost, and you kind of want a framework, I highly recommend Lizzy Goddard's low-cost training and it's $9. It's a low-cost training around how to create $9 offers. And I have to say I've sold all different kinds of offers over the years at varying price points, and certainly, some low-cost offers that were in the $19 range. But I had never sold something for $9. And I do agree with Lizzy that like it is a really good price point because it is so low; it is very accessible. And also as a creator who tends to over-deliver, it gave me permission to keep things super specific, which I think also led to people getting great results because it was something that they knew was around a very specific outcome and a very specific topic. And then it wasn't going to be a lot of content because it was low-cost.

And so yeah, it's just been successful all the way around. So she has this training that will walk you through it and it is super consumable and easy to get through. So I highly recommend that if you're like, I don't have any low-cost offers, or I do but I don't feel like I want to sell them or give them even give them away or use them as an incentive. I will include the link in the show notes and in the blog post and the transcript and everything for how you can get that but you can also go to mvlearn.co/9dollar and learn more about Lizzie's $9 offer to help you actually do the thing.

So the action steps for this particular strategy is that you have to determine what is your low-cost offer that you're going to do. And again, you can pre-sell it. So if you don't have something yet, you can pre-sell it and say, “Hey, if you do this thing, I will give you this thing that I'm creating and it will be released on X date and it's going to be this value.”

So then the next thing is what do you want them to share. So I've done two different things. I've had people share a post on Facebook because we're not active on any other social media platform, so we're not on Instagram, we're not on TikTok, we're not on LinkedIn, we're not on Twitter or X, we have strategically chosen to not be super active on social media over the years. And so really, the only place that we even have any presence is Facebook currently, because we have the Facebook community there.

I just went ahead and again, it was all very much an experiment. And so I had people share a post that I had made on our business page. And I will say that, while this was the lowest friction way to have people do the thing, and certainly had the highest adoption rate, I think that it had the lowest success rate, just because the Facebook algorithm is so trashy, so many people said it. And it didn't get seen by that many people because Facebook doesn't show very much stuff to people in their feed.

So that was I was I would say, really consider where are you going to get the most reach? That particular experiment for me was okay because I had people share why they loved their MemberVaults. And so it was really helpful market research to hear how people look at their MemberVault and how they describe their MemberVault when they sign up for our trial. So that was really interesting just to see from that perspective, but it didn't give us a huge huge spike of traffic just because not that many people saw it even though there were a lot of shares and a lot of engagement.

Another way that I've done it that works a lot better in terms of reach is having people include it in an email that they send. So you have to consider, because this is a low-cost product. So for me, they're $9 offers, I'm not going to ask someone to dedicate an entire email to what I want them to share, just because the cost-benefit ratio doesn't match up in that case. So if you're doing something that is worth more money, you could take this strategy and have something that's a higher value and have someone dedicate an entire email, which probably will convert better. I'm not going to say definitely, because sometimes those emails, I think, people's lists depending on how many promotions they do. Sometimes those, I think, perform worse just because they kind of tune out. They're like, “Oh, this is a promotional email.” Whereas if it's just cooked into the normal email that they send, and it's their normal content, and they just mentioned you, it's more of that, peer referral experience, where you can get a better conversion rate, when it's just a blurb inside of their email that feels natural and does not feel like an advertisement.

So you can consider what do you want them to share and where do you want them to share it is really important. And also the what, so do you want them to share a paid offer that you're doing, do you want them to share your podcast, you want them to share your opportunity to get on your email list, a freebie that you're doing, a summit that you're doing, whatever it is, you can rinse and repeat this for so many different things. And so it's a great opportunity for you to create quite a few low-cost offers and low-cost products that will benefit your business over time. And they will also allow you to do this strategy for numerous different kinds of endpoints like my podcast, the summit that I'm running, or the challenge that I'm running, my newsletter, or the group program that I'm about to release or whatever, right, so you're you're asking your audience to share this thing that you're going to be releasing, whether in a paid or, or free capacity so that they can get this other thing that you have. So it's just very, like symbiotic and wonderful.

So you want to make sure that you are making it easy for them. That is why that Facebook post did better in terms of how many people engaged with it and did the thing. Because it was so easy. They were already on Facebook, they were in our community, and they saw my call to action, and my information about how to do this thing. And then they were able to just like, pop over to our business page and share the post. And so it was easy and low friction. But again, because of Facebook and the algorithm, there wasn't as much of a huge uptick in traffic for us, so keep that in mind. Maybe it'll be a little bit less low-friction if you have them do the email. But if you can make it easy for them in terms of write the blurb for them or write a little outline, which is what I've always done, just make it as easy as possible. Make sure that you send reminders, I'm going to be doing that after I record this, I'm actually running this strategy right now for the fifth or sixth time and I need to send an email reminder for people to do this before the deadline, which is Friday.

So make sure that you are sending reminders, because people forget, and make sure you have a deadline, like “you need to do this by X date” because people need that urgency. And that kind of like, do it before you lose out on this opportunity. And then make sure that you consider how are they going to show the proof. So I have done screenshots, I've done you know, share a screenshot or forward the thing to me. If you're doing it on social media, you could have them tag you, just keep in mind that tags are not always the most reliable thing. And then I've had them always come back and comment because to me, everything that we do in our ecosystem with MemberVault, it comes back to the community. So I always have them come back to the community to share that they did the thing, which also helps bump that post up. And it gives that like peer evidence like, hey, other people are doing this, this is a fun thing for you to participate in. And it makes it really easy for me to have it all in one place and just like pop over and be like, hey, which one do you want.

And so, as I have created more Action Labs, like I said, I have an Action Lab category. And so I have mvlearn.co/actionlab. And so I just dropped the link and I'm like, “Hey, which of these do you want, here's the link to check them all out.” And then the people come back and they say, oh, I want this one, I want the Audio Gold or I want the Launch Your Summit or whatever, which is that was an Action Lab that it was pre-selling. So it was like, you can choose these Action Labs that exist already. Or you can choose this one that I am pre-selling that's not going to release until late January. And a lot of people took that one. So pre-selling is not a deterrent at all. And that has made it easy.

And then I just pop over and I'm like okay, this is the time I've set aside to go and give everyone that has shared, their coupon. And so I just go into our MV Learn. I go to the different products, I create a coupon code based on their name. And then I save it, refresh the page, go up to the gear icon at the top right for that product, click it, and choose the direct purchase link. And right there, there's a little drop-down for the coupon. And so you can embed their coupon right into the link, which just makes it really nice for them. And so then I grab that, go over to Facebook, say, like, “Hey, I'm going to send you a DM with your unique coupon code for 100% off.” And then they go ahead and they click on it and takes them right to the page. And it already has the coupon code applied. So they get 100% off.

And this is where you can play around with either order bumps, or upsells. So I've not only seen people grab the order bumps that I've done, I've seen people grab the upsells after they purchase their 100% off for the Action Lab, the thank you area says like, “Hey, this is a really great Action Lab for you to stack your strategy and you can buy this”, and so people will go and buy that one. And then I've also just seen people clicking around and like they ended up buying all, like they got one for free and then they bought all of the other ones.

So it works really well in those regards. You can absolutely put in your product, you can have just the main low-cost offer. And then you can have a different payment option that has a call with you, or what I did was automated emails to kind of like remind people that they had gotten this thing over three weeks, a lot of people took me up on that. And so on the coupon, I gave them $9 off on that. And so they spent, I think it was like $4. So they ended up buying it instead of taking it for free. For just the Action Lab, they went with the order bump and paid $4. And then of course in the thank you area, they would also purchase many times the other Action Lab that I recommended. Really, really successful. So a great thing for you to do, you're not only getting growth, but you're also creating sales opportunities for people who are really engaged. And in a very supportive way. We're not being super shady here, these are things that are going to help you.

So I am a huge, huge fan of low-cost offers. And that is how you can set it up, it works really well. I don't feel like it has taken me very much time at all, because I have these low-cost offers for other reasons. And so it's absolutely something that you can use to get traffic on all different types of your business, whether it's your free stuff, your podcast or YouTube channel, or if you are doing a bundle, or you doing a summit and you wanna try and get like more eyes on that you can ask your audience to share it for you, in exchange to get this thing for free. You can pre-sell, if you don't have any low-cost offers yet, you can build them out over time, so that you can keep doing this strategy multiple times and rinse and repeat.

So the thing to watch out for that I would say is overwhelm. So if you're listening to this, and you're like, oh my gosh, Erin those all sound amazing, I'm gonna go ahead and create four different digital offers and I'm going to create order bumps for all of them. And I'm going to drop post in wherever you engage with your audience, I'm going to ask people in my email list or if you have a community, I'm going to be doing that all like this week, and your brain just completely locks up and explodes. So avoid that. You need to start where you are, and then just take baby steps. I didn't do this all in one day, it was just a cumulatively built up to where I have all of these different options.

Then perfectionism, especially when creating low-cost offers, you know, trying to put too much stuff in there, trying to make it really glossy, like, I've kept it really simple. I do the private podcast for my Action Labs in my car, recording directly into my phone, it is not the best audio quality but it is good enough. I've had people say they love it because it feels really casual. It feels like we're just chatting on Voxer. And so I don't involve an audio editor or anything like it just I keep it simple and streamlined. So don't let perfectionism get in your way.

And then of course, thinking your audience is too small. So if you have a big audience, obviously, that's not something that you probably need to worry about. But you might be worrying about the perfectionism piece, you want to make sure that you show up really glossy, or you might be worrying that your audience isn't going to like this. And all I can say is that people have absolutely loved this, it's been really fun. I've gotten so many love notes from people who have just been over the top excited to participate and to share with their audiences.

If you are a B2C business, so you're selling to consumers, you have to really check in with like, are they going to be sharing? Are they able to share the thing that you want them to share with people who are going to be interested in buying it? That's the thing to consider. I would say for the most part, again, depending on what your exact audiences are and your exact business topic and business model, really take a deep gut check. Maybe it won't work, maybe it's something that's really private that people are not going to feel comfortable sharing that they are doing this or that they're involved in this or following you, in which case, this probably would not be the best strategy for you. But for everyone else, I think it's gonna work great and MemberVault makes it so easy to do.

Hope you've enjoyed the summit. Overall, I just loved all the audios and all the sessions. They were so good, and I am so excited to do other summits around, like a sales summit. I think will be really fun, it would be the next future summit that we might try.

I'd love to know what strategy stood out the most. So definitely come and share at membervault.co/collab. And if you have takeaways from this particular session, I love to see those as well. So thanks for joining and go take some action.

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