3 Low Lift Ways to Offer Asynchronous Support to Your Clients

In today's episode, our host and CEO of Membervault, Erin Kelly, delves into the world of asynchronous support—a quintessential strategy for entrepreneurs juggling multiple roles and responsibilities. As a self-proclaimed introvert, sensitive soul, homeschooling parent, and leader of a thriving SaaS platform, Erin understands the challenges of limited capacity and the importance of flexibility. That's why she's sharing her personal success with three innovative, low-lift strategies for providing asynchronous support that has delighted her clients and spurred action—all without the demand for constant real-time availability.

Key Topics & Highlights

• Introduction to Asynchronous Support
• Context and Personal Capacity for Support
• Asynchronous Support Offer Structure
• Implementation Using MemberVault
• Three Asynchronous Support Methods: Email Support, Video support through Loom, and Audio support via Voxer
• Asynchronous Support in Group Settings
• Structuring and Pricing Asynchronous Offers

Episode Full Transcript

Erin Kelly [00:00:01]:

Hi, my name is Erin Kelly. I'm the CEO and co-founder of MemberVault. And since we are doing a special series for the Made with MV podcast about asynchronous support options and strategies, I wanted to share the things that have been successful for me in the past. So I have shared three different asynchronous support offers in the past that have worked really, really well. They worked well for me, they worked well for the buyers. They really liked it. I got really great reviews, and testimonials from them. I felt like people really took action.

Erin Kelly [00:00:31]:

It was, it was really great. It was, it was like a win-win all the way around. And so I want to share my three low-lift ways to offer asynchronous support in the way that I have in the past. And so currently I'm not offering this. And I will say before I dig into the specifics, I have never had this as an ongoing offer just because my capacity was never high enough to have one-to-one support be like a mainstay of my offer ladder. Like, I just, as an introvert and a highly sensitive person who is also homeschooling kids and, you know, running a platform, a SaaS platform, like, I just didn't have the capacity to have people have that kind of access to me, especially because I spend a lot of time connecting with people through our community and the email marketing that I do. And so this was always something, these asynchronous offers were always something that I did sort of like as a little burst of energy to get insights for people who are really good fits for MemberVault. Often our lifetime upgrades and our annual upgrades are people who membervault has just really clicked for them and they're really loving it.

Erin Kelly [00:01:35]:

And so I really wanted to be able to connect with these people more deeply and actually have conversations with them, you know, more than I can, just like in a Facebook post or in an email reply. And so these asynchronous offers were a really great way for me to satisfy that and to accomplish that without having to have a bunch of stuff on my calendar and without having to show up for Zoom calls. And it was a really great way for me to have a spike of insights and obviously cash generating as well without it being like an ongoing thing that I ever offered. And so I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned that, because I think that that is a really great option for a lot of people who have limited capacity for one reason or another or have pockets of time in there, in their calendars where it's a better fit for them to be doing one to one support than, you know, than other times, and that they can't be doing it all the time. This is a really great way to kind of do like a flash sale of asynchronous support to your audience or to a segment of your audience and not have it available all of the time. So I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. The other thing that you can consider is these were always standalone offers inside of our member vault, and that worked really well for me. But you can also use this idea, any of these ideas that I'm going to be sharing as bonus modules inside of a larger program or something that people can unlock that, you know, after they complete something or they've, you know, maybe your like best leads or your hot leads, you know, you can use this in a lot of different ways depending on your business offers and your strategies and what your goals and, you know, plans are for right now.

Erin Kelly [00:03:15]:

So the three low live ways that I have offered asynchronous support in the past using membervault, is always starting with quiz questions. And so it was a standalone product where they purchased it, they got access. It had information about how the support would look like, what the expectations were, you know, how they needed to get the information, you know, to me, and then what my response time would look like and what they could expect from me. And so that would be in the main part of the product and then it would just be one module, one lesson with, you know, probably like ten to twelve quiz questions to get an understanding of a very specific problem that we're trying to solve. And so that worked really, really well. And since doing this, we now have file upload quiz questions. So if you're like a design, if you're helping like audit designs or something like that, just know that you can even have them upload information to the quiz answers, which is really helpful. When I was doing it, all we had was multiple choice and essay, which was really all I needed.

Erin Kelly [00:04:16]:

But I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned that that is now an option inside of quiz questions. So that is how it started. They purchased, then they got access to these quiz questions and I already had them in there. Ten to twelve quiz questions, mix of essay and multiple choice. And then I had three different ways. So I've done it in three different ways of how I actually responded to people after they answered the quiz questions. And it's really cool because in actions you can have membervault notify you by email when someone answers those quiz questions. So you kind of like, that clock starts ticking, and like, okay, like, now it's your turn, right? And so for me, what I did was the first one was email.

Erin Kelly [00:04:56]:

So I would look at the quiz questions and then I would give them like four to five different very deep dive bullet points of what I would recommend. And so I did it both on email strategy and also like, overall member vault strategy. So go and look at their member vault. I did it both of those two different topics, and both of them were very, very successful. I would say of the three different low lift options of asynchronous support that the email was maybe the most popular because people wrote, several people wrote back to me and said this hit, like, after, after their initial, like, this was great. Loved it. You know, like, I'm going to go work on this. After the fact, like weeks later, they would write back and say, hey, like, this was really useful to me because I just kept this email in my inbox and was able to refer back to it as I had time to work on it.

Erin Kelly [00:05:41]:

Now, obviously, you don't necessarily need to do email. You could do like a, you could do a Google Doc or you could actually, you know, add it into a member vault product. If it's a one-to-one product that you created for someone, you want to make sure that it's not a product that other people have access to. But there's, there's other ways that you could support that. But, the end goal was that they had these actually these deep dive action steps from me on what I would recommend and they were able to refer back to them very easily and like, check off those things. And so that was very, very popular. People really liked it and I felt like they were actually able to really take action on it, which was very satisfying as the creator. So the second way that I did it is that I would look at the quiz answers and then I would create a loom.

Erin Kelly [00:06:22]:

And as an introvert and as someone who finds video creation more energy exhausting, I didn't particularly like this way of delivering asynchronous support. I think that it was popular. You know, all three of these were popular. But for me, at the end of the day, like, didn't really like having to. It kind of felt like one of those things on your to do list that you sort of dread, which is silly because it's like not that hard, but for whatever reason, like, creating video is very energy-taxing for me. And so whereas audio isn't and writing isn't. And so really definitely check in with what comes easy to you for these asynchronous support options because you certainly don't want to replace one to one direct support with like a Zoom call or something like that. With an asynchronous support option, that's actually more energy for you to create because that's the opposite of what we're going for, right? So make sure that you check in on that.

Erin Kelly [00:07:18]:

And again, you can sell a few of these and see if you like delivering. I mean, that taking action is always my preferred way of seeing, like, hey, does this work for me? Does it not work for me? I know it works for other people, but does it work for me? And so I would say I would never do loom as an asynchronous support option in the future. But if you love creating video content or you really like sitting down and batch recording a bunch of looms, like if that sounds fun to you, and easy like, that would be a fantastic way for you to create asynchronous support options for your audience. Especially if you are serving in a capacity that requires a lot of like visual guides, like, so that you're like showing somebody as you like, do a review of their website or their member vault or something of that sort. Heads up though. I don't recommend loom anymore. It was a go to tool for me for a long time. But there have been so many glitches and issues that not only with my own loom, but with other people's looms, that it's no longer a tool that I recommend.

Erin Kelly [00:08:16]:

And I haven't actually, as of the time of this recording, I haven't really created or found my new tool just because I don't create video content. Like I said, I find that very exhausting. But it is something that I definitely need to add back into my toolbox. And I am looking at probably going back to Vimeo because Vimeo has added a lot of tools since I've left them as a video host. And, and so that's certainly one that has been highly recommended if you need video content. Another option is Marco Polo, which Hannah from Team MV actually created an episode on how she asynchronously supports her fiddle students. And so if you want to check that out, Marco Polo is definitely comes highly recommended from Hannah. It's what she uses.

Erin Kelly [00:09:04]:

And then there's another tool that you might consider called Clarity Flow, where you can have all different kinds of asynchronous conversations with your clients. So there's definitely different options out there, certainly a lot more options than there were back when I was doing this. And then the third option that I did was voxer support. So I would look at their answers, I would send them a box, and then they had a set amount of time to get back to me with any questions that they had. So let's say 48 hours, and that worked well. I didn't feel like people took as much action as they did with the email. So I think that of all of them, which makes sense because I love writing emails and I love reading, I'm a fast reader. And so for me, email worked really, really well.

Erin Kelly [00:09:46]:

And it also, it was also cool because of all of the three options, that was definitely the one that I got like the most glowing reviews for. Like all three. I got positive responses from people being like, oh, this was really helpful, I'm really glad I bought this. Like, you know, those kinds of things. But the email option is the one that like, after a period of time had passed, people were writing back to me again and saying like, hey, just so you know, like, this was really helpful, which to me is really powerful and a sign that it was, it worked really well for my combination of topic, how I like to support people and how people like to be supported by me. So that was a really great combination that I certainly have considered bringing back and doing occasionally. I just haven't found, haven't found the time when I have the capacity for that. But those are the three different ways.

Erin Kelly [00:10:34]:

So basically you could break it down as like text, video or audio. I did all three of them and I am exploring other ways of doing more scalable, asynchronous support inside of a group capacity. And so for the all Access membership, I am doing a Q and a podcast and taking questions from people. It is still really early days, so I don't have a thumbs up or a thumbs down for it yet. I tentatively really like it, but I think it's something that is still really new for a lot of people. And so it isn't necessarily like high value you like, it's not the thing that's going to sell your membership or your program that you have this like private podcast that people can consume. But I definitely will do podcast episodes on more on that and whether I recommend it once I've been doing it for a little bit longer. And of course, since offering these different asynchronous options, Membervault has changed a lot.

Erin Kelly [00:11:30]:

And I already mentioned the file upload, but I'm also curious to test out other options, like using comments. If you make a one to one portal for someone using comments or using the community feature to interact with your one to one client, you would probably have a template product that you would use. And when someone purchases your one to one package, you then would create a cloned version of that with their name that is private for just them and you. And so you, they would be the only people that have access to that product aside from yourself. And then that's where you would have your conversations all in one place. So I've experienced it as a buyer to get a one to one portal in Membervault created for me and then all of my resources. There was no like asynchronous support inside of the product, but all of like the resources that were created for me were added into that portal and it has been really nice. So I can absolutely see the use case of using either the community feature, the comments feature, or quiz questions to have back and forth inside of your product without involving any other outside tools.

Erin Kelly [00:12:38]:

And is definitely something that I am planning on testing out just so that I can give people like the pros and cons of how that worked and, you know, ways that we can improve the experience and all that good stuff. So there's lots of different ways that you can asynchronously support your one to one clients or your vip's. Like, if it's like a vip day, whether it's like a retainer or it's a one off, there's so many different ways that you can structure this in terms of like what the container of the offer is and obviously the price and how you actually create that support content. And so again, email is great for text-friendly people, you know, people that really like creating text content. I always really liked it because I could do it. I could be typing on my laptop, like while there was a sleeping kid next to me, which obviously doesn't work for video or audio. So that was, it was like maximum flexibility with my schedule at the time, which was very unpredictable and continues to be. And then of course, loom is video, and I don't recommend Loom anymore, but some tool like that, that allows you to create a screen recorder recording or recording of your face.

Erin Kelly [00:13:45]:

And then Voxer is an audio based tool that I still continue to use and recommend. I've actually used Voxer for an asynchronous podcast. And yeah, I think it works really great. So those are three different options, lots of different ways that you can structure and price this. And you can use membervault. It all starts when I did it. It all started with a quiz question inside of the MemberVault product. And of course, like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, you could absolutely put those quiz questions inside of a bonus module or use it as a bonus reward system for people that have, like, completed something.

Erin Kelly [00:14:18]:

I've seen that in more and more courses, like high touch, high dollar courses, where there's different, like, milestones that people need to reach. And so if they show that they've done the work, then the course creator actually gives them a reward. And it's often a one to one call on a one to one call on Zoom. And yeah, so this would be a replacement for that and it would be very flexible for you. So lots of opportunity here. And if you currently support any of your clients or have supported your clients in the past asynchronously and you want to share your story here on the Made with MV podcast and the way that you were supporting your clients asynchronously included member vault in some way, shape or form, definitely reach out and let me know. erin@membervault.co and we'd love to share your story. I think asynchronous is a great opportunity for a lot of us, and so I definitely want to share and showcase different ways that people are supporting their clients and things that they found that worked well and things that they found that did not work well so that we can all be collectively helping each other free up more time on our schedule and streamline things.