User Spotlight: How Susanna Reay uses MV

In this fun interview with Susanna Reay from 'SusannaReay.com' we discuss how she uses MV in her coaching business for introverts. We explore her unique way of using her free resource area with 'bonuses'.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Remi Oduyemi  
Hello, everyone, welcome to another user spotlight. My name is Remi, I am the user success lead at member volt. And I'm back to interview another member of member volt. And today, we are joined by Susannah Ray. And we're gonna go behind the scenes and look at some of the things that she's doing in her business. And we do these episodes because we want to inspire you, and give you some ways to think about how you can use member vault a little bit differently. So hi, let's say hello to Suzanne, how are you?

Susannah Reay  
Hello, I'm doing great. Thank you.

Remi Oduyemi  
Thank you so much for taking the time out to join us today. So I'm gonna start with a nice easy question. How long have you been using member volt?

Susannah Reay  
About three years?

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah. And was you using anything before members? Or was this your first sort of platform that you arrived upon?

Susannah Reay  
So what I was doing before is I had a WordPress website, and I had WishList Member involved in there with Thrive Themes and thrive apprentice, but everything wasn't really singing and dancing together as I wished. So that's when I searched out and found member vault. And, yeah, it was after I'd run an online Summit, and I was like, I need something different, I needed something a bit more substantial. And I'd been in fact, part of another early adopter in member vault who had been seeing their training and went, Oh, I quite like this. And that pointed me in the direction of member vault and I hopped on board, yeah, many years ago.

Remi Oduyemi  
I love that I love that you kind of found it through somebody else using it. And often a lot of people find that or they do a call. So they do something and then that Oh, I like this platform and then sign up. It's quite an organic way of of doing this. That's awesome. So tell me a little bit about your business. Who is it you work with? Who's your main sort of ideal client?

Susannah Reay  
So my main clients is I focus on I've actually got registered as a trademark the introvert way, because I support introverted Coaches and Consultants actually doing kind of what we're talking about setting up their online courses to scale their business. So it's taking them from that one to one coaching space into creating scalable productize service packages, online courses, occasionally memberships but I find introverts aren't the best at running memberships, because it needs ongoing consistent energy. And the thing about us introverts is we need our time to recharge. And that's where courses are absolutely fantastic. And where member vault really supports my business and that space.

Remi Oduyemi  
Amazing. And how do you like to work with your introvert clients? Is this one to one? Is this small group programs or a membership? How do you best work with your customers? Or is it a mix of all of those,

Susannah Reay  
there is kind of a mix, I do do some high end one on one mentoring, but my most favorite way is what I call small group hybrid training programs. So that is a combination of recorded video content that gives structure to the program. And people can watch in their own time with activities, and then actually have either weekly fortnightly small group no more than six, because again, I feel people get overwhelmed and flooded with what other people are doing and distracted. And so then we have like a q&a coaching session to help them and they can bring those sorts of words together. So that's my favorite way. Because I do love I always say I'm a sociable introvert. I do love connection. I love meeting people. And my goal is to actually help them get to the end of the program. I'm not about just selling them something and then disappearing. I think the nurturing side is super important.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, absolutely. I'm also a social introvert. So I totally relate to that, as well. Totally makes sense to me. And we had a little chat before we started recording. But I'm going to ask you about tech tools. Can you share some of your favorite tech tools? But let's, let's keep this to like your top five, I think.

Susannah Reay  
So my top five number one absolutely memorable. I've got to say that that's in there, because all my trainings are linked in there, whether it's one on one personal or the group, Active Campaign I use because it's deeply integrated within member vault. And that helps me nurture clients. Zoom for the live coaching aspect. When I'm recording content, actually, or streaming live, I use Ecamm live and again, as an early adopter on that one. I've been with E cam for over five years. And actually when it comes to graphics and presentations I use I'm a Mac user. So I use Keynote. I don't go into Canva because I find keynote pretty much does everything I want as I want and it's they're

Remi Oduyemi  
amazing. And are you doing any cool? I'm not using Active Campaign yet but I'm going to be moving over to Active Campaign. Tell me about something cool or something that you use at to campaign and how that links with your member role and how that sort of serves your process of either selling or nurturing your, your your clients.

Susannah Reay  
Yeah, so one of the cool things because obviously, there's all the obvious things. But one of the things when I do and I do have some self led programs as well. And one of the things I love using Active Campaign four is when we combine the actions and tags, and sending emails at specific moments, so when someone's completed a certain module, they'll then get a certain email that comes through. So it's about creating that bespoke journey. And the other elements that I use quite often is the EPS that we have, because again, you can create a tag that someone's reached, like 100, EPS, and, you know, do the celebration and convert a member vote, but I'll also send them an email as a result and an extra thing with Active Campaign and I'm gonna sneak in an extra bit of tech here, go for it. If you it's a video messaging app called bonjoro, bo N J. Oh, and with that, you can also integrate that into your Active Campaign sequence. So I know when someone's got to a certain point, it triggers to send a notification to me in bonjoro to say send them a video. So it's all interlinked. And then that tells me what to do. So it goes on my to do list of these are the people you need to send them any video out to. Yeah, that's where active campaign starts getting really powerful. And yeah, the in other email tools.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, no, that's brilliant. I am. I think it was Mike did a user interview with Adrian Doris and I don't know if you've seen that one yet. But um, she was talking about some of the amazing things that she's doing in Active Campaign, I started having all these light bulb moments of I need to get over to Active Campaign. I'm with mailer light at the moment, but the potential of kind of the CRM side of it and like you say, the things that you talked about how you can kind of target people at specific points to reach out to them and to keep that nurturing going, is something I think I need to look into as well. And some of the some of the watchers of this will probably be starting to feel the same, because it's a really powerful tool.

Susannah Reay  
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I started on mailer light, as well. And I think mailer is brilliant, for starters. Because you don't want to be overwhelmed by all the bells and whistles, you want to get your head round into the basics. But I will say if anyone like yourself, me is thinking of transitioning, Active Campaign, we're really good. I had like 15 automations already set up in mailer light, and it took about three months, not three months, three weeks to, for them, and I just let them bring across those automations interactive campaign for me. So that was really cool. Yeah.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, rather than having to recreate all of those that you've, you may already have set up a mailer light, that's very handy tip. So thank you very much. And if anybody's watching and thinking EPS or EPS, their engagement points, that member volt has inbuilt into the system. So as people are completing modules or lessons, they earn points. And you can do all sorts of wonderful things of these. We've got some knowledge base articles about that. So I'll drop some links for the EP and how to use engagement points with member vote for those of you who may be interested in that as well. So Susanna, so can you tell us because we know that you're doing something really cool with your resource area? And this is a really interesting topic, actually. Because there are different ways that you can set up a free area or a free library or free resource area. Can you talk to us about how you set yours up? And now that you've changed it, why you've changed it and what that looks like? And give us a little bit behind the scenes around your free resource area, please?

Susannah Reay  
Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I just like to remind anyone listening is, you know, remember where you are at in your business. So when I started, I absolutely had my lead magnet, you know, the freebie as an individual product, but what you begin to realize is you end up and if you're like many of us, you're multi passionate, you're a scanner, you have too many ideas in your head. And the thing about lead magnets is you need to create more than one because it's unlikely the first one you produce is going to hit gold for your business. So you need to test and put different things out there. But it'd be a shame to like spend all that time creating something then disappearing. So to begin with, I did have, I think, you know, I had one lead magnet, I was testing it or seeing how it's going. Then I came up with another idea. So I created another lead magnet because the join env is you can have as many products as you want. So I was doing this all as the testing, and then it got to the point where my list was more mature and I was actually, you know what, it would be far easier both for me, and for my clients already on the list if I actually combined. And I've got five lead magnets now that hit slightly different areas and different points, I would say in the customer journey in terms of what they're interested in. And the nice thing is, is because Absolutely, you have your analytics when you've got them individually. And I think that's what some people worry about. But if you put them together into the resource hub, and that as separate modules is the way I've got them. So each, so when someone now lands into my free resource area, there you can see, and I've got a nice image of which of these five things and they can then go in and automatically go to where they want. And my envy insights, my analytics, tell me, which are the most popular, but for my subscribers, it takes out a step of them having to subscribe to something again and again. So what I can see as well is okay, that person sort of this is the most popular one. And I was actually taking a look at this before this call today. And I've got a course creation template. That is, unsurprisingly, having described what I do the outright winner of people going, okay, like, how do I get my head around this? Yeah, and I've also got a subscriber action plan in there. That's, you know, not much behind and interestingly enough, that was the first lead magnet I ever produced. So it was showing I'm still quite on the money. Yeah. But it's about showing the balance. So I really love the fact that, because what I also do with this resource hub is once they're in there, and they're getting engaged, and it's more than just a download, I've normally got a little video sort of showing people how to use it

Remi Oduyemi  
as well. Oh, that's great. That's nice. Yeah, it

Susannah Reay  
does make it engage them. And obviously, there's an email sequence that comes to them as well if they've gone through certain things. But also I use EPS. So when someone's hit, and I have a goal of just the first 25 VPS, because I've also got a sort of let's chat and get to know each other in there is I open up a bonus, like free piece of content when they get to that point. So I kind of mix in all these things within the hub, and they see it as a blocked sort of bonus until they reach that EP, just to encourage them, you know, to be curious and look around and see what there is.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah. And have you had much feedback about from your customers, but how they're enjoying using the free resource area?

Susannah Reay  
Oh, yeah. loads, they, they always tell me off, like, can you give you so much value, it's like, I can't believe this is free. There's some of the biggest feedback I get, but I believe in leading with value. And I kind of feel that's one of the things that attracted me into member vault is, I see that in member vault, the whole ethos of the company is like lead with value, and which is why the Facebook community is so proactive because everyone's like, yes, we want to share. And people love the fact that they can just go in and pick and choose and my clients will also go, yeah, because I can't remember where I put it on my computer and back in, you know, and then they hopped back in if I've put something new in there, it grabs their attention. Yeah, but obviously, there's also all pulls towards the beautiful sort of binge and by marketplace. Yeah, that's since I've last been in that highly likely, I've got a new new offer, Hey, I am a scanner. Something else will be up there opens their eyes, because unfortunately, as good as Active Campaign is, it's still not a miracle in terms of guaranteeing your emails are gonna land in people's inboxes. Yeah. So I think it's really important to, you know, be able to show as much as you can in the different spaces.

Remi Oduyemi  
And so, with a traditional lead magnet, right, you'd have like, one sort of signup page. So how are you doing that with the resource hub that has it all there? Do they all individually have individual signup pages that lead them to the to the hub? Or do you drive them straight to your member vault? And if you do, what do they see? When they arrive? Do they see that they're gonna get five things in there, or they see they got that one thing that they're looking for.

Susannah Reay  
So again, I've played with this along the way, I've done individual landing pages on my website for certain things that I've told them. And in this instance, for instance, the course creation template, I had a specific landing page. And then I teased and I said, and when you sign up for this, you might get four bonuses along the way, and I'll introduce that I'm letting them know, here's the thing that you're really interested in. Yeah, but watch out. There's something else in there, or I do, and again, it kind of depends where the audiences and who I'm speaking to. So if I'm speaking on a specific podcast or a summit, and I know actually, these people want this course creation template, I will send them to the landing page. And then they'll get the sneaky extras. Yeah, if it's someone just like, generally, so within my Instagram, I've got, you know, various links. And there, I actually have a graphic showing the free resources. And it shows all five of them together, and therefore, they land in the member vault, they see that graphic of all five. And obviously, we have that semi grayed out that they see each one individually. Yeah, and I give each a like the name and sort of the features and benefits of each of them. So they get a feeling before they sign up. And that's just a simple sign up for me for that purpose. Because if someone's, and sometimes, you know, people don't go down the free resource route at all, they come straight into a paid program, or whatever, yeah. And so they will only see my free resource hub once they're in a paying program. And that's why I like having them all together. Because I do also give automatic access to my free to the free resources to anyone who's signed up with any other program. And that's where the actions are just magic in the vault that you can just go, yep, someone's signed up for like my signature office system, my big training program. So they also get free resources this, that, and the other I've got a library of other content as well on an online business kit, which aren't available for sale on the front end of empty. Yeah, but they're, they're behind and because I know it support material. So yeah, the combination of actions in a member of ours is really a magic. Sort of, it's the magic behind it isn't it is how you can access and

Remi Oduyemi  
yeah, it really is, it's that thing of you can have all these different products and resources. And by setting up one action, it just simplifies the process. And one action gives people access and they log in, and it's just there for them. They don't have to do anything extra. And we as the business owner don't have to manually add somebody you know it, it just makes life so much easier. Yeah, and I call them magical, magical, little automations in the background, they are brilliant.

Susannah Reay  
You don't have to throw that through your email client as well. Yeah, as much as I did mention earlier on in the interview, I use Active Campaign to do that. And sometimes I'll use Active Campaign to add people to a product again, because they've got to a certain point, but a lot of it you can do directly inside of member vaults. And that is just it just makes it super easy. And also one of the other things that I do very often inside of member vault is when I've got a training program, which is the group lead and it's cohort, it's just so easy to duplicate your product. Take like and then just delete the recordings of that cohort. You can just run it again Yeah. And

Remi Oduyemi  
works. It does. Mike Oh, he'll love that. I will tell you what he's gonna love this interview even more because he loves a British accent. Now there's two of us

Susannah Reay  
to make more Brits and member of quite a few at the moment we have

Remi Oduyemi  
we have and I tell you what a lot of them from my community as well. Like I've been talking about member vote for years and they just, they just keep flooding in. It's so interesting. When I look up at the members, I'm like, I know all of these people, they're all in my, in my orbit, you know, but um, yeah, I think it's a brilliant tool. And I often describe it as my business ecosystem, I have everything in member vault and I drive people to them about all the time whether it's for one to ones, whether it's for done for you, whether it's for small group programs, I'm sending my people there and um, bit like you actually my free resource area currently has everything in one place, my needs tidying up, I think I've put too many stuff in there actually. And I need to kind of edit it down and make it more specific because some of the stuff is you know, three years old, and I'm, you know, need to tidy that up. But I do the same thing. I drive people to that one area. But I will advertise that one thing. And then when people connect, they come in and they get all the extra goodies as well. But yeah, so that was brilliant. Thank you for sharing about your resource area because I think that's gonna be really helpful to people who are thinking about I want to create a free hub, I want to create a free library and I don't know which way to go and I think this is gonna give people a lot of food for thought of the different ways they can do it. You can do it individually one by one in a product or you can put them all together and kind of create a strategy around that. And I loved what you said about you know, kind of promoting it so that you know, here's the one thing you're gonna get and here's a bonus for extra things. I love that as a as a way for selling that because people people like to get more than they

Susannah Reay  
The door bonuses. I would say, though, as well is, you know, don't think oh my God, I need to do five, no, just do them as you can in your time. Absolutely. The main thing with anything that is a free resource is I see it, it needs to answer, like a quick win something that people are really looking for that they're stuck, or they're struggling with just to help them take one step in the right direction. And so the best way to create these is by listening to your people and going well, what what do you want, and then just create something but make sure it's bite size disabled tend to go over the top. And this is where PDF downloads are great on checklists, or with the template because for me that's in a Google sheet so they can make a copy. But that's why i've got a video describing it because people might open it and go, Oh my God, there's so many columns, because I've done it more. They can delete columns. Yeah, they don't need because it's easier to delete than it is to add four new in various tech if anything, they delete by accident. So. Okay, so Yeah, sort of backup and everything. And but that that's another bit of tech, but yes, talk about which is that oh, yeah, Google Drive is a huge support for me in anything that I want to be fillable templates that people can create copies of that I use in a lot of my training. So yeah, I'm afraid we've spoken about seven. All right,

Remi Oduyemi  
fine, it's fine. I'm a fan of Google Drive as well. My whole life revolves around drive. It's great for collaborative work. And it's great for working on the go, and sharing and all of that good stuff. Yeah, I'm a massive fan. It's in my top two, my top five Google Drive says it's fine. I like the tech stuff. It's fine, you know, but I didn't want to make this whole hour of tech, even though we could quite easily, quite easily talk about tech for an hour. But no, they're all really important. tech tools that you've mentioned, that make make your business life easier. And that's what and that's what you know, this is what's important, really, and alongside of your member volt. This is how your business works. So it's really good for people to hear about this stuff, because it will help me there might be tech tools that they're not using yet. But it could be benefiting them. So this is all good stuff. All right. So can I ask you when you first started using member vaults? Did you find it quite easy? I'm guessing you're quite a tech savvy person? Was it quite easy for you to kind of understand how to use it? Or was there a learning curve for you?

Susannah Reay  
Yes, I would say it was easy in that sense, which is why like yourself, I encourage my clients because I've got a lot of clients who go oh, I'm like tech scared. And I found member vault one of the easiest. I'm super looking forward to the content block editor coming. I've been like, gnawing at me bit for that. And that's mainly because my clients are less tech savvy than for me. So you see who's amazing on the MV team taught me CS like CSS ago, CSS, yeah, two years ago to do what I want. I'm like, now if we can do that, that for me will take it that one step to be easier. Because the only thing that I do know that I hear some people struggle with it's like, well, where do I put my sales page? Yes. Yeah. And it was just that, but once you know it, yeah, it's fine. You've got it. And what I love is as well, and I'm tell all my clients, that big green question mark. There's question marks all over the place. But the knowledge base is superb. It's easily done, like step by step. Yeah. And even when you first sign up, there's some templates that you can follow to just put some things in. There's some links, like if this is your first time, do click on those links, don't be one of those people who never read. I promise you if you just click on those links, and one of the nicest things that I like about the knowledge base is you're in the admin side at the back of mV. thing. I'm a raving fan at this point. I am so hey, I own it. It's because when I have my desktop open, and I'm going well, how do I do this? It's a knowledge base just slides out in a little window. Yeah. And it stays there. So whilst you're looking and navigating around, you've still got the instructions up in that slider window that help you do the thing you want to do. Yes, it's not yet another window. I mean, I think we all suffer. And one of the memes that I sort of share all the time and my social is like I've got too many tabs open in my brain. I think we do it on our computers too much as well. So it's something teeny, that's an experience about the admin user experience. Yeah, I really like and obviously to be Give me some people might need to get to know some of the terms. Yeah. Search correctly. Yeah. But on the whole, I think the whole starter route. I think I set up my first thing literally within hours. Yeah, it was super speedy.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah. And Suzanne is absolutely right about hitting that that green, that green question mark and it kind of bounces around tap on that because there was so much useful information in there. And I know, Aaron is working really hard at like what the News talked about there about the sales page making that language a bit easier so that for beginners, they're clear where they go to make those things. But in the meantime, yeah, the green, the green question mark is is your friend click on those click on the links. And using the knowledge base is brilliant, I've never seen a resource area for support that is so simply done like in everything is step by step and it guides you. So if you are watching this, and you're still a little bit stuck about things, check out the member vault knowledge base, I will share the link for that as well on the page for this, because it's got all your answers in there. And if failing that, if you're not somebody who wants to read off a screen, I've started doing a lot more video ones as well. So video walkthroughs, where I walk you through in the back end. But also the collaborative group is like the hub for asking any question. And the support is phenomenal. So when you go into the collaborative group, you can always search for whatever it is you're looking for, there will probably be answers. And if there isn't answers, you can just ask a question. And there is, you know, we've got people all over the world, from the UK to Australia, every everywhere in between, and people will be online and they will help you. So yeah, absolutely brilliant advice that you just gave there about using the knowledge base and using the kind of the help support that is in the dashboard area for people. So if you ever start listen to Suzanna, she knows what she's talking about. Okay, so final question. Before we go, how can people find out more about you, where you live where your member vault is, if you tell me where people can find you, and I'll make sure we get all those links put into this episode.

Susannah Reay  
That would be fantastic. So my business is run under my name. So it's Susannareay.com. And my member vault is memberzone.susannareay.com. So I've set up the subdomain something else that's fantastic about it, you can make it all part of your big domain that really helps. Even if when you start getting really advanced and want to go into advertising. So I can't help but throw in all these things. Give me just give me my links. I'm giving you more. What's going on. Do also connect with me. I do have a Facebook community called the introvert entrepreneurs powerhouse where I bring in guest speakers, you're very welcome to join that it's a free community, on Instagram and on LinkedIn. My handle is at Susanna Reay, so search me up and yeah, do reach out. And if you do connect or Follow me, please send me a quick message and say, Oh, I listened to your chat with Remi. And this is why I'm here because I love to know how people find me. And yeah, do that for your business by the way. Yeah, absolutely.

Remi Oduyemi  
Absolutely. Well, this has been blooming. Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining me early this morning with that morning energy. And it has been so helpful. And I know a lot of our users going to take away so much less. So thank you so much, Suzanna for taking the time and for sharing. This has been superb. Thank you.

Susannah Reay  
It's a pleasure being here. Thanks, Remi. No worries.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hey, hey! 👋 I’m Remi, the User Success Lead here at MemberVault. You’ll hear me over on the Vault podcast, see me in the Collaborative, and also hosting special user success workshops.

Outside of MV, I work with established entrepreneurs and ambitious business owners who are ready to scale their business using simple systems and cool automations.

You can find my MV site here: https://www.onlinebusinesstemple.com