This video and guide shows you how to drip feed courses over an extended period of time using Memberium and ActiveCampaign. For example, releasing one course per month to your members after they join. We explain how you can drip out any piece of content, be it a course, lesson, page or anything. We also show you a step-by-step example of how to release a course once every month.
We’ve included instructions on how to import the same automation we’ll show you right into your ActiveCampaign account. We’ve built-out the automation and pre-written a few of the emails for you to make it super simple to implement on your site. Just make a few changes as you see fit and it’ll be ready to go.
Why Use a Drip?
Drip feeding has several applications, and it benefits not just you, but also people who consume your content. Here are some of the advantages:
- By delivering your courses and lessons in smaller, bite-sized portions,
- Increase retention by structuring member engagement
- For trial accounts or money-back guarantees, drip feeds can help prevent users from “raiding” the content before doing an intentional cancel.
- Using a content drip allows the site owner to launch with less content completed. Since the content is is time-released, future content can be developed later, after the site launches.
- Drip feeding can create additional revenue opportunities. If your content is already fully produced you can sell the ability to unlock all the content at once as an upsell offer for those who want unlimited access.
In this article, we’ll take a look at two different types of drips – simple evergreen drips and activity-based drips.
Memberium Controlled Drip Concept
Before we dive into specifics and how to build out a drip step-by-step, let’s pause and understand the general concept of how this works.
With Memberium, when a member has a tag in ActiveCampaign, Memberium can be configured to give that member (and any other member with the same tag) access to a set piece of content. That content could be a regular WordPress page or post, a LearnDash or Sensei course, or some custom post type on your site. Regardless, the entirety of the access is primarily focused around tags. This is done using the Content Protection Metabox.
What this means for us when it comes to drip-feeding is that we simply need to control when the access tags are applied. We can leverage ActiveCampaign automations to apply access tags, send notification emails, and more all on a schedule that we set up ahead of time.
Showing and Hiding Dripped Items from Menus and Course Grids
Because Memberium implements tag-based drip feeds, other components of your site can be reliably synchronized. For example, Memberium will control the display of menu items based on whether or not the member has access to them. No special configuration or effort is needed.
The same goes for your Course Grids included in the Memberium Page Templates.
When a member hasn’t been dripped a certain course, it will simply show locked and grayed out:
When the second course gets dripped to the user (meaning the ActiveCampaign tag associated with the course was applied to the member), the course will simply show unlocked:
Simple Evergreen Drips
Implementing the simple evergreen drips is very simple. Each course/lesson is released on a set schedule determined by the date that each individual member starts the drip campaign. Each person in the drip will receive the same content on the same schedule relative to the start date.
Only members who start on the same date will receive the content at the same time.
To make it as easy as possible, we’ve put together a drip campaign you can import into your ActiveCampaign app. We’ve already written the emails for you, too. All you need to do is customize everything to fit your site and content.
Import Our Free Automation Template
Step 1: In ActiveCampaign, navigate to the Automations tab and click “Create an Automation”
Step 2: In the popup, click “Import an automation”
Step 3: Insert the link and click “Import”
http://tplshare.com/O_UQ2qO
Step 4: Import Wizard
The automation import wizard is going to guide you through updating the from name and address on the emails. Once complete, there are a few more steps until you’re ready to go.
Step 5: Update Start Trigger and Tags
Update the start trigger of the automation. This will usually be a tag that your eCommerce system applies, but it could be something else depending on your setup.
Next, update the access tags that get applied to members. These access tags correspond to the tags/memberships you’ve used to protect your content which we discussed earlier.
Step 6: Edit Emails
The final step before activating the automation is to go through the emails and update them. We’ve written the majority of the copy for you, but you’ll need to fill in placeholders and modify the templates as needed.
First things first, update your logo at the top and then go through the entire email and replace anything in brackets:
When you get to the login credentials part of the email, you’ll have to make a decision:
Memberium for ActiveCampaign does not store the password of members in plain text in ActiveCampaign. When we generate a password, we do temporarily store the password in a field, but once the member logs into the site, that field is cleared.
What this means is that if this is guaranteed, 100% of the time the first email the member will receive (they can’t have ever been sent a password before), then you can use a personalization tag (merge field) and merge in the password field.
However, if the member has already purchased products/courses in the past and been given a password, the field will be blank resulting in this email not sending them their password.
In these cases, the best course of action is to include an autologin link that will log the member into your site without. This way you don’t need to merge in their password. Here’s an example of an autologin link:
https://yourdomain.com/?memb_autologin=yes&auth_key=YOURAUTHKEY&Id=%SUBSCRIBERID%&Email=%EMAIL%
Lastly, you’ll want to click the settings icon in the top right and update the subject line and the sending information if necessary (the wizard earlier should have done this).
You will need to repeat the email steps for all the emails in the automation, but that’s all you’ll need to do!
Test, Test, Test
After making all those updates, create a user with a valid email address and run them through the automation. You can use this to check the emails and verify the tags are being applied correctly.
At this point though, you have a fully working, automated evergreen drip sequence.
Activity-Based Drips
An activity-based drip is a little different compared to an evergreen drip. In this type of drip, the content is controlled based on the member’s activity.
Each member moves through the drip at their own rate, pushed forward or held back by their own actions. The drip can continue on a pre-set schedule or stop if the actions are not taken, depending on what works best for your particular case.
You will use the “Wait” or “If/Else” actions in the automation to pause the automation until the user completes certain actions.
In the example below, I’m waiting until the member has completed course 1 before releasing course 2. You can use Memberium’s integration with LearnDash, Sensei, and LifterLMS to have Memberium apply a completion tag to a member’s record when they’ve completed a course or lesson.
You can also trigger movement in activity-based drip by using shortcodes like [memb_automation_button], [memb_automation_link] or [memb_set_tag]. These shortcodes can apply the tags to the user when a button or link is clicked or when a page is viewed respectively. That tag can move the member along in the automation.
Additional Notes
When implementing a drip system, it is important to have the Contact update webhook installed on your site so Memberium can see the new tags a member is receiving.
If you don’t already have it installed or you’re not sure if you do, you can check by going to Memberium > ActiveCampaign, and in the “Webhooks” tab see if your site is there. If not, click on “Reinstall webhooks”.
We have a detailed guide on automating contact updates with Memberium’s webhook if you need additional instructions.
