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Watch How “DigitalMarketer” Does Memberships…

Watch the video above to see how do some of the best marketers on the planet run their membership site!

In part 1 of a 3 part series, Richard Lindner (Co-founder of DigitalMarketer and Scalable.co) and Taylor Nelson (all-around genius), walk us through one of their membership sites DigitalMarketer.com.

DigitalMarketer provides overarching marketing strategies, tools and templates for marketers. Since it was founded, DigitalMarketer has helped over 120,000 marketers with their businesses, changing the industry as we know it.

Through this case study, you will learn some of the techniques and strategies to create a successful membership site.

Here are some of the key points discussed throughout the video:

Customer Value Journey – What It Means for Brands
Course cultures and how communities factor into coursework
An overview of the various features that Memberium offers that can help you to create a fully automated membership site.

Important Lessons & Highlights Shared In This Video

[00:00:47] – How did Digital Marketer start and where they are today?

Richard Lindner speaks about how Digital Marketer is 13 years old and has been in the digital marketing industry for a little over a decade. At one point, Digital Marketer had well over 30 companies operating in just every industry, and their focus since has narrowed down to B2B. They believe that the best way to enable marketers to grow their business is not only through training but to open source and templatize. Digital Marketer was founded by Ryan Deiss, Roland Frasier, and Richard Lindner, and Scalable was a natural progression for them.

Their main focus was to find out what’s working templatize that and deliver it to their customers, which lead to a pretty robust product line. They offer à la carte purchases, team purchases, and memberships and coaching that have small groups. Scalable is a cohort-based accelerator where their customers go through live four times a year.

Their goal is to help entrepreneurs scale themselves so they can scale their companies. Memberium helps leverage and enable both of those businesses. On top of being powerful as a tool, it gives them the ability to have a centralized technology department.

[00:07:38] How does optin work with Digital Marketer?

Digital Marketer’s primary methodology is the customer value journey. The CVJ teaches how customers go from unaware to aware, to engage, to subscribe. Their primary method of customer acquisition and awareness is by driving social ads to content and then retargeting.

They mention about beefing up organic content on social and on the blog. They have a broad understanding of all aspects of marketing but a deep understanding or specialization of one. So for them, the one-page marketing blueprint over is to offer their digital marketing mastery certification as an ideal starting place. Then once they go from there, they typically get into the digital marketing masterclass. That’s their flagship certification that covers the eight critical core disciplines of digital marketing.

[00:10:55] Digital Marketer Site Walkthrough

The content within the Digital Marketer is completely gated, so there’s no way to get to the member site unless you are a paying number. The only way to get access is if you make a purchase. They show templates, whether it’s to enroll in a training or to buy or upgrade, but all of these are set up as free courses, these buttons are only delivered based on their Memberium access level.

They also have upsells on the back end of the customer value journey where they have an upgrade to the certification bundle that’s all one-click upsells. This is something to be with one purchase. There are also different order forms.

[00:13:20] How does community factor into this course environment? Where does that come into play?

Some of their higher-level partners and their elite coaching programs they’re inside Facebook groups or circle communities. So if someone was a member here, they would see a button that would say community and that would link them out to the respective group.

Digital Marketer’s new community is less Facebook and it’s more slack. The people at Digital Marketer are on Facebook and that’s where they’re running their ads.

[15:05] What is included in a la carte courses?

Everything, but certifications would be included in the a la carte courses. Visually, it would have no locks anywhere, either get started or start over, depending on the level of conclusion from the courses.

[00:17:30] How do they deal with an uncomfortable situation with a partner?

Digital Marketer has certifications and their own certified partner program, which has a totally different login and look. If someone is a certified partner, they’re licensed to deploy their IP on behalf of their customers. In the same way that Scalable has their SBA which is known as Scalable business advisor certification.

Dealing with an uncomfortable partner boils down to communication, including, but not limited to expectations or unset expectations.

It’s a kind of misalignment. Digital Marketer’s believes it’s just a matter of realignment.

The agreement which they use is a standalone document where they agree that they are adopting their core values as their own. So as part of the process, they’re adopting their brand, which means they’re adopting their Core values and their beliefs.

[00:21:43] What plugins does Digital Marketer use?

Digital Marketer uses Elementor Hello, which is a lightweight theme. It allows customizing everything with a theme builder. One of their sites uses Buddyboss, which also works great with Memberium and Learndash. The Digital Marketer member site is all on Elementorhello.

A lot of Learndash integration plugins, and then there is the Manage notification emails which prevent notifications such as someone has changed their password being sent each time there is a change.

One user avatar to easily add a profile picture for an author, redirection to manually redirect the users.

Rewrite rules inspector as they’re using custom URLs on all of their courses, everything’s done on the back end with some custom PHP functions using that plugin.

Rocket one click is what they use on the backup order form. This plugin has been a really big game changer for them in their ability to keep the site light. It’s a super easy-to-use plugin.

Tin Canny reporting is another great one. Digital Marketer has around 50,000 WordPress subscribers that are on the site. So being able, to see all that data, sometimes it hangs up on the LearnDash pro panel. This one is great for showing course completions, enrollments, progress, and everything like that.

[00:29:47]: How does Memberium work with Digital Marketer?

The biggest shortcode Digital Marketer uses is [memb_has_membership]. This is what Digital Marketer uses to show either the purchase button or the enroll or resume buttons. These are just custom forms using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, that map to Elementor. And so it loads a shortcode on there and they just use these shortcodes that have by far been the most helpful thing.

It’s based on the membership level, not necessarily the tag because this does work great with umbrella accounts too. So a child account will get access, even if they don’t have the actual tag it’s based on the parent account level, which is awesome.

Full Video Transcript

[00:00:04] Micah Mitchell: Hey everybody. It’s Micah Mitchell and I am more excited than I’ve ever been to create a video. Because today we have Richard Lindner and Taylor Nelson from Digital Marketer and Scalable.co. And we are gonna walk through a couple of their membership sites. They have two different membership sites using a very, very similar tech stack.

Serving two pretty different audiences, you know, really high-end on one side and then just a ton of content membership levels on the other side. So Richard, why don’t you, if you wouldn’t mind, give us a little bit of a, an overview in case somebody doesn’t know Digital Marketer, which I can’t imagine. Cuz when I think of anything online, I think of you guys for like 15, 20 years now. So, so maybe just tell us kind of how it got started and, and where you guys are today. And then we’ll dive in.

[00:00:47] Richard Lindner: Sure. Well, hopefully, there’s a ton of people that haven’t heard of us. Um, uh, uh, fingers crossed. Um, hopefully, a lot of them are listening to this. Um, but thank you. Uh, we, I’m excited to be here too. Um, you know, we’ve used Memberium, uh, for gosh, an. I don’t know, a decade or so. Um, so, uh, for us at Digital Marketer, like you said, we’ve got, um, we’ve got a pretty diverse, uh, product line. Digital Marketer is 13 years old. Um, you know, we, we really, we really did our best to, uh, to lead the charge in professionalizing, kind of the industry, uh, at a time where internet marketing was a thing.

Um, we kind of, we, we kind of kind of took a longer-term bet and said, like, this is eventually going to become a, a, a career. This is, this isn’t something that just is going to be a way to make money online. Like this is going to be a department, a, a job within every organization. So we bet pretty early on, uh, and, and really have been hot, hot on the term digital marketing, you know, for well over a decade.

Um, our, our goal was to kind of open source. What we do, uh, to grow all of our different companies. Uh, at one point we had well over 30 companies, um, that we were operating in in just every industry, uh, that you could imagine a little bit of entrepreneurial add for sure. Um, we’ve since really narrowed our focus, um, to B2B.

So Digital Marketer, um, we support marketers. We still, uh, we, we still believe that the, the best way. To enable marketers is not only training, but to open source, um, templatize, an open source. What’s working for us and what’s working for our, our partners, uh, and, and our different portfolio companies to grow our brands online, right.

To grow our brands through, through all the different channels. So Digital Marketer, we do training and certification. Uh, we’ve got coaching. And, and really that leads to a pretty robust product line. We have à la carte purchases. Uh, we have team purchases and memberships. Uh, we have coaching that have small groups and it’s a, the business model has evolved and, and the technology on the back end has to support several different levels and several different access types.

Um, and, um, very thankful for you, Micah and everything you guys do because you enable that, right. You enable that. So that’s Digital Marketer. Um, Scalable was the natural progression for my business partners. Uh, Ryan Deiss, Roland Frasier, and myself. Um, when we started Digital Marketer, really what we did to grow our businesses was market, right?

That was our job. Our job was to, to do marketing, to grow the business, uh, to grow all the businesses, figure out what’s working templatize that deliver it to our customers at Digital Marketer. Um, well eventually we kind of stopped doing marketing because we had a team. We had people that did marketing. For us. And, and really our day to day, uh, became very different.

Uh, we were leading a company. We were, you know, we were focused more on, you know, other aspects of, of growing a company and, and, you know, making sure that we’re leveling up and. We kind of had no outlet for, for distributing what we’ve, we’ve learned and figured out, but we still had that core competence and, and kind of that, that muscle memory of documenting the processes that we used.

So Scalable was that next natural progression at Scalable. Our goal is to help entrepreneurs scale themselves because so they can scale their companies because we believe that companies are better, Economies are better. If founders can stay in that driver’s seat. Now the product line at, at Scalable is greatly different from Digital Marketer, you know, Scalable really we’re dealing with founders, uh, our, our primary offer is Um, our Scalable operating system, it’s a, it’s a cohort based accelerator that, that we go through live four times a year, uh, enabled by software. And then we have, uh, different levels of mastermind groups. We have, uh, peer mastermind groups, and then we have, uh, those mastermind groups that have a live meeting component.

And we have, um, kind of a licensed program, our Scalable, uh, business advisors, or SBAs, uh, are in there. So we have, um, consultants and coaches that are licensed to deliver our IP on behalf of their clients. So we only have about four real products for sale at Scalable, but we leverage the exact same technology stack, uh, to enable and support that business.

So, um, Memberium really is, is there to, to leverage and, and enable both of those businesses. And. On top of being powerful, um, as a tool, it gives us the ability to have a centralized. Uh, technology department, really, if we’re being honest, Taylor is also known as the technology department. Um, Taylor’s able to build all the funnels Taylor’s able to build and maintain all of the, um, you know, all of the, the backend and, and configure all the plugins and make sure that we’re enabling both of these very similar but different business models. Um, and, and he does that. He does have a team. It’s not just him. He’s got, um, he’s got a couple of, uh, of, of people, very, very smart that work with him, but we don’t have a giant team and we don’t have to build that, uh, specialized knowledge at each of these companies.

We’re able to keep it centralized. So that’s kind of. The difference between the two companies and what we do. Um, hopefully that, that gives it paints a picture. I’m sure you don’t wanna talk about that. I’m sure you wanna dive in and see kind of how we do it.

[00:06:13] Micah Mitchell:Yeah. I’d love to see some of how, uh, how you do it.

So Taylor being the, the resident nerd, we established this before the call. I’m also a nerd. So , we’re in good company, probably most of the people on here. So Taylor, if you wouldn’t mind, um, sharing your screen and. I wanna say if possible, let’s go to Digital Marketer first, since that was the first site.

And for those of you listening to put some of what Richard said in membership terms, these guys started out selling, you know, courses, memberships. They, I feel like were one of the pioneers in doing the whole certification thing and were really successful with their certified program. Um, I love Digital Marketer.

And so when you guys started Scalable, the first time I heard about it, I signed up for one of your higher level programs and I’ve just been thrilled, like the event. All the, the touches, the slack group. So I’ve seen it firsthand, you know, I’ve bought, uh, little pieces of your digital market or stuff for myself, for my team.

And then now being part of the founders board, I can see what you mean, where you guys are just great at documenting what you do. Um, so that explanation’s very helpful. Um, but yeah, Taylor, if you can show us, you know, and, and I guess starting out conceptually. Where do people start before they’re a member of Digital Marketer?

What do they first see? Is it like a, a free video? They opt in kind of what’s the path from not knowing you guys to being a paying member.

[00:07:32] Richard Lindner: A great, uh, great thing about, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Taylor.

[00:07:34] Taylor Nelson:No, I was gonna say, Richard, do you wanna speak more to that?

[00:07:35] Richard Lindner: Yeah

[00:07:35]Taylor Nelson: How they get there. I can talk about what happens once they are in it.

[00:07:38] Richard Lindner: Sure. That’s that’s why we’re a good one two punch. Um, yeah, the cool thing about Digital Marketer is our, our flagship kind of methodology or our, our primary methodology is the customer value journey. The CVJ teaches the, the. You know how customers go from, uh, unaware to aware, to, uh, engaged, uh, to subscribe.

So we have several funnels that we use, um, for acquisition, um, but we really lead with a content first strategy. So, um, we’re, we’re really beefing up on organic, um, content on social and, and on the blog. But our primary, uh, method of, of customer acquisition and awareness is by, uh, driving. Uh, paid social ads to content and then retargeting, uh, to, to a, to a relevant lead magnet.

So for us, it’s, it’s, it’s always been templates and tools, um, are the things that we like to provide. We think that’s the highest level value. So, um, someone may start with the one-page marketing plan, which is our CVJ. Right. That’s kind of that again, uh, for us, it’s, it’s critical that someone understands our methodology before we introduce them to our world.

So starting there is both, uh, an amazing tool that we can give away for free and add value, even if someone chooses not to spend a dollar with us. Um, but it introduces them to that methodology. And it’s usually a pretty good entry point. To get them to want to spend money with us. So for us, uh, the one page marketing plan or one page marketing blueprint, which is that customer value journey is the ideal starting place.

We have several other ones, but that one’s really where the best customers, uh, come through because, uh, if you understand that core methodology, then Ascension happens pretty quickly. And, and I think it is a, a nice little value loop, uh, value for us value for them. So, um, if we’re starting there, uh, that, that is kind of the, the best place.

Then once they go from there, we, we typically get, try to, uh, try to get them into digital marketing mastery. Which that is our flagship certification that covers, uh, the eight critical core disciplines of digital marketing. We, uh, we like to think of, of, um, the ideal marketer is T-shaped right? They have a broad understanding of all aspects of marketing, but a deep understanding or specialization of one.

So usually it’s the one page marketing blueprint over, uh, to an offer to get our digital marketing mastery certification, uh, and then, uh, attempting to figure out what area of specialization. So it’s a, it’s a, à la carte purchase that hopefully then leads into a, a membership.

[00:10:13] Micah Mitchell: Yeah, that makes sense. And, and I know from being a client on the other side, that was pretty much my journey. Like getting into yours, your lingo and your concepts. And once you know the concepts, it’s like, you almost have to go buy at least one of the courses be

[00:10:13] Richard Lindner: right.

[00:10:27] Micah Mitchell: And I love that you’re selling marketing because it’s, I feel like it’s easy to sell because the person buying it should get a return rather quickly.

[00:10:35] Richard Lindner: Right. Mm-hmm

[00:10:35] Micah Mitchell: um, so, so yeah, I know from being on the other side of it, uh, it’s very magnetic. It drew me in pretty easily. Um, Taylor, are you ready to show us the site?

[00:10:35] Taylor Nelson: Yes, I am. I’m going to go in and share my screen.

Can y’all see this?

[00:10:54] Micah Mitchell: Yep. We see ya.

[00:10:55] Taylor Nelson: Okay, cool. Um, so yeah, so here’s that page, uh, Richard was talking about for the one page marketing blueprint, um, just a standard landing page with a, a small form, and then it goes into a thank you video kind of talks about what they downloaded and then, uh, the offer for digital marketing mastery.

Um, from here. Everything is pretty much the same for us. Uh, we’re using keep max classic. Um, so it goes to an order form. And then, um, from there you get access through HTTP post to our website, our member site from Memberium. Um, so what that looks like is we’re interesting because we have it completely gated, so there’s no way to get to the member site unless you are a paying number.

Um, so we, there’s no free way to sign up. The only way you get access is if you make purchase. Um, so here’s what it would look like for, um, a normal user when they log in. So you just log in and here’s kind of our dashboard, um, with all of our products, in this case, I already have some purchase in here, so you can see, I can get started on these.

Um, some of these, if I don’t have the access will be locked and see details. Um, and part of this is though, um, always Memberium. And so we, we show these templates, whether it’s to enroll in a training, um, or in this case of one that’s locked, um, we go ahead and buy or upgrade, but all of these are set up as, as free courses, but they’re only delivered, the buttons based on their Memberium access level.

So it’s a way to kind of keep everything open on the front end, but just choose whether they can view it or not. So, um, that’s kind of our approach to it. Um, do you have any questions about that?

[00:12:27] Micah Mitchell: So, Uh, I guess one question that comes to mind is are those one-click upsell buttons, or do they fill out another form?

[00:12:35] Taylor Nelson: These ones are currently, um, uh, go to order forms.

[00:12:39] Micah Mitchell: Okay.

[00:12:39] Taylor Nelson: But we do have upsell. So for example, on the back end of the customer value journey, where to, we have an upgrade to the certification bundle and that’s, uh, all one click up cells. So, um, we have, we’re using both, but. This is something to be here with one purchase.

We wanna make sure that we don’t discharge our car necessarily right away. Um, and plus we have the benefit of giving them upsells on the back end of another order form, um, for a different offer if we need to as well.

[00:13:03] Micah Mitchell: Yeah, that makes sense. So, you know, it’s obvious you guys have a bunch of different products in there and you can, you know, give them access to only those they have and upsell ’em on the others.

How does community factor into this course environment? Where does that come into play?

[00:13:20] Taylor Nelson: For, for Digital Marketer, it, uh, it exists in Facebook and then some of our higher levels, um, like certified partners and our elite coaching program they’re inside of, uh, either, like I said, Facebook groups or circle communities.

So we kind of have those separate, um, so if I was a member here, I would see a button that would say community and that would link out to the respective group. Um, but since I’m not, I’m just a car buyer. I don’t see that option here.

[00:13:45] Micah Mitchell: Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah.

[00:13:47] Richard Lindner: For us with community, um, the secret sauce has been to figure out where your people already are.

I think I love that. You said, uh, Micah, you know, it’s like the slack group, you know, why slack and not Facebook? Why Facebook for Digital Marketer? Well, Digital Marketers are in Facebook, right? Our people at Digital Marketer. Uh, are, are in Facebook. That’s where they’re running their ads. Um, that’s where they’re running their groups.

That’s where they’re at. So if we wanna reduce friction or increase engagement in our communities, the starting point or the kickoff point there is to figure out where they are and, and build community where they’re already used to going. in, um, in Scalable, you know, when we’re looking at, at, at founders and executives, where are they already communicating on a, on a daily basis?

It’s less Facebook and it’s more slack. So that’s a slack group. And for here it’s a Facebook community.

[00:14:42] Micah Mitchell: Yeah. I almost like started crying tears of happiness. When you guys started that slack group, that was one of the best, best things. Um, cuz just like you said, and you guys surveyed people, I believe to find out.

[00:14:49] Richard Lindner: We did

[00:14:51] Micah Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, it was such a perfect fit. Um, okay. So you’ve got some à la carte courses when they buy a membership, for example, does it include all of the à la carte or when? Okay, so it includes everything.

[00:15:05] Richard Lindner: Uh, yeah, so we, we had different levels, but most, uh, like our, our main one digital market lab that would unlock everything.

So you would get, um, well currently it would include certifications, but we have something coming for that where it, uh, may include those in the future. Um, but everything, but certifications would be included. So everything would be unlocked. It would look like this, no locks anywhere, either get started or zoom or start over, uh, depending on the level of conclusion from these courses.

[00:15:29] Micah Mitchell: Gotcha. And, and I understand you guys are also using Learndash, which I love that product. I love Justin. I know he, he sold the company a bit ago, but, um, with your courses, uh, how much, you know, quizzing badges points, how much gamification did you feel like you wanted or needed with those certification courses?

[00:15:50] Richard Lindner: The certifications have, um, quizzes and a, and a final exam and a badge.

Uh, really what we, when we talk to. And surveyed our audience. Um, we wanna make sure that if we’re gonna certify someone that, that they’re, they’re able to, to retain, right. That it’s not just flying through, it’s not completion based. Um, so modules unlock after successfully completing a quiz on each certificate, uh, on each certification.

And at the end, um, before you get your badge and your digital certificate, you have to pass a final exam. Um, that’s because we are, you know, we. We are certifying like we’re, we’re kind of attaching our brand to your, your knowledge and your ability to, you know, to effectively market an e-commerce store or, um, to, to acquire customers or to effectively, uh, use email for marketing.

So, uh, we think that one, it’s a, it’s a benefit. It’s what our, what our customer wants. They’re looking for. Confidence credibility and authority, right? Like whether it’s for, um, whether it’s for their career and, and, you know, getting a job or a promotion, or whether it’s for customer acquisition, client acquisition, and in, in that agency space.

So for them, it’s very important, um, that, that they have that, that credibility. And for us, it’s very important that if we give that to them, that, that they know what they’re doing, but for our workshops and, and other trainings, uh, we don’t leverage any of those. As far as the gamification, we don’t do probably as much as we should there. I think we could, we could do a whole lot better in, um, gamifying, uh, all aspects of, of the membership. Um, so we really focus in and around, um, the testing and quizzing, uh, but just on certifications.

[00:17:30] Micah Mitchell: That makes sense though, especially like you’re saying, if you’re gonna attach your brand to somebody, um, we kind of followed your lead and did a certified partner program, and I was a little bit worried.

That might somebody might be a certified partner and mistreat a customer or something. And, and luckily we’ve never had that, you know, have you guys had any issues with anything like that where you had to say like, Hey, you’re not certified now, or has it been pretty?

[00:17:30] Richard Lindner: Yeah, so we have, well, so we have our certifications and then we have our certified partner program, um, which is a totally different login and look.

So, um, if you’re a certified partner, meaning you’re licensed to deploy our, IP. Uh, on behalf of your customers, uh, in the same way that Scalable has our, um, our SBA Scalable business advisor, Digital Marketer has certified partners. Uh, it’s a little confusing because we also certify individuals on, uh, on skill sets or methodologies.

Um, we do, we have had to, um, remove two partners from the program, which, you know, I would say over a. Like a five-year period. Um, that’s and the, you know the hundreds of partners that, that we’ve been lucky enough to have and, and to, to walk with and, and support and grow together. Uh, I feel pretty good about that.

We, you know, we’ve had a, we’ve had a couple of instances. We have a, um, a way for customers to, uh, report or, um, Shenanigans that they feel may have happened. And, and we have kind of a, a mediation or a resolution process that we have with customers and, and, and certified partners, cuz frankly they’re both customers.

Right. Um, luckily the wall, while there have been, um, you know, I would say maybe a half a dozen. Uh, of those, uh, disputes all have ended very, very well, uh, for both parties. Um, in into instances, we had to, um, ask people to leave the program and, and, you know, make it right with, with the, um, with the customer.

But I think, all in all, it’s been a, a really, a really pleasant experience.

[00:19:34] Micah Mitchell: Yeah. That makes sense. And, and like you said, two or whatever out of hundreds is great, is amazing. Cuz you, you don’t control all those people. And um, being in some of those same circumstances, sometimes it’s kind of like you’ve got the partner and the client and maybe there’s some miscommunication misunderstanding.

So having that kind of higher authority be able to come in and be like, Hey guys, how do we. How do we fix this is nice for everybody.

[00:19:58] Richard Lindner: Yeah. And you hit the nail in the head there. Usually it, it boils down to communication, including, but not limited to expectations or unset expectations, either the, you know, the customer expects.

The moon and, the partner or the agency doesn’t do a good job at setting those expectations, whether it be timelines, results, or scope. And now, you know, the both parties are just a little misaligned. Um, frankly, that’s easy to fix, right? You come in and, and you’re, you’re truly just moderating and you find out like, well, you expected this and you expected this and neither one of you talked about it.

So how do we get back and, and find something here? I love those. I don’t love it. Right. That’s the wrong word. Those are easy to fix. Right? Those are easy to fix because really it’s not a, it’s their fault. It’s their fault. It’s kind of misalignment. Our job’s just to realign. Um, so like you said, uh, those are, those are numbers I can deal with. Those are issues I can deal with. We’ve been very, very lucky. It sounds like you have too.

[00:20:58] Micah Mitchell: Yeah. And it’s, uh, I’m sure you guys try to set expectations with the partners. Like we do saying like, Hey, you gotta treat your clients, right? That’s part of this and all that.

[00:21:07] Richard Lindner: They sign on to our core values. So as part of the process, like they’re adopting our brand, which means they’re adopting our core values and our beliefs.

So we actually have a in the agreement as a standalone document where they agree that they are adopting our core values as their own.

[00:21:22] Micah Mitchell: Very cool. That’s something I gotta think about. That’s a great time, actually. um, Taylor, could you show us maybe the back end as an admin? Cause I, I want people to be able to kind of see maybe some of the plugins you guys are using.

Um, is this a, I would guess it’s maybe a custom theme, but is it based on a theme? You know, if somebody wanted to go ahead, I’m sorry.

[00:21:43] Taylor Nelson: I would just say, uh, we’re actually using Elementor hello, which is just the most lightweight theme you can probably ever get. But, uh, the best thing about it is you can customize everything with a theme builder.

So any page you want, your header, your footer, your CSS files, anything can be customized, um, on top of, without having to worry about other themes, when you have stuff built in. So on, on one of our sites, we’d use Buddyboss. Uh, the buddy boss theme, um, which works also great with Memberium and with Learndash, but, um, for our digital order member site, that’s all on Elementor hello as ours, all of our part facing, uh, like marketing and, uh, business websites.

[00:22:18] Micah Mitchell: Very cool. Um, Yeah, I like the lightweight, you know, part of Elementor if you’ll scroll down through these. So there’s one, I see there already, the auto-complete learned dash lessons and topics. Mm-hmm um, I don’t get into this stuff every day, but that’s one that I didn’t even know existed. You know, that’s probably a cool little pro tip

[00:22:36] Taylor Nelson: There’s uh, yeah, this one’s great. And also, I apologize. These are all not updated. Uh, we have some custom things added in. Uh, we’ve gotta do it all at once as opposed to doing it and breaking something and locking people out of their accounts. um, yeah, this is great.

This, this makes it, so you can hit the next button as opposed to mark complete and learn dash, um, which hangs people up if you have to go or order. Um, so that’s just something that’s helpful. Um, duplicate page, just for duplicating pages, um, Elementor, Elementor Pro um, i2SDK which is used in Memberium.

Uh, Learndash of course. And we have some of these learn dash. Uh, add-ons so it’s like the Coursegrid. The Elementor, um, widgets pro panel for reporting Zapier and then this, uh, import exporter, which is a paid plugin, but it actually works really well. Cause we migrated, uh, sites to this one and we didn’t have, we don’t have to remake every quiz question across, you know, 15 different quizzes in the 50 question seats.

So this made it so we could put in an Excel file and upload it that way without having to redo it. Um, Manage notification emails. This is mainly for me. So I don’t get emails when, uh, when some, whenever someone updates their password or, uh, cuz I get those all the time and it was super annoying.

[00:23:45] Richard Lindner: Yeah. Taylor must hate me because he does not have this installed on Scalable.co, which I get the emails of every time someone updates their password.

[00:23:56] Taylor Nelson: So I’ll change that out for you’ll just add this, this plugin we can fix it. um, yeah. So also obviously Memberium we did use this in the beginning, but we deactivated once we had everything, uh, we needed it from there. Um, one user avatar. This is just a way to easily add a profile picture for an author. Um, for one of our courses, redirection for manually redirecting things.

If we updated course or something like that, um, this is one we did, uh, rewrite rules, inspector. We’re using custom URLs on all, all of our, our courses, me pulling up. See. So generally, uh, when you go to a course in a learn dash site, it’s always gonna put courses in the URL. Yeah. And so we wanted to have it be whatever the course category was.

So certification or workshop and to replace app for all the categories. So we’re using, I was using this plugin just to, to figure out how to do it, but everything’s done on, on the back end with some custom, um, PHP functions. Um, Rocket one click. This is a great, uh, one-click upsell plugin. So this is what we use on the backup order form.

So, uh, we can do it with when they’re logged in, but this is great that you don’t, they don’t have to be logged in for, so after purchase, we’ll have an upsell page be on the member site and use this plugin and it’s already got their, um, their infusion soft contact ID from the URL and all that stuff.

[00:25:11] Richard Lindner: Um, that is truly a super plugin, like, yeah. Uh, Taylor again. Renaissance men, um, you know, good at everything. I mean, when he dug around and found that plugin as an option, like that, was a really big game changer, uh, for us in our ability to, uh, to keep the site light, to not have to just layer on additional, you know, Keap with other, with some other.

You know, one-click upsell builder, um, in additional CRM, right? I love, you know, love Russell Love click funnels, love SamCart, love, love all the solutions. Spiffy, great love Michael, and the guy like they’re all great, but in trying to keep it, you know, as, as light as possible, uh, and keep that tech stack as, as, you know, as.

Slim is possible. That was, that was a big deal for us. Um, I had never heard of it and, and I’m, I’m pretty dialed in, in the, in the upsell and course builder and, you know, uh, landing page builder, um, kind of communities. So that was a great find.

[00:26:11] Taylor Nelson: Yeah, it’s, it’s super easy to use. It’s all built-in on the backend of WordPress and it’s connected with your key, the API.

So you can just click, go through the dropdown, select your product, uh, select the price point, select any goals or action sets you wanna get completed. Um, whenever they click the button. So it’s, it’s all in one, which is awesome. Um, and even works with, with subscriptions, which, uh, Infusionsoft will usually bulk, uh, bill subscription.

Even for the first one. So this one pushes it through the first order as a one-time order and then sets up, um, the billing to recur monthly, uh, the following one, which is, which is awesome. So you don’t have to worry about, uh, people getting access when their payment is actually declined, you know, in the middle of the night when they run those billings.

[00:26:50] Micah Mitchell: That is cool. Yeah.

[00:26:52] Taylor Nelson: Um, yeah, then, uh, uncanny, they do, uh, some additional plugins as well for mainly for Learndash. Um, Tin Canny reporting is a great one. We have, you know, 50,000 subscribers, uh, WordPress subscribers that is on the site. So being able to, to see all that data, sometimes it hangs up on the LearnDash pro panel and this one is great for showing course completions, enrollments, uh, progress, and everything like that, uh, entire level for everybody on the site.

Um, and then, yeah, just some normal, uh, sending emails and then just some basic forms as well.

[00:27:25] Micah Mitchell: And I don’t know if you guys, I appreciate you being willing to show this because this is so valuable. Just like you said, you had to dig around and find that plugin, just showing people like, Hey, this, this is how we put this together is so valuable.

So thank you for showing that. Thank you for sharing. Mm-hmm and that’s good.

[00:27:40] Richard Lindner: Thanks for having us on.

[00:27:42] Micah Mitchell: Yeah.

[00:27:43] Taylor Nelson:Yeah. So we have a. As you saw in the front end, we have, we have a bunch of different products. So we have, uh, à la carte access, um, memberships for literally every single one of ’em. So there’s a good two or 300 of ’em on here.

[00:27:57] Micah Mitchell: Wow.

[00:27:58] Taylor Nelson: Um, followed by our where’s the very bottom at, by our main subscriptions. So I have these down the bottom. You can see, we have the basic or the lab partners, um, our lead coaching program or our lab plus, which includes the certifications. So these are just the basic things that kind of unlock everything

And then we have individual ones as well, so somebody can buy one product so they can buy all of them. And they’re all managed through these membership levels.

[00:28:21] Micah Mitchell: Gotcha. And for, for anybody watching this, there’s a column to the right. That has mostly zeros and then there’s some nines and tens at the bottom.

And that’s how, when somebody logs in, even though there might be hundreds of products, it prioritizes though. So Memberium basically says, Hey, if you’re one of these guys, let’s send you there instead. Right?

[00:28:40] Taylor Nelson:Yeah.

[00:28:41] Micah Mitchell: Very cool.

[00:28:41] Taylor Nelson:Yeah. Sounds easy. And it’s also nice to you because it brings it to the bottom. So it’s always easy to find those and it’s not alphabetical it’s based on that, that level, which is super helpful.

[00:28:50] Micah Mitchell: Good, good, good. Yeah. Dave’s a smart guy. Dave, who, who programs Memberium He’s a very smart guy.

[00:28:56] Richard Lindner: MOS mosques?

[00:28:57] Micah Mitchell: uh, Bullock, but Dave.

[00:28:59] Richard Lindner: Bullock that’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Um, Dave did a ton of stuff early and, and really helped us super early on when we were like, kind of beta with you guys. Like our, uh, our first one-click upsell script that worked with Infusionsoft.

Um, like we, we wrote in partnership with you guys, um, it was this hefty thing on, on the back end. Um, that was great. And, and Dave, Dave worked to write all that. It was really cool.

[00:29:28] Micah Mitchell: Yeah. I, I think when, when we started mid, he was working with you guys before that as well, doing, doing something.

[00:29:36] Richard Lindner: Yeah.

[00:29:37] Micah Mitchell: Yeah. Um, so, so this is amazing on the Digital Marketer side.

Is there anything else that you think people should see on this site before we bounce over and talk about the Scalable side?

[00:29:47] Taylor Nelson: Um, one thing that I think is kind of cool is just the, so the shortcodes are a big thing that Memberium has. There’s we use ’em all the time. Uh, the biggest one is where is here.

[memb_has_membership] this shortcode. We use this like I said, so this, uh, this is where we show either the purchase button or the like the enroll or resume buttons. And just based on this, so here we’re using the same, um, the tags that associate with the membership, you can see over here, we have all of our membership levels.

We check the ones that we want. We gonna put ’em over here too. So these, these are just custom forms. Uh, custom fields are using the ACF plugin, that map to an Elementor like a little widget. And so it loads a short code on there and we just use these, the shortcodes have by far been the most helpful thing.

And, uh, even like some of the PHP hooks on the back end and the developer resources. Have been super great. So if you, if you think you can’t do it, you probably can do it. You just gotta figure out what shortcode to use.

[00:30:43] Micah Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the truth. There are a ton of shortcodes. Um, and then, like you said, the PHP functions on the back, this one in particular, I think is really interesting.

The [memb_has_membership] because it’s not just saying if they have a tag or if they’ve purchased a product. Membership is a combination of things that’s saying they are current. They don’t have failed payments. They don’t have a lockout tag. So, so it’s a little bit more complex. Um, but yeah, uh, Dave has put, you know, based on customer request about anything you can think of. If you combine enough shortcodes, you, you pretty much do anything.

[00:31:14] Taylor Nelson: Yeah, that’s great. And I like what you said about how it, uh, it’s based on the membership level, not necessarily the tag, because this does work great with, um, umbrella accounts too. So a child account will get access, even if they don’t have the actual tag it’s based on the parent account level, which is awesome.

[00:31:29] Micah Mitchell: Oh, so, so you bring up a very good point for people who don’t know about umbrella accounts. Do you mind explaining how you guys are using that? How you’re deploying it?

[00:31:38] Taylor Nelson: Yeah, we can pull up our tab real quick so you can see it. So this started with, um, our, our elite program, which had, uh, which gives he just five seats. So we had this elite parent tag that goes parents. And, um, this pretty much just gives him five, uh, accounts each. Uh, we didn’t change anything here. Um, we just choose an action set for the child, which all it does is apply the tag and, uh, gives them the password using the Memberium HTTP post, if they don’t have an account already. Um, and then we have these white list ones. I don’t know if I really need this. Um, but I put these in there cause I didn’t want somebody to have an à la carte purchase and have that passed down to a child account. It’s only for the membership level that, um, they’re actually having, you know, and I to cancel tags in here too, just in case. Cause I didn’t know. And I figured better safe than sorry.

[00:32:28] Micah Mitchell: Yeah, that makes sense. And, and for people who aren’t familiar with the concept in the first place, what this means is someone. Let’s say the business owner buys a membership to the site, then they can give up to five in this case, if their team members access also, and where this is really powerful is if somebody is taking courses where the progression is being tracked or the quizzes, then you don’t have your employees coming in and messing up your progression and where you are, they have their own, you know, tracking and, and all that kind of stuff. And, um, I wonder when do you guys remember when you added this. Like how long have you been doing it?

[00:33:03] Taylor Nelson: Uh, we’ve probably added this functionality in back in October or November on the site, maybe December.

[00:33:11] Micah Mitchell: Gotcha. How did, how was it received? Uh, I mean, it’s, it’s great people, people enjoy it. Um, it’s, it makes it a lot easier to, um, I can show you on I’ll show you when we were to the Scalable site, we have the same implementation there.

Uh, but I have an account logged in that’s a parent account. So you can kind of see how we’re using it. But it’s, uh, it works great. It’s, it’s nice to be able to, to, for people to manage that themselves and not have to worry about asking us to give access to anybody. Um, mm-hmm as well as view the progress as well with somebody the hooks that, Memberium has, in has in there that work with.

[00:33:45] Micah Mitchell: Thanks again for watching part 1 of 3 of this series. In part 2, coming out in a few days, we’ll dive into Scalable.co, which is their other membership site for another business where higher level members who are paying more, use that and have some really cool features in it that you won’t wanna miss.

So watch your inbox for parts 2 and 3 coming soon. In case you’re not receiving emails from us or have any other questions, you can always email support@memberium.com and we’ll get you taken care of. Thanks again.

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