How to build a Membership Database

Membership types and tiers are a cornerstone of your membership program. Choosing which tier to enroll in is an important decision for your members to evaluate their involvement with your organization and the various benefits and prices you offer.

We’ve worked hard to keep membership types flexible and powerful to be molded to your membership program.

Duration

As you build your membership program within Join It, consider how long your memberships will last. While simple in concept, membership duration drives many follow-up decisions like pricing, billing model, member benefits, and more.

With Join It’s default settings, you can choose between various membership cycle options -- a year, month, or a week. Also, keep in mind the opportunity to offer a Lifetime membership with no future expiration date.

In our advanced settings, you also have the option to set expiration as a fixed date in the future, such as December 31st of any given year.

Automatic Re-Bill or Expiration Date

Depending on your organization, you may find the option for automatic rebilling useful. We’ve built in the functionality for you to set a membership to expire and prompt a renewal, or you can set a membership type to simply rebill at the end of the period.

We call this “opt-in” vs. “opt-out.” If you create a membership type that expires at a future date, members are given the option to opt-in to another membership with your organization. On the other hand, if you choose automatic re-billing, a member can opt-out of future membership at any time.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both, so consider which option fits your organization best.

Member Messaging and Content

As a member joins your organization, you can customize the messaging they receive over their membership.

Upon initial joining, two messages are prominently displayed or emailed to your members. Use these messages to communicate important information to your members:

• Confirmation Email:  A custom message delivered to confirm a membership purchase.
• Membership Message: The first message a member sees after completing checkout, as an official member of your organization.

Outside of these initial messages, Join It can automate sending renewal and expiration notifications and failed payment notifications if a payment was not processed correctly.

Renewal Settings

Just like most businesses, membership organizations need to update their 'product' offerings from time to time. Often, this means discontinuing membership types and redirecting renewing members to a new membership type.

Join It offers a convenient solution to configure how a membership type renews:

• Renewable: Every membership is renewable by default, but we include the option to disallow members from renewing their membership on certain membership types. Suppose you keep a membership type as renewable. In that case, your members will receive a notification when their membership expires, and they will be directed to a page that renews them for the same membership type.
• Non-Renewable:  Your member will receive a notification when their membership expires, but they will not be directed to a page that renews them for the same membership type. Instead, they will either be directed to the main profile to select a new membership type or be redirected to renew as a new membership type.

Form Fields

Between a set of default form fields and our custom field option, you can configure a member form to meet your organization’s exact needs.

We’ve created a set of simple toggles and buttons so you can add, create, and remove form fields as necessary. You can incorporate an array of options as you customize your form:

• Textbox: A simple one-line input field for a member to write any text.
• Paragraph Textbox: A larger multi-line input field for a member to write a paragraph of text.
• Radio: Give multiple options that are displayed for the user to select a single choice.
• Dropdown: Give multiple options that collapse for the user to select a single choice.
• Checkbox: Give multiple options that display for the user to select as many choices as they want.
• Waiver: Include a body of text that the user has to 'Accept' before purchasing.

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