As a busy practitioner, invoicing and handling client payments can take up a lot of unnecessary time from your workday. We want to show you a more efficient way to organize your payments and an opportunity to earn steady income…without the headaches of manually chasing payments.
For this month's Feature Highlight blog, we're going to explore how to use subscriptions and memberships to streamline your payments and set yourself up to earn recurring revenue. Setting up a subscription or membership option in Practice Better can help give you back valuable time to work on what's most important. This setup will allow you to add income on top of 1:1 visits and give you the flexibility to spend time enhancing your offerings to clients.
The income your practice can expect to make on an ongoing basis is considered recurring revenue. When you're future-proofing your business, stable and predictable revenue is desirable, and a memberships/subscription payment model can give you that reassurance. Plus, knowing the total recurring revenue that your business takes in per month (or year) can help you confidently assess your business plan, including any risks.
Additional benefits include:
For our purposes, a subscription means clients receive a service for a longer defined period of time, whereas a membership involves actively participating in a community in addition to receiving content. With subscriptions, clients can enroll in a program for a specific time, like a few weeks or months, and gain access to content you’ve created, such as programs. You can set up a program with a set number of modules that clients can access for a defined time. The subscription can be set up so that clients only have access to the content for a period of time, and after they have completed all the modules, you can unregister or archive them.
For memberships, clients will not only get access to your resources but can be involved in group sessions, a group chat, and even receive sneak peeks into your upcoming offerings. Group sessions act as a space to discuss materials and gain valuable insights about what clients liked and disliked. Collecting this information can help you shape future content based on what clients loved (more on this below!) You can also host live sessions where you bring in speakers or other professionals to talk to your community about topics that matter to them. The membership can act as a springboard to gaining long-term clients who, in turn, can become advocates for your services.
In a subscription model, clients can access weekly or monthly meal plans, training regimens, or other resources you may offer. They will not need to worry about ensuring they have read all the material before a session, as you can choose to only offer content. Clients can go through the content at their own pace and continue to get access to new material as long as they are subscribed.
Since clients will only receive access to the content, subscriptions are less labor-intensive once the content is created. You can create this content far in advance and schedule it to release at monthly intervals so that you can focus on building other aspects of your practice.
This model may be best for newer clients who aren't ready to commit to a program long-term and only want the additional content. For example, if you offer a Monthly Maintenance Program, a subscription can be set up more meal plans and recipes to help clients stay on track without needing to schedule a check-in session each week.
Recurring revenue means your clients engage with you and your offerings repeatedly over time. Why not take advantage of the opportunity to build a referral community among this group of engaged people? Depending on your offerings, you can look to this group for feedback and encourage support and communication through a form, group chat, or Telehealth group session. Read on to learn more about the ways you can optimize memberships in Practice Better!
There's a huge opportunity to learn from your membership clients. For example, are you thinking of launching new product offerings, such as a 10-Day Winter Detox program? Grant early access to these specific members before you launch to a larger audience. You'll be able to gather valuable feedback from some of your most engaged members and make adjustments before you release the program to your entire list.
Offering memberships can keep your clients engaged and excited with evergreen access to new content, recipes, and guides added each month! You can even adjust your programs so that only the modules within the membership option allow clients to download your content, providing exclusive access to bonus resources to members.
You can expand your offerings even further by including individual coaching sessions within a package with a bonus discount on high-quality supplements that you offer through your online dispensary.
Lastly, create a sense of community by adding a group chat so clients can speak with other program members to share their progress and help motivate one another. A group chat creates a social media-like environment where people can connect. If you have the time and ability to moderate the group chat, this element can add substantial value to your membership.
There are many ways you can set up billing and payment in Practice Better. For example, with subscriptions, you can set up a payment plan depending on how long you want clients to be enrolled in the program. You can make it so that clients can have the option to pay a deposit when booking and receive a charge automatically based on the schedule you have set.
If clients choose the payment plan option, a payment plan will be created for them with the recurring revenue you can expect for the length of their membership. Installments can be set to charge daily, weekly, or monthly. The options are customizable based on your desires for these programs.
For memberships, you can set them up with ongoing payments. This will allow you to collect payments at regular intervals while the clients are in the program. Clients will charged automatically when they purchase their membership and will continue to receive a charge until you cancel the payment plan.
Whether you wish to add subscriptions, memberships, or both to your offerings, you can adjust your payment settings in Practice Better to make it happen and unlock additional revenue. Subscriptions act more like a key to unlocking products for a limited time, whereas memberships are an ongoing, highly scalable, commitment to working towards a common goal. These clients would be paying a monthly fee to not just get access to the content you are providing but the ability to get that valuable feedback and ongoing communication with you. Both models provide clients with more options to work with you and allow you to collect recurring revenue- all while leveraging content you may already be creating. While it can feel intimidating to launch these types of services, we encourage you to start small in a way that works for you, like a Recipe Club or stretching and meditation exercises. Once you launch for a small group of people, you can expand–this could be the start of a new era of growth for your business.
Practice Better is the complete practice management platform for nutritionists, dietitians, and wellness professionals. Streamline your practice and begin your free trial today.
