SSWUG Membership Website Case Study

ARTICLE SNIPPET - SSWUG.org, a subscription website that provides an astonishing amount of technical information for database administrators, uses three levels of membership to secure loyal, paying customers.

At one time, pay-for-access technical sites were virtually non-existent. No one believed computer technicians would pay for information. Stephen Wynkoop broke new ground. Today, his website, SSWUG.org includes 82,496 articles, 66,774 discussion forum posts, 580 reusable scripts of programming code and offers monthly how-to webcasts. Tiered memberships are critical to its marketing strategy, but pizza parties are a factor, too.

By offering three levels of participation—visitor, guest member and paid member, SSWUG.org is able to follow up and secure more memberships. Previously, SSWUG offered all visitors three days of completely free access, with no credit card capture—that was a big mistake, and now they use a seven day credit card required trial as a default.

By sending an invoice via U.S. mail to anyone who does a free trial, but fails to join as a paid member (as well as to any member who cancels or whose credit card fails) SSWUG generates an additional 10 percent conversion for the price of a stamp. In addition to memberships, the site sells job listings and generates revenue from advertising: banner ads, Google AdSense, sponsorships in the newsletter and webcast sponsorships.

Important lessons: split test everything AND use tools to improve newsletter deliverability and get past spam filters.

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