Yesterday we announced the release of your new product for Membership Organizations. Today, we have hundreds of running clubs that use our legacy Clubs product. This release means it’s time to upgrade to Memberships! This blog will get you excited about the new features and capabilities of your upgraded membership, and make sure you’re upgrading at the right time. This blog includes more details about the benefits of upgrading, but you can also join our webinar on April 3 to see Memberships in action before you hit the “Upgrade” button.
The Benefits of Upgrading to Memberships
First, the easy question: why upgrade to Memberships? Memberships has many customer favorites from Clubs, including cross-promoting races and clubs, integrated donations, flexible membership levels, and more.
Beyond that, in addition to an updated UI, Memberships has a number of advantages over RunSignup Clubs. Memberships includes both newer, more modern versions of old Clubs features as well as entirely new features. You can see the full feature list here, but we’ll highlight a few key upgrades below.
Upgraded features in Memberships include:
1. Websites V2
Coming soon to RunSignup race websites; currently available for TicketSignup events.
- Website builder: Easy drag & drop website builder
- Unlimited pages: Create a full club website with custom menu and submenu options.
- Custom branding: Fully customize your colors, logos, images, headers, footers, and more
- Dynamic components: Data-driven website sections with membership-specific components like signup tiles, members lists, and member counts
2. Email V2
Now available for both RunSignup races and TicketSignup events.
- Email builder: Just like the Email V2 now available in races, Email V2 for clubs has a simple-to-use email builder to create custom content.
- Unlimited contacts and sends (free): Update unlimited custom contact lists and send unlimited emails, for free.
- System lists: Easily access members lists for members-only emails.
- Custom branding: Automatically pull in your logo, colors, and images from your membership site or customize it for the specific email.
- Newsletter archives: With “view in browser” option for your emails, it’s easy to create a newsletter archive for members to refer back to.
- Templates: Access professional templates to get started or create your own templates from scratch.
3. Store V2
Coming later this year to RunSignup race websites; currently available for TicketSignup events.
- Flexible options: Offer up to three variants of Store items (for example, color, size, and cut)
- During purchase and/or standalone: Offer store items during membership purchase or in a standalone store (or both) for year-round merch sales.
- Create bundles: Setup premium membership options by bundling memberships with store items.
NEW (currently available) features in Memberships include:
- Autorenewal: No more lost revenue simply because members can’t remember to re-enroll. Autorenewal saves member credit card info (securely), auto renews memberships, and automatically takes care of notifying the member if they need to update their credit card.
- Members Self Serve: It’s easy for members to find their membership via a link to their email. Today, this allows members to see and manually renew their membership. Options for editing or upgrading membership information will come later.
- No password required: It’s easy for members to join without creating an account. Future actions with their membership can be taken via “logging in” through an email link.
If you want to dig in deeper, check out the full list of current and future features for Memberships here.
When to Upgrade to Memberships
You can upgrade your Club to Memberships anytime via the “Upgrade” button on your existing Club Dashboard.
However, we recommend you wait to upgrade until you have some time to make additional updates. Some updates that are needed can be completed gradually, but you will need to bring over some content and settings manually. You don’t have to start from scratch, though. Once you upgrade, your new Memberships Dashboard will have a menu item called “Legacy Content” Here, you’ll find all the content, reports, and settings you need to be able to get your new Membership Organization up to date.
These are the key items you will need to re-configure:
- Custom website content
- All email marketing settings, templates, lists, etc.
- Coupons
- Donation settings
- Store settings, items, and orders
- Non-director club access (all directors with full access will carry over, but partial access will need to be reset).
Some of those items you may need to get setup immediately when you upgrade, while others like email lists & templates you can bring over gradually as you start using Memberships. Additionally, you can start by bringing over only crucial website content initially, and take your time building out a full website with the new tools. New Membership Organizations should be aware that importing (from sources other than a RunSignup Club) is not currently available. Importing will be available in late April or early May.