BlueLena Guide: Memberful is a paywall/registration system that enables subscribers to create accounts and make financial contributions.
Why would I use Memberful?
- Publications use Memberful primarily to manage memberships. While this platform works best with open access sites or because of its ease of setup, it can also be used to manage exclusive content to which members get access. This is also because Memberful does not function as a registration system so in order to create a user account, the user would need to make a payment.
- Memberful allows you the option to create a separate all-in-on membership website that compiles certain posts and pages for members-only.
Why would a publication choose Memberful over other paywall/registration systems?
- Memberful’s platform is straightforward and relatively easy to use.
- Memberful uses Zapier to connect to Active Campaign rather than a native integration, so the BlueLena team is able to track logs for any issues and has better insight into each automated trigger.
- Memberful is best for publications that have open site access or pay-wall only access, because it does not function as a registration platform.
- Memberful includes a built-in cancellation survey that is filled out at the moment of cancellation. For other registration platforms, the BlueLena team needs to implement a separate cancellation survey that comes a few days later.
- Memberful allows one-click checkout with Apple pay, whereas other providers (Hype, Stripe Direct, Wallkit), don’t yet have this option.
- Memberful allows the option to purchase gift subscriptions, as compared to Wallkit and Stripe Direct which don’t have this functionality.
Memberful Data Glossary (Recurring):
***It’s critical to follow a standardized naming convention with Memberful products/plans because the integration that connects Memberful to ActiveCampaign (Zapier) depends directly on the plan name for filtering purposes. Please make sure not to re-name any plans and to follow a standard naming convention for any new plans.
If you have any questions about naming conventions for your plans, please reach out to your SSC or support@bluelena.io to clarify.
Also note that some publications choose to treat recurring donations differently than subscriptions, and if this applies to you, all payment-based fields except Total Paid below will be differentiated by adding the naming convention “Subs_” for subscriptions and “Recurring_” for donations. This does not apply to contact based fields such as Member ID, Member Created at, and Address data.
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| MEM member_ID | Account ID |
| MEM created_at | Account registration date |
| MEM active | Membership status (True/False) |
| MEM plan_name | Membership tier/product |
| MEM trial_end_at | Trial end date |
| MEM total_paid | Total $ paid |
| MEM last_payment_date | Latest membership payment date |
| MEM current_billing_start_date | Billing period start date |
| MEM current_subscription_start_date | Original subscription start date |
| MEM current_billing_end_date | Billing period end date |
| MEM current_subscription_end_date | Subscription end date (only applies if auto renew is off, billing end date is used in cases where auto renew is on as this is the end of billing period but NOT end of subscription |
| MEM last_payment_amount | Latest payment amount |
| MEM autorenew | Auto renew status (True/False) |
| MEM billing_cycle | Billing cycle (monthly, annual) |
| MEM recurring | IF auto renew is TRUE, then this will equal latest payment amount |
| MEM next_payment_date | IF auto renew is TRUE, then this will equal billing period end |
| MEM city | Address data: City |
| MEM state | Address data: State |
| MEM country | Address data: Country |
| MEM postal_code | Address data: Postal Code |
| MEM street | Address data: Street |
Memberful Data Glossary (One-Times)
Memberful treats every purchase as an order, meaning that a separate set of fields are required to handle one-time donation data to ensure subscriptions data does not get overwritten.
***Note that the fields with the one_time convention are specific to One-Time donations, whereas all other fields are updated for both Recurring or One-Time donations as the data remains the same regardless of the type of order
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| MEM one_time_donation_plan_name | Donation tier/product |
| MEM one_time_last_payment_date | Latest donation payment date |
| MEM one_time_last_payment_amount | Latest donation amount ($) |
| MEM one_time_utm_campaign | UTM Campaign |
| MEM one_time_utm_content | UTM Content |
| MEM one_time_utm_medium | UTM Medium |
| MEM one_time_utm_source | UTM Source |
| MEM one_time_utm_term | UTM Term |
| MEM created_at | Account registration date |
| MEM member_id | Account ID |
| MEM total_paid | Total $ paid |
How do I create a member profile?
Navigate to the website where the Memberful system is installed, and then go to either a Support Us or Memberships/Donations link, which lives in the upper right corner of the navigation bar. Click on that button and this will bring up a Join page for memberships and donations. Upon clicking any of the available products, a modal will appear (like the one below):
How do I log in via Memberful?
Navigate to the website where the Memberful system is installed, and then go to the Memberships/Donations link, which lives in the upper right corner of the navigation bar. There you will either see a sign-in button in the top right, or scroll down to the bottom of the page where there will be an option to log in or manage your account.
Upon clicking this button and entering your email, you will receive one of two communications:
- A sign-in link via email if this is your first time logging in or haven’t set up a password.
- Or it will ask you to enter your password directly if you’ve set one up.
How does a subscriber reset their password?
Upon clicking the Login/Manage Account button on the website’s Membership/Donations page, a prompt will appear asking you to enter your email. Once you’ve entered your email, it will bring up an option for you to either reset your password entirely, or to use a temporary email signup link.
If a subscriber has trouble with figuring out the process to reset their password on-site, then you also have the option to either send a direct sign-in link or a password reset email. To do so, navigate to the Members section and then search the subscriber that’s having issues. Up top on their profile you’ll see both options as shown below:
How do I merge subscriber accounts?
- If a contact has a non-paid account and a paid account but wants to switch around the emails, follow the process below:
- If you have a non-paid account under one email address (jake123@gmail.com) and a paid account under another (jake123@outlook.com), and want to flip these, make a simple edit. On the current non-paid account, edit their email and add “+test” before the domain name. This is a necessary step because you cannot have two accounts with the same email existing at the same time.
- Example: jake123@gmail.com would now be jake123+test@gmail.com
- Go to the current paying account, copy the current email, then enter the non-paying email here: jake123@gmail.com
- Finally, navigate back to the profile that you changed to jake123+test@gmail.com, and update that to jake123@outlook.com.
- Once completed, confirm with the contact if they wish to get rid of the unpaid account, then delete it if necessary. Account deletion must occur in both your monetization platform and also ActiveCampaign.
- If you have a non-paid account under one email address (jake123@gmail.com) and a paid account under another (jake123@outlook.com), and want to flip these, make a simple edit. On the current non-paid account, edit their email and add “+test” before the domain name. This is a necessary step because you cannot have two accounts with the same email existing at the same time.
How does a subscriber switch payment tiers?
In order to allow subscribers to switch from one plan to another mid-billing cycle, you need to add all of your plans to the same plan group. You can find documentation on adding plans to the same plan group here.
Clicking “Change Plan” will bring up a modal as shown below:
How do I cancel a subscriber account?
- You can cancel a subscriber’s account by navigating to their profile within Memberful and scrolling down to the Subscriptions section at the bottom. Click on the name of the subscription product, and this will bring up a new page.
- You can delete this entirely (cancel immediately) by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and selecting “Delete Subscription”
Or you can also turn off auto-renew (cancel at billing period end) by clicking “Cancel subscription auto-renew” up in the top right of the modal.
How do I offer a refund?
While subscriptions themselves are managed through the Memberful platform, refunds will need to be processed directly through Stripe. For documentation on how to issue a refund within Stripe, click here.
How do I manually add a subscription to a contact?
Navigate to the Members section and then search for the contact you’d like to add the subscription for. Scroll down to the bottom of the member profile until you see the Subscriptions section and then select “Add a new subscription”.
This will bring up a modal that allows you to select the plan, and also allows you to choose if you want to attach a card/payment method here. For a free access subscription you wouldn’t need to add a card, and if it’s a paid subscription you would click the “Add a card” link within the modal.
How does a subscriber update their payment method?
The subscriber needs to navigate to the Membership/Donations page and then find the Login or Manage Account button and once logged in, they’ll see an option to update their card on file.
If however the subscriber wants you to update this for them, you can navigate to the Members tab on the left-hand side, and then enter the subscriber’s email up in the search bar. Once their profile pulls up, scroll down until you see “Card Details” and then select “Update Card”
What is the purpose of plan groups? How do I add plans to the same plan group?
You can find information on the purpose and usage of plan groups here.
Why does my Stripe reporting no longer show subscriptions data?
Memberful operates by managing the subscriptions within its own platform and passing these payments through to Stripe. Since Stripe subscriptions reporting only corresponds to Stripe-managed subscriptions, the reporting will no longer populate metrics. Instead, you should refer to the Memberful dashboard for subscriptions reporting metrics.
How do I update my notification settings?
- To manage which email address notifications are sent to, as well as choose which notifications that you want to receive, follow these instructions here.
- To manage which email address the replies to transactional emails are sent to, you can manage that by going to Settings-> Custom Behavior -> Email Delivery, and this will pull up a screen where you can edit your “reply-to” email address.
What is the cancellation survey, and how do I view the results?
For information on the purpose and usage of the cancellation survey and subsequent results, click here.