Brianna Wilkerson on how she uses MV to host summits

In this episode of Made with MV, we have a special guest, Brianna Wilkerson, who shares her expertise in hosting successful virtual summits using Member Vault. Brianna, a holistic health and life coach and essential oils advocate, explains how she leverages Member Vault's features to create engaging and seamless online summits. She discusses her unique approach to running virtual events, from sending participants directly to Member Vault for sign-ups to utilizing the drip feature and implementing paid access.

Key Topics & Highlights

• Introduction to Brianna Wilkerson
• Use of MemberVault for Summits
• Details about Brianna's four summits, with mentions of co-hosting and solo hosting
• Overcoming the challenges of hosting a summit during her maternity period
• Use of direct sign-ups through MemberVault instead of a website
• Utilization of the drip feature to release content over multiple days
• Differentiating between free and paid access to the summit content
• Use of affiliates to boost summit engagement and sales

Connect with Brianna

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Website
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Full Episode Transcript

Hey, welcome back to the Made with MemberVault podcast. My name is Brianna Wilkerson, and I am your featured guest, I guess for this episode. So my name is Brianna again and I am a holistic health and life coach, as well as an essential oils advocate my business is Madewell345 LLC, and really what I do as a coach in oils is a little bit similar, but a bit different.

As a health coach, I really support women in ditching diets losing weight that lasts, and thriving in their whole health of life, really, through pursuing a kind of food freedom working on mindset and habits, and really supporting themselves in living their healthiest, best life for themselves not trying to follow someone else’s version. As an essential oils advocate, I support women and use those oils as nontoxic solutions for their health, home, and family.

And so I’m a huge educator of oils, as well as just really passionate about seeing women find food freedom love the body that they’re in, and find peace with their weight. So kind of two different things. But I use MemberVault for both. And so I have been a MemberVault user for a few years now. And I’ve done a bunch of different things with MemberVault, I have used them for memberships, and I’ve used them for free challenges. I’ve used them for paid courses, and I’ve used them in just four resource libraries for paid and free work.

And what I have loved using MemberVault the most for is summits. And so that’s actually what I want to talk to you about today. And so for those that don’t know what a virtual summit is, at least it’s a very it’s an I like to call it a party, I really like to call it like an online party. And it’s where you can bring together some of your favorite friends, I bring together some of my favorite health and wellness professionals. And we just have a party sharing all things health and wellness sharing all things on whatever topic you want to leave your summit on, where there’s typically a to kind of some training of some sort.

Some people tend to do interview training, but I like to actually have my guests record their own videos. That way, just kind of more teaching style, you get a feel of just the guests and just the speaker. But you could do an interview either way. And then typically those talks go live for a certain time period, maybe for the whole length of this online summit or for just the day or just for that hour. And then there are typically free resources or giveaways and all that’s available for each speaker.

And so I’ve hosted up to four summits and three of those were in MemberVault, and my most recent one was in August 2020. And that was when I really it was actually my first summit that I led alone, I have always kind of done it with a co-host. And actually, I’m doing another one with my good friend on your Perry in January 2021. Using memory, of course, but this one was really it’s funny this one was really cool because it had the most speakers is about 35 speakers, 36 speakers, roughly 32 to 36. I was planning it in my third trimester and my first trimester of being a mom, so I fourth trimester, and hosted it when my daughter was only a couple of months old.

But by then I knew how to use MemberVault, and I knew how to plan summits. And I just kind of had like a good production system and system of operations down. But really, I use, I use MemberVault differently for this particular summit. And let me tell you the four things that I mean, I’ve used MemberVault before, but really the four things that I really think if you want to host an online virtual summit, why MemberVault is actually the best option for you, and the things you can use it for.

So one typically in the past, or typically most people would do is you kind of have a signup page right on your website, or when you create a new website for your summit. Well, for me, I always had like a different signup page on my website. But what I did this time, what I’ve been doing a lot of my free and paid products is actually sending people directly to MemberVault. And, you know, sometimes people are worried about the long link. You can either use pretty links if you have WordPress as a you can use pretty links as a on WordPress as a WordPress plugin.

So it’s like your website and then whatever title of the summit, or you can use Bitly like there are many ways to kind of pretty, prettify I guess. And redirect to MemberVault I use pretty links, I love it. And so I just kind of send people straight to there and the benefit of that versus sending them to the page.

So when you send them to the page, they still kind of have to check their email or they see on your screen how to login to MemberVault but when they go directly to your page, they get to access the welcome video or whatever you want to tell them right away and they get familiar with how MemberVault looks because guess what? Most people sign up for things and do they actually ever check their email and go to it No. So by allowing them to really directly sign up to remember about you are encouraging engagement and you’re also making sure that it happens.

And so of course you you know you can connect it to Your email provider I use Active Campaign because I so I connected to there. So I still got their email, and they still got the welcome email, and all the emails after that, but they could all just them can see directly what was happening. Now the benefit of that also is higher engagement. But also, I think I’m using the word gamification, right, like they just kind of binge on things, I don’t know, I might be wrong. But people get to see all your other stuff. So all your free stuff and all your paid stuff.

So what I found was happening is that I just found people were signing up for my free resources left and right, people were peeking their eyes on my paid resources left and right. And it was really cool, because guess what tends to happen after the summit people unsubscribe from your summit list, which is normal, sometimes they just want to watch the summit.

But if they sign up for your other freebies, my goodness, they’re still on your list, right? And so really, if you’re, if you’re thinking about not just getting people on your list, or growing your list, or engagement for just the week of the summit, but you want it for like ongoing, so you can really nurture that audience, then you’re going to want to make sure you send people straight to MemberVault to sign up. But also make sure the rest of your stuff that you want them to see is live active and ready to go. So they can gonna sign up for it right away or join a waitlist, whatever. So that’s number one, I sent people straight to straight to MemberVault to sign up.

Number two is I use the drip feature. So because I had all these things pre-recorded, I set it up to go out my semester, usually seven days long, five days are actual content two days tend to be on core days. And I set it up into different categories. So nutrition, all the talks that related to nutrition, what you’re eating was on one day exercise, the next whatever. But you can have it all set up. So it goes live on that particular day.

Now you can do two things with this, you can leave it live for the whole week, which is what I’ve tended in the past now I’m going to probably tinker with a little bit of taking it down. Or you can take it down after the day basically just go back in and make it unavailable again, or make it to a further date. So they don’t have access to it that way. Right. And that can encourage people to actually sign up on the day that they want those particular talks. And I actually always outline when which talks are going live and I do that in the welcome module.

When people sign up, they can say welcome, here’s the here’s the here’s what’s happening, here’s what’s happening, all that sort of stuff. join the Facebook group, I use Facebook groups for engagement, often in my MemberVault. So people can join my Facebook group to increase my Facebook group. Also make sure you have your announcement all set up on top of MemberVault, use that new feature because guess what, that has my Facebook group and people went to my Facebook group because of that. Okay.

Yeah, so the drift feature, I love using the drip feature for the summit. So one, you can use, send people straight to remember vote to the drip feature that can either be up for the length of the summit or however long each day. So with that, number three is that I used paid. This is the first time I sold my summit, and I did free.

And there are many ways that people even suggested here in the MemberVault collaborative group to do this, you can either just do one course, and then do teaser content that you upload each time. Or you can make it free and then when people buy a separate use a separate link to buy it.

And then after removing access, keep the people who pay for it on there. But I prefer to set up to and this is why I set up two courses one for the paid and one for the free. Because one I didn’t want to go back and look at the hundreds of people who signed up and then figure out which ones are kept the ones who paid in. And two, it just was just cleaner for me. So you know I set up right away. Here’s a lie hold it live summit. And here’s the lifetime access.

I was selling the lifetime access two weeks before the summit, during the summit, and even after but really only focused on those three weeks, two weeks before and during, and what was able to happen, why, and what really allowed to lead to more sales is that a lot of bonuses for lifetime access. So I had an Amazon gift card or I had each speaker giving giveaways even the free one. I created giveaway bundles, workbooks, and all these different things and a cheap early bird price.

And so most of my sales were I mean literally 98% of them were before the summit started. And oh, another benefit was that they got immediate access. So they didn’t have to wait for the drip content or each day they could watch it whenever however they want. And actually you would think oh, no one’s going to do that. But I had a lot of people do that. A lot of people who came someone came on day one says I’ve watched everything I’m so excited. Oh like what because they bought it two weeks before and so they didn’t have to feel the pressure of you know, try to get on, and then they were better able to comment on when you know, the people’s talks went live, what prizes, they want all that sort of stuff. Okay?

So, yes, send people straight to MemberVault two was drip content three, you can do paid or lifetime access, and again, even when they’re paying let them pay straight in MemberVault. You can use PayPal or Stripe, people use it.

And fourth, though, was affiliates. And so obviously because I’m selling it, I use affiliates. And so because remember how well it has this amazing affiliate stuff, my affiliates got 50%. So what I did was send them two links, I sent them the link affiliate link to the free one and the affiliate link to the paid one. Now, one thing with that is you know, cookies are stored. And so if people access even either you’re free or paid on it, especially the free p most people do that one to sign up for that right away, access that on the actual laptop, same laptop, or same phone cookies are stored, but if they do it on different ones, the person will not the affiliate will not get credit for them. So I told my speakers this up front.

But in some cases, there were a couple of people who really I could tell drove a lot of the registrants and sales. So what I actually did is, I actually went and tracked like, Oh, so this person signed up for this free thing. I’m not showing that this sorry, this person, John, as I only had a woman, let’s say Jane signed up through Betty’s link, but she I don’t see any link attached to when she paid for it. So I’m like, I’m just gonna give it Betty, you don’t have to do that. I might not do that all the time. That’s what I did this time.

And so each affiliate got two links. And I really created a swipe copy for them. I mean, I really set these people up and created swipe copy for them. And so told them when to promote the free told them when to promote the paid. And obviously, it’s up to them. And you’re required a certain amount of promotions. And it went well, I mean, I mean, a good amount of sales. And so. At that point, I just wanted to make sales to cover any costs that I incurred during the summit, as well as offer gifts to speakers to encourage registrants or encourage them to promote. Sorry, there are a lot of other production things that you can do to make the summer really well. But just kind of tying it all in for you. So one I use MemberVault, and send them straight there to sign up I use the drip feature. I also drip features free and paid. And then I had affiliates.

There’s one other thing I wanted to mention about it. But I think those are the four main things that I really enjoyed. And I found really allowed MemberVault to go I mean the summit to go really well in MemberVault I host again my free resources, my paid courses in there, I really love everything they’ve, you know, the Kelly’s have done and their team to set everything up. So if you already use MemberVault, don’t please don’t do use anywhere else to do Summit it’s just so good. I love it. I love it.

So yeah, again, I recommend if you’re trying to host a series, or you know a series, a lot of have some memory some in a current series that is for three weeks. And where this person is releasing one each day, you can do that same thing in MemberVault. So whether it’s a series a summit or even a challenge, I host my challenges in member votes as well using the drip feature using having people sign up there. Right away, obviously, it’s free. And so I just love using memorable for live events like that, or what I would say live parties, right?

So I hope that this was helpful for you. I know many of you, when I posted in the group kind of the results that I got, just was like how did you know I’m thinking about this? How do you run with this? And these are just some tips for you on how to set it up in MemberVault. Obviously, there’s so much that can go into actually creating a good summit. But again, we’re just talking about, remember ballpark.

So if you have any questions on this, you can definitely feel free to reach out, or if you want to just learn more about me and my work and the way I support women. You can find me on my website madewell345.com. And then all my social media handles particularly Facebook and Instagram where I’m most active are madewell345 as well. My Facebook group is actually the most active where I’m like hanging out the most is the Healthy and Sustainable Weight Loss community on Facebook.

But yeah, check out my MemberVault. I’ll link it in here just I think it’s madewell345.mvsite.app however the link is and feel free to check out how I’ve set up some things and reach out if you have any questions. And yeah, so that said that covers anything. So if you have any questions, make sure you tag me in the MemberVault Collaborative Facebook group. And again, thank you guys for listening. Hopefully, this is helpful and helps somebody.