Enhance Your Membership Program With Digital Downloads

You already know how important membership programs are.

From earning recurring revenue to encouraging greater customer loyalty to your brand, membership applications like Conjured Memberships are often a tremendous addition to a Shopify store.

Consider, for instance, that companies who do loyalty well can grow revenue 2.5 times faster than other brands.

Now picture taking your membership game to a whole other level, by enabling downloads of digital content via your membership app. (A whopping 95% of loyalty customers like engaging with their membership program through new and emerging tech, by the way.)

Sky Pilot — a Shop Circle application that allows merchants to sell and deliver digital music, videos, ebooks and other files directly from their Shopify site — is doing just that, thanks to a newly released feature, which integrates their services with membership apps like Conjured Memberships that are part of the Shopify ecosystem.

The unique feature allows customers with active memberships to stream (this is generally preferred with a subscription model) or download digital files as part of their membership experience, says Camilla Giovannini, Senior Product Manager at Shop Circle.

“As far as we're aware, there isn't another solution on Shopify right now to sell digital content via a subscription.”

How the SkyPilot integration works

Integrating SkyPilot with Conjured Memberships — and your ecommerce site as a whole — is seamless, because of the versatility of the app and the customization opportunities it offers, says Giovannini.

“In terms of versatility, while competitors will deliver digital content outside of your store, we are completely integrated. This allows you to own the whole relationship with your customer. You can brand that experience, as well as retain customers within your ecosystem,” she explains.

As for customization, you can build the integration to function pretty much any way you like, says Giovannini.

How often do you want to add new content? That’s up to you and is likely dependent on the type of content you provide.

What kind of billing cycle can you set up for subscriptions? Whatever works best for your cash flow management.

The delivery page itself can be customized to uniquely reflect your brand, and there’s even another integration available that allows you to create a unified email marketing campaign to scale your subscriptions program.

What you can achieve with SkyPilot

Are you ready to be the next Netflix or Spotify?

While that might seem like a lofty goal, it’s possible to become a worthy competitor to digital membership powerhouses like these, with the SkyPilot integration as part of your membership program.

Or perhaps you are a digital creator, but have never offered your customers a membership plan before? Now’s your chance to embrace an entirely new revenue model by adopting SkyPilot in conjunction with Conjured Memberships.

There are so many potential business opportunities available with this digital downloads meets subscription pairing, says Giovannini.

A straightforward example might be a merchant that sells digital magazines. “Now they can actually offer all of their magazines or a specific collection of magazines to any subscriber, without impacting their previous model which allowed customers to buy on a one-off basis.”

Then there are scenarios where digital subscription products can emerge from the provision of in-person services. For instance, a yoga teacher who has started to offer video downloads of their classes, says Giovannini, who shares some different models that can be employed in this type of situation.

“You could decide to organize your products by, say, beginner, intermediate and advanced. If the customer buys a different subscription, different videos are made available.”

But you can also go one step further and determine whether the subscriber will have access to those videos forever (well, as long as their membership lasts!) or if you are only going to make them available for a short time, she continues.

Boost customer retention and revenue

From printables (digital design or text patterns available for download) to music or podcast streaming, the sky really is the limit for content creators who want to further monetize their product offering and/or encourage customer retention and loyalty with a SkyPilot integration.

When crafting your membership-meets-digital-download strategy, Giovannini recommends bringing everything back to what you know about your consumer audience and how they tend to engage with your brand.

“Use what you know about how your customers make purchases, to upsell a subscription to them. Or ask yourself ‘How do I keep them engaged throughout their subscription experience and excited about upcoming content releases?’”

That’s how you add value to the technical integration of two products like digital downloads and memberships, she says.

“It’s a corollary to the integration, but can really supercharge the whole experience for the customer.”