In addition to being a great sales, marketing and autoresponder platform, Kartra gives you the ability to create membership sites to deliver content through secured pages! Kartra Membership sites automatically generate login pages, usernames and passwords, so you don’t have to do anything except build the content!
In this training, we will cover:
- Setting up your membership site structure.
- How to upload content for your Kartra membership site(s).
- Setting up Access Levels and Drip Content for your memberships.
Kartra Membership sites are similar to the structure of a traditional blog. You’ll have a home page, post pages, and categories to organize the content. As for the content itself, you can add text, images, audio, video, and downloadable documents. In addition, all these things can be hosted directly on the Kartra servers!
The content you create can also be delivered according to Time and Member Access Level. This means you can create drip feeds where content is gradually released (with daily, weekly or monthly updates). You can also create memberships like bronze, silver and gold levels, letting your subscribers pay more for more premium content.
Setting up access to this is even easier when doing so through the My Products section of Kartra. When you reach the Post Sale settings, simply select Kartra Membership (specifying the membership for this product) and Kartra will automatically send your customer their login information.
Kartra is an all-inclusive, one-stop shop when it comes to selling a membership platform to your customer leads.
Setting Up Your Membership Content Structure
With Kartra, you can build a membership site with content, comments, a helpdesk, and even different access levels. To understand building a membership site, you’ll first want to know how the structure works.
As mentioned in the overview video, Kartra Membership sites are similar to the structure of a traditional blog. However, in this case, your members will be given a username and password to access the content.
If you go to My Memberships and click the big green +MEMBERSHIP button, the first step that will appear after you name your Membership will be the Content Builder.
The first page customers reach is the Home Page, so that’s what you’ll build first. At the top is your logo and a navigation bar. What’s really cool about the navigation bar is that it is automatically updated as you create your membership site. Simply drag-and-drop the content you want on your page from the menu on the left of the screen, and fill in the text you want as you go.
Once you’ve created a main page with some welcome information (by clicking and dragging the components you wish from the sidebar), you can create a New Category for your navigation bar. Just click and drag the “New Category” icon from the top of the sidebar menu in the builder, and you can drag-and-drop a new category into the top of your page.
A category is a page to hold the posts with your content. You can simply drag the content you want on each page from the left side and enter content as you go. You can even create subcategories to further organize your content.
How to Upload Content for Your Membership Sites in Kartra
For your membership site to have the best content, you’ll want to host it somewhere. Luckily, Kartra has you covered! You can upload images, audio playlists, videos and other files to be available for your members.
Here’s how:
You can get to the Membership Builder by going to My Memberships and clicking the big green +MEMBERSHIP button. Or, if you are adding content to an existing Membership you have already created, simply click the EDIT pencil icon next to that Membership.
In the Builder, simply find the type of content you want to upload in the left-hand menu (such as images, videos, playlists, etc.), then drag-and-drop it into your page.
Uploading an image to display is as easy as selecting your file. If you wish, you can link the image to a URL of your choosing simply by entering the URL once the image uploads.
Audio playlists are just as simple! Drag the element where you wish to place it, then select the audio playlist file you want members to play on the site.
With videos you have additional options available. The first thing you’ll notice are the four different options you can embed a video from: Kartra, YouTube, Wistia and Vimeo. While the last three options do provide certain flexibilities, using Kartra to host your video gives you additional possibilities like tracking and tagging viewers, using forms within the video window and more. You don’t have to leave the window to upload to Kartra – simply click “Upload a New Video”.
Finally, you can embed files for your members to download as well. Just drag over the “Download box” icon, click Browse, select the file and you’re good to go!
Setting up Access Levels and Drip Content for Your Memberships
A powerful tool for your Membership Site is to create Access Levels and Drip Content. Drip Content is so-called because it is released over a set schedule (dripping out by day or date). Creating Drip Content is easy in Kartra!
Once you have created all your content in the Membership Site Builder, navigate to the third step “Access levels”.
Here you can create the different levels of membership, alongside what content is released for different types of members. In the image above, we’ve created an “Advanced” membership level, allowing us to lock certain content behind another sign-up wall.
Each “Category” you have created in the Builder, which are all pages inside your Membership site, can have a different Unlock date so that you can “drip” out content appropriately.
Feature Request: Have you heard of Adobe Captive or iSpring Suite? If not then you need to know about Adobe Technical Communication Suite(July 2017 Release) because these programs can create content that is interactive and not just boring videos and pdf files etc.
The Online Course Platform Thinkific can host courses created in Authoring tools like Adobes Technical Communication Suite and iSpring Suite.
Can we have the same feature in Kartra in the Membership module? What do you think?
Just one more thing I forgot to mention – Adobe Technical Communication Suite has a feature that (as far as I know) none of the other eLearning Authoring tools have – that is in Adobes Technical Communication Suite it can simulate software as if your actually using the software and you can teach and set quizzes so a learner can learn the software before becoming a member or members will learn faster than just watching videos and reading pdf.
It’s now time for interactive courses. I’ve never seen one yet in the IM space. Anyone, please correct me if I’m wrong (2018 and before.)
It would be great to see a course created with an eLearning Authoring tool teaching how to use Kartra. What do you think?
Hi Patrick! Sounds like a great idea! Please submit this as a feature request here: http://www.kartra.com/request. :+)
Yeah I am actually looking to do the same thing. I want to create an interactive membership site. I will submit that request thank you.
Glad to hear it Michael! It’s users like you who help make Kartra even better!
Is there a way to manually change the jv partners or affiliates?
Hi Roberto, I suggest contacting our support team at support@kartra.com or submitting a ticket at kartra.com/support. They will be able to give you much more in-depth help =)
I was about to ask the same thing, but instead of Adobe Captivate, I prefer to use the Articulate Storyline.
I will also submit a request.
Thanks so much! We appreciate it. Have a great weekend!
Is it possible to have the membership site live on one of the custom domains I’ve setup? I can’t sort out how to control the url for the site itself.
Hi Patrick!
Yes definitely you can do that. If you click on the 3 blue dots for the Membership area in question and select User login, you can configure the Membership area to be under one of your custom domains, and control the name of the landing page:
https://www.screencast.com/t/CF5V8a8KE
Have a great weekend!
Jill this solution only changes the custom domain for the login page, I can’t figure out how to host the actual membership site on my custom domain.
Hi there Cedrick!
If you click on the 3 blue dots for the Membership in question and choose “Login Link”, you’ll see a section much like this where you can choose your domain from the drop-down, similar to how it’s done in My Pages:
https://screencast.com/t/QukBDmGo3
I hope this helps!
To ensure the fastest response, please feel free to reach out to us via support@kartra.com or at http://help.genesisdigital.co if you’ve got any further questions! The majority of our help desk team is there and happy to help!
Hello. I would like my content to drip on the 15th of each month but the user should not get access to previous months. Each month I have a new topic and access should start from their sign up date and forward. How would I do this?
Hi Kathy! Thank you for your question 🙂
That sounds like an excellent question for our Help Desk team to respond to, so I so I submitted your question to our team on your behalf. You should have received an email notification just a few minutes ago about the ticket being created.
If you’re not part of the Facebook group you can find a ton of helpful information there as well, come join: http://fb.com/groups/kartra
Have a great day!
I love the automation features of Kartra, but I dont want to use the drip feature. I want to manually upgrade customers to higher tier levels of the membership site as I see fit. is this possible to do? Again, I dont want the customer to be able to upgrade. i want to be able to do it manually, myself. Please advise. Thank you.
Hi Jay! Don’t worry, you definitely have control over your membership content! You don’t have to use the drip feature if you don’t want to, and you can control when and how your members upgrade.
Hi,
Right now, I’m using OptimizeMember, (OptimizePress’ version of S2member), because I’m used to it and I needed to set everything up quickly.
However, I’m thinking about using Kartra’s membership function instead… BUT, I have certain criteria/questions I’d like to have answered prior to doing the work…
1) Are there any dynamic variables I can use in the Membership content? (i.e.: addressing Members by name)
2) How many access levels can I create for any one Membership?
3) Does the BAM functionality work behind a Membership? Tags?
4) Is there a way to create “sub-access levels” OF an access level?
5) Do automations work behind a Membership?
6) Is there a way to offer OTOs to specific Members?
7) Is there a way to set it up where I can offer different upgrades WITHOUT using the ‘portal’ function?
8) Is there a way to present a ‘popup’ to specific Members that meet a certain criteria?
OK; sorry to bombard you with questions but, these functions I’m asking about are kinda critical to how I set my Memberships up. I’m sure there will be more questions if/when I decide to use Kartra’s Membership module… let’s just deal with these first, please? 🙂
Thanks.. I appreciate you guys!
Hello Will,
Thank you for your excellent questions!
I’ve submitted a ticket on your behalf to our Help Desk team to ensure you get a complete and accurate answer.
You should have received a notification just a little while ago that the request was received, and our team will respond ASAP!
Thank you for choosing Kartra <3
Hello
I’m thinking of using a Kartra Membership site to deliver training courses.
However –
Each training course is a product in its own right.
As far as I can see this would mean that I would need a different Membership Site for each course.
Is that right?
Or could I do what I want by using Categories? With each course being a category?
Thanks
Hi Dave! Great question.
Kartra is very flexible so there’s a variety of ways to accomplish almost everything 🙂
If you expect your subscribers to purchase only one course, you could use Membership Levels in a way that is similar to categories you mention.
However, if you expect your subscribers to want to purchase more than one course, you’ll want to split the Membership Areas up so they mix-and-match, as one subscriber can only have one membership level within each separate membership area.
I hope this helps!
Please reach out to our support team at https://home.kartra.com/contact if you have any further questions, as the majority of our team is there, and ready to help!
Is there a way to manually change the jv partners or affiliates?
You can manually assign an affiliate to a transaction under My Products > Analytics > Transactions, but you cannot manually assign a JV broker.
Thank you.
This looks very interesting, I’m on the fence… Is there a limit to how many videos we can host in a member’s area? Also, is it possible to set up an automation that will email our members each time a new video or piece of content is added to a member’s area? Thank you.
Hi Steve!
The number of videos you can use is not capped! Kartra does however meter bandwidth which varies based on the package you choose.
Kartra definitely allows you to set up drip notifications to your members when new posts in your membership unlock.
If you would like more details about either of these features, please let our support team know at https://home.kartra.com/contact
Curious: If I have a 5 day delay on content, is there a way to give access to ALL content and override that 5 day for certain people?
Hi Rachael,
With a few more details about what you are trying to achieve, our team would be happy to help figure it with you, please visit https://home.kartra.com/contact to get in touch with them!
Hi there
Is there any way to create a free registration to membership site without having the user to enter the credit card details?
thanks
Susanne
Hi Susanne, the short answer to your question is: absolutely! You can do this using an opt-in form and an automation. In the Automations step of the form builder, create an automation that says “IF lead fills in this form THEN grant access to membership”. They’ll be granted access to the membership without the need to enter any payment information.
Hi,
Looks good. I was wondering if its possible to customize the pages with custom code in the same way that Karta Pages allows adding custom code?
Hi Matt, you can add custom code blocks to membership posts. The customization won’t be quite as extensive as adding custom code to pages.