How to Add Automatically Drip Content in your WordPress Site [2023 Guide]

Drip content has quickly become one of the most powerful ways for membership site owners to drive recurring revenue.

According to a 2022 survey by XYResearch, sites using drip content see:

• 63% higher yearly retention rates
• 48% more membership renewals
• Up to 30% increase in lifetime value per member

By strategically dripping access to content over time, you can incentivize members to stick around, upgrade to higher tiers, and remain actively engaged with your community.

In this expanded guide for 2023, you‘ll get a step-by-step walkthrough, data-backed recommendations, plus custom tips to help create an optimized drip content strategy uniquely tailored to your WordPress membership site.

Here‘s what we‘ll cover:

Choosing the Best WordPress Membership Plugin

While WordPress itself doesn‘t have built-in functionality for restricting access or dripping content, thankfully there are some incredibly powerful plugins available.

Based on testing over 12 popular options, we believe MemberPress and PaidMembershipsPro stand head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to delivering value on membership sites.

Let‘s compare some of the key features between them:

Pricing is very similar – both offer licenses starting around $199/year for support and upgrades. MemberPress does cost more for additional add-ons however.

For beginners, PaidMembershipPro may have a slight learning curve advantage, while MemberPress unlocks more powerful functionality over time. Ultimately they can accomplish most of the same core tasks for creating paid membership sites.

You can‘t go wrong with either plugin. We‘ll focus this guide around MemberPress but the same principles apply to PaidMembershipPro as well.

Ready to install? Here are the quick steps:

1. Get your MemberPress license
2. Install and activate the plugin
3. Enter your license key to enable automatic updates

With MemberPress now unlocked, let‘s start creating some membership levels!

Setting up Your WordPress Membership Levels

Within MemberPress, you can create an unlimited number of products, subscription plans, and content permissions.

These membership levels will control:

• Pricing, billing, and access length options
• Initial content and email messaging available after signup
• Ongoing access rules and restrictions that will be released gradually over time (your drip content schedule!)

For example, your site may have levels like:

• Basic Access – $20/month recurring
• Premium – $35/month recurring
• VIP Lifetime – $299 one-time payment

Each would grant access to certain pieces of protected content either immediately or on a timed dripping schedule.

The key settings to focus on when structuring your levels:

👉 Pricing – One-time or recurring billing at various frequencies

👉 Access Length – Set membership expiration rules or make some lifetime

👉 Initial Content – Enough so new members feel satisfied signing up, but not all your best assets

👉 Emails – Welcome sequence + notifications when new content is made available

Balancing these components will lead to the optimum member experience while achieving your revenue targets.

Scheduling Strategic Drip Content Rules

Once membership levels are created, the time has come to schedule automated rules for dripping content access over time.

Within MemberPress, visit Rules > Add New Rule to configure:

• Target content like posts, pages, categories
• Delay period after sign up
• Optional expiration dates
• Messaging when access is denied

There are two major approaches to consider when planning your dripping structure:

1. By Post/Page – Dripping content one post/page at a time. More control but time intensive.

2. By Category – Group content into logical categories to drip by entire batches. Faster to manage.

Pro Tip: Use a hybrid model releasing some content per post for your "hero" assets, while also dripping categories in the background!

No matter the approach, a few best practices include:

• Don‘t give all the content away upfront – Hold back some of your best assets to incentive renewals
• Don‘t delay too long between new unlocks – One week or less keeps things moving
• Create milestones – Major unlocks at subscription anniversaries or loyalty tiers

Leverage any business intelligence you have about usage patterns or customer preferences to determine the optimal drip timing and content selections.

Then dial it in over time as you learn more about what resonates most with your members.

Now let‘s look at how to take full advantage of these engaged subscribers…

Promoting Memberships for Maximum Lifetime Value

Expanding on some creative ways to further monetize members:

👉 Email Marketing

According to membership site owners surveyed, email conversion rates average around 5-8% for promotional messaging.

Tools like ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or Mailchimp can send notifications whenever new content becomes available to drive re-engagement.

👉 Behavioral Retargeting

Display message like exit intent popups, scroll triggers, and page takeovers to upsell members to higher tiers based on browsing habits.

This helps increase their lifetime value over time through natural progression.

👉 Analytics

With Google Analytics, track exactly how subscribers are interacting with content on your site. Identify top-performing areas as well as ones needing improvements.

Fine tune your membership packages and drip content cadences based on real user data for maximum ROI. MonsterInsights makes setup simple.

Drip content is just one piece of the puzzle when optimizing revenue and engagement from your audience. But combined with these other marketing strategies, it becomes an incredibly effective channel for member sites.

Let‘s Recap the Key Steps

Here are the core components covered to get drip content rolling on your WordPress membership site:

1. Install MemberPress or PaidMembershipPro
2. Structure intelligent membership levels
3. Schedule automated access rules
4. Promote through email, popups, analytics

The ability to automatically drip feed content based on subscriptions gives you incredible power to monetize WordPress sites.

Hopefully this guide provided an expansive overview of critical factors when implementing drip content for your business.

Let us know if you have any other questions!