20 Must-Have Features for your Premium Chat Community

Premium chat communities are being leveraged by businesses, entrepreneurs, and creators to build additional streams of revenue, drive growth, and create better relationships with customers.

If you’ve been thinking about launching and scaling your own paid chat community, there are many options you can take to provide your customers with the ultimate value, drive engagement and retention, and build your subscriber base.

Here are some of the features we’ve seen work for the tens of thousands of communities powered by LaunchPass.

1. Exclusive content: Whether you’re an expert in day trading, a reseller, a podcaster or a creator, providing exclusive members-only content is a great way to pique interest and build your audience. Behind-the-scenes information, special Q&A sessions with industry experts, bonus episodes — exclusive content available only to premium members is a fantastic way to add value and get people excited about subscribing.
2. Ad-free experiences: Ad-free experiences are becoming more sought after as advertising becomes more pervasive and frequent across virtually all platforms. Ditch the ads and offer a space for your audience to engage and chat without interruption.
3. Priority support: Give your community members best-in-class, personalized support to ensure any questions, concerns, and issues are addressed quickly. Partnering with a paid community platform like LaunchPass that provides this support for you is a great way to ensure your customers receive the highest level of service and have a great customer experience.
4. Customized user profiles: Give premium members the ability to customize their user profiles with special badges, avatars, and more.
5. Access to a VIP lounge: Within your private chat community, you can offer a “room” where premium members can interact with each other and have access to special perks. This can be available to all of your paying subscribers, or you can offer it via multi-tier subscriptions, where you assign particular roles with special access to channels (if you’re using Discord) or private channels (if you’re using Slack).
6. Virtual events: Live, virtual events like webinars, AMAs, special guest events, or fireside chats are big winners for many of the communities that use LaunchPass. They are a huge value-add for subscribers across all types of communities, and there are some awesome Discord features like Scheduled Events and Stage Channels that make these easy to facilitate.
7. Exclusive discounts: Discounts on products and services, whether they are from your business or done in collaborations with partners, are a simple but compelling way to keep your community engaged and excited.
8. Early access: Exclusive early access to new features, content, or information is a compelling feature we’ve seen many of our communities use successfully, from resellers to podcasters, finance groups to crypto groups and beyond.
9. Advanced analytics: Provide advanced analytics on user engagement, such as message history, to premium members.
10. Virtual membership card: Virtual membership cards can be used to allow your community members to access special perks, such as exclusive discounts, at partner businesses.
11. 1-on-1 personalized coaching: Are you a subject matter expert? Do you offer courses or advice to your audience members? Personalized coaching or mentoring is a huge benefit that you can offer to your premium members, leveraging the knowledge and talents you already have.
12. Live streaming: Let premium members participate in live streaming events, or watch exclusive live streams that nobody else has access to.
13. Customizable chat settings: Allow premium members to customize their chat settings within your community, such as notifications, fonts, and more.
14. Virtual meetups: Host virtual meetups and networking events to create a true sense of community among your members.
15. Resource library: A members-only resource library can be hugely beneficial to your community, and we’ve seen it work very successfully for all types of groups. E-books, templates, tutorial videos, and other resources help you provide significant value for the money your subscribers are paying.
16. Challenges and competitions: Organize challenges and competitions for premium members and offer prizes. This can help drive community engagement and keep members motivated to participate.
17. Giveaways: Many LaunchPass communities offer regular giveaways at different intervals, whether daily, weekly, monthly or otherwise. These range from subscription discounts, to swag, to collaborative giveaways with partner businesses.
18. Exclusive courses: Courses and training sessions are a massive hit in many types of communities. In fact, some communities’ entire premise is online courses and training, with additional perks like office hours, one-on-one training, and more.
19. Virtual gifts: Allow premium members to send virtual gifts to each other. These could be gamified within your community to allow users to collect and gift rewards to each other, for example.
20. Special guest access: Allow premium members to invite special guests, such as celebrities or industry experts, into the chat community.

We’ve seen the features listed above work successfully for the tens of thousands of communities that are powered by LaunchPass. And these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the perks and benefits you can offer your paid chat community.

If you’re interested in launching your own premium chat community, or you want to learn more about what we’ve seen work for some of the largest paid Discord and Slack groups in the world, feel free to connect with our Growth & Success team!