Terms of service
Who we are
Membership Gap is a service of Internet Physics, Inc., a Delaware corporation (Delaware file number 10348328). In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean Internet Physics, Inc. acting under the name Membership Gap, and "you" means the business that receives our free gap finding or places an order with us.
Our services are for businesses only. By placing an order, you confirm that you act for a business and may bind it.
How Membership Gap works
We work by email. When you ask for something that these terms and your order confirmation do not answer, we refer it to the officers of Internet Physics, Inc., and the answer reaches you by email from john@membershipgap.com.
The free gap finding
The free gap finding costs nothing and commits you to nothing. It is not a trial: it never turns into a paid order, and we never ask for payment details to send it. We prepare at most one free gap finding for each company, identified by its website domain. We build it only from public sources, as described below, and you may use it as you wish.
The gap finding compares your association's public member directory with one public list of firms or practitioners in your field: a state licence roll, a public industry directory, a trade-show exhibitor list or a ranked industry list. It shows how many firms on that list, by state, do not appear in your directory, and names 25 of them with their public website or contact page, so that your director of membership can check them against your member database.
We build it only from public pages: your association's public member directory, the public field list and each named firm's public website. It needs nothing from your association. It says plainly that some named firms may be members you do not show publicly, or may be ineligible under your membership rules. It does not say whether any firm is eligible to join or owes anything.
What we do for paying customers
Member recruitment campaign
We run the whole email recruitment of non-member firms for your association, with no association staff time beyond the one-time setup:
- We email decision-makers at every firm on the full non-member gap list (about 500 to 3,000 firms, an estimate) in monthly waves from our sending domain.
- The emails name your association, which is a sender alongside us, use the text you approved once, and carry our postal address, an opt-out and your join link with a coded token for each firm.
- Firms newly added to the public field lists are included as they appear. Follow-up emails go to listed firms that have not joined.
- We answer routine replies from the member-benefit FAQ you approved, and pass other member-benefit questions, with the thread, to your membership staff.
- Each month you receive a report of emails sent, replies, and firms from our list that joined, with their dues.
- We start the first email wave within 30 days of receiving your acceptance and the items you send with it.
- Before you accept, you tell us which member categories or states are ineligible, and we leave them out of the gap list. Your order confirmation names them.
We never email a firm or person in your member export, your pipeline list or your do-not-contact list, or anyone on our suppression list.
What you give us, and when:
- With your acceptance, once: your current member export, including members hidden from your public directory; your do-not-contact list (firms or people you do not want emailed); and, if you want, the firms already in your own recruitment pipeline.
- With your acceptance, once: your approval of the recruitment email template and a short member-benefit FAQ, which change only if you ask us to change them; and your online join link.
- With your acceptance, once: you schedule a new-member report that your membership system emails us each month.
What's not included
- No telephone or text outreach
- No renewal or retention work
- No changes to the association's membership system, website or dues
- No sponsorship, exhibit or advertising sales
- No paid advertising or event marketing
- No access to the association's systems beyond the member export, the do-not-contact list and the optional pipeline list sent when the order is accepted, and the scheduled monthly new-member report
- No judgment on whether a firm is eligible for membership under your rules
Prices and billing
All prices are in US dollars and exclude any sales tax that applies by law. We bill only the events this section names; our own errors, retries and failed checks are never billed. We do not ask for payment details before you accept an order, and we start paid work only after you accept it as described in "How orders are made".
Member recruitment campaign: 85% of each new member's first-year dues paid, for firms on our gap list, not in the member export or pipeline list the association sends at acceptance, that join within 6 months of our first email to them and, before joining, replied to one of our emails or opened the association's join page through our coded link; invoiced by email after the dues are paid and paid by bank transfer (ACH or wire) to the account named on the invoice. Nothing is charged for organic joins, for firms in the baseline or for firms not on our list. Offered only to associations whose own pages publish entry dues of at least USD 750. No fixed fee; cancel by email with 30 days' notice.
These terms decide each fee:
- Baseline. Your association's member list on the order date: the full member export (including members not shown publicly) you send with your acceptance, plus the optional list of firms already in your own recruitment pipeline, sent at the same time. Neither is ever billable.
- Billable result. A firm on our gap list, not in the baseline, that becomes a member and pays its first-year dues. The fee is 85% of the first-year dues paid, invoiced only after the dues are received. A first-year discount your association gives reduces the fee, because the fee is a share of the dues actually paid.
- Attribution. A paid join is ours only when all of these hold: (a) the firm is on our gap list and not in the baseline; (b) its join date is within 6 months of our first email to it; (c) before its join date it either replied to one of our emails or opened your association's join page through our coded link (each link carries a token for that firm). A listed firm that joins without (c) is an organic join and is not billable.
- Measurement. Your association's member record: the monthly new-member report you schedule once at acceptance (firm, member category, join date, first-year dues paid, date paid). Condition (c) is shown from our records (the reply thread, or the coded-link log) and sent with each matched list. We never access your systems.
- Timing. The report is due by the 10th of each month for the previous month. We send the matched list within 5 business days; you confirm or mark lines within 15 days, after which unmarked lines are confirmed. We invoice confirmed lines; payment is due within 30 days.
- Zero results. Nothing is owed; no retainer, no minimum per month.
- Disputes. A line is removed only for one of these, shown from your association's record or ours: in the baseline; join date outside the window; no reply or coded-link visit before the join date; dues not received, or refunded within the first year (a credit on the next invoice). Nothing else is weighed. If no later invoice is due, we refund that fee by bank transfer within 30 days.
- Collection. We invoice by email from john@membershipgap.com; payment is by bank transfer (ACH or wire) to Internet Physics, Inc., and payment instructions come with the invoice. We never hold your association's or a member's money. A report more than 30 days late is asked for once a week; after two late reports we may pause the waves.
We never bill organic joins, firms in the baseline, firms not on our gap list, joins outside the 6-month window, dues not received, the gap finding, the emails, replies or monthly reports themselves, or a month with no paid joins.
Cancelling an order
Either side may cancel a Member recruitment campaign by email with 30 days' notice. You cancel by replying CANCEL to any email from us, or by emailing hello@membershipgap.com with the word CANCEL; no reason is needed, and we confirm the cancellation by email. The campaign ends 30 days after the notice, and we send no wave after it ends.
Joins attributable to emails sent before the end remain billable within their 6-month window: a firm we emailed before the end, that joins within 6 months of our first email to it and meets every other term above, is billable as usual. Your monthly new-member report continues until the last of those windows ends, and the dispute, timing and collection terms above apply to it. Nothing else is owed. With no attributable paid join, nothing is owed.
Guarantees and refunds
Every guarantee we offer, with its conditions, and our refund rule are on our guarantee page at https://membershipgap.com/guarantee. A promise that is not on that page or in your order confirmation is not a guarantee we make.
How orders are made
We send you an order form by email from john@membershipgap.com. It states what we will do, the price and the guarantee that apply. An order is made when you reply to it with your full name, your title, your company's name and the words "I agree"; that reply is your electronic signature on the order form. The order form and these terms are our whole agreement for that order; if they differ, the order form applies.
Your responsibilities
You confirm that the information and files you send us are accurate and that you have the right to give them to us for the work you order. You use what we deliver in compliance with the laws that apply to you.
The reply that accepts an order comes from your association's own address, from its executive director or CEO. Your association decides which firms are eligible to join it; we make no judgment on eligibility. It is responsible for the facts about its membership and benefits in the email text and FAQ it approves.
Senders. Recruitment emails name your association and promote its membership, so your association is a sender alongside us. Each email carries your association's name, our postal address and an opt-out. Who does what:
- We are responsible for each email's form (a truthful sender and a subject line that matches the content), for putting our postal address and a working opt-out in every email, for applying our suppression list and your do-not-contact list before every wave, and for honouring opt-outs: each opt-out from our emails is applied to both our suppression list and your do-not-contact list within 10 business days.
- Your association supplies the email text and FAQ it approves and its do-not-contact list, with its acceptance.
You send the member export, the lists, the approvals, the join link and the monthly new-member report at the times "Prices and billing" names, confirm or mark each matched list within 15 days, and pay each invoice within 30 days.
Your material and our work
You keep all rights in the material you send us. Once you have paid for an order, what we deliver under it is yours to use and change. We keep the right to reuse our general methods and know-how, but not your material or your deliverables. How we handle personal information is described in our privacy policy at https://membershipgap.com/privacy.
Confidentiality
We keep the non-public information you send us confidential, use it only to do your work, and share it only with the kinds of service providers our privacy policy names. This does not cover information that is public or that you have told us we may share.
No promise of results
We promise the work described in your order, not a business result such as replies, meetings, sales or revenue, unless a guarantee on our guarantee page says otherwise. Estimates, examples and benchmarks we share are not promises.
A firm on the gap list is not a member: we do not promise that any firm will reply, join or pay dues, or any number of paid joins a month. The count in the gap finding comes from public pages and does not show that a firm is eligible to join or is not already a member.
Limitation of liability
Apart from the work described in your order and the guarantees on our guarantee page, we make no other warranties, express or implied. The free gap finding is provided as is.
Except for amounts you owe for work delivered, each party's total liability arising out of or relating to these terms or any order is limited to the amount you paid us under the order concerned in the 12 months before the claim arose. Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, or for lost profits, revenue or data, even if told they were possible. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.
Ending an order
Either of us may end an order that is not yet finished, by email, if the other seriously breaks these terms and does not fix it within 15 days of being told. You then pay for the work delivered up to that point, and we refund what you paid for work not delivered.
Changes to these terms
We may change these terms by publishing a new version on this page with a new effective date. An order keeps the terms in force when it was made. For a plan that renews automatically, we email you any change at least 30 days before it applies to you, and you may cancel before then.
Governing law and disputes
These terms and every order are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Before either of us starts a legal claim, we try for 30 days to settle the matter by email. A claim that is not settled is brought only in the state or federal courts located in Delaware, and both of us accept their jurisdiction.
General
You may not transfer an order to someone else without our agreement by email. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. Notices under these terms are given by email: ours come from john@membershipgap.com, and yours go to hello@membershipgap.com.
Contact
Membership Gap, a service of Internet Physics, Inc.
Email: hello@membershipgap.com