Membership ideas here please

[gokangas]

Membership is really under the hammer and we need to help. What ideas do you have toboost membership? the media are circling and I can just see a "poor old north" headline coming. This is a critical revenue stream for the club so lets get our collective thinking caps on and come up with some marketing ideas that will encourage the fence sitters to join.

 

[Event Horizon]

I already mentioned this in the large Membership thread, but may as well put it here as well. During our first few home games, club personell should target people in North colours queueing for tickets to the game, offering them to buy the membership on the spot to get in for free immediately. Month to month payments option should be offered for those who are reluctant to sign up for financial reasons, as well as the 4 game ticket (or whatever it is) to those who claim that they only attend 3-4 games a year.

 

[gokangas]

I already mentioned this in the large Membership thread, but may as well put it here as well. During our first few home games, club personell should target people in North colours queueing for tickets to the game, offering them to buy the membership on the spot to get in for free immediately. Month to month payments option should be offered for those who are reluctant to sign up for financial reasons, as well as the 4 game ticket (or whatever it is) to those who claim that they only attend 3-4 games a year.

Thats a great idea. Wonder if we could muster a group of volunteers to do that?

 

[Urmoe]

I dont see why we cant offer a range of membership packages from 3-10 games.

If people want to pay for a 5 game membership pay 5/11ths of a normal membership, 7 game membership 7/11ths etc.

It wont work for reserved seating but maybe we can have 'reserved bays' for less than 11 game memberships.

Or even allow members to put $$ on their card and each time they scan their membership card then $15 (or whatever) will be deducted. Allow the amount remaining at end of year to carry over to next year?

Again we can put these people in reserved bays rather than reserved seats.

 

[Event Horizon]

I just think while our database may be crap and it's hard to target those "lost" members without knowing how to find them, this option at least gives us the target market right there. These are the first people we should target as they not only claim to be North supporters at work, they actually bothered to attend a game, which means they really should be members.

 

[Reverend Shinboner]

While not possible to implement for 2010 membership numbers, but come the second half of the season, once the membership deadline closes (30 Jun), NMFC should take Hawthorn's lead from 2009 and sell 2010 memberships for some small nominal amount ($10-20) which will effectively allow access to 3 home games (Essendon, Freo and St Kilda) - conditional on them becoming a full paying 11 game member in 2011. If North are playing ok footy, and still in contention for finals come July, this would effectively lock in new 2011 members and boost match attendance for the last three games.

 

[Rippednew1]

Nice, we need to fudge the books, can't avoid that.

All good ideas.

They said the Tigers had 100,000 lapsed members over the last decade.

We'd have to have reasonable numbers just waiting to be found and converted.

 

[Chadwiko]

This may no longer be possible due to some unknown rule/regulation change, but here goes;


A few years back the club had a fantastic membership packaged called the 'Aussie Kangaroo/Aussie Kangaroo Gold'

In essence, it included;

• Entry to any 5 Kangaroos games, anywhere in the country
• Restricted purchase to non-Melbourne based supporters
• All the usual membership benefits - scarfes, magazines, etc

However, 2 years ago this package was phased out and in it's place the 'Country' membership was coined. It changed from being entry into any 5 games around Australia to being entry into any 5 North Melbourne home games. What's more, the membership only granted access to level 2/level 3 at Etihad as opposed to the members wing.

I still bought those memberships, but felt it was a huge 'downgrade' in value, despite the fact that the pricetag went up by $20!

I know we have a large amount of supporters in WA, SA, and Canberra, and at present there doesn't seem to be a genuine membership option for these fans, myself included.

My two cents.

 

[speedy]

There is no short-term quick fix to this problem.

Why does everyone ignore the elephant in the room? It's not about converting supporters into members. We do not have the supporter base to begin with, plain and simple.

It irks me a little that North supporters get slagged for not becoming members or not showing up to games. Every club only converts a certain % of supporters into members. I think you will find that our conversion rate is right up there. In effect you are slagging people that don't exist.


Fixing the problem:

The medium term fix is to unearth 1 or 2 megastar players and for the team to become premiership contenders. We would easily get 36,000+ members this year if we were serious contenders for the flag.

The long-term fix is 2 to 3 decades of sustained success with spectator friendly fixtures and a $hit-load more prime time free-to-air exposure.

We need to find new members from new supporters, not new members from existing supporters. The latter is just painting over the cracks.

 

[Reverend Shinboner]

There is no short-term quick fix to this problem.

Why does everyone ignore the elephant in the room? It's not about converting supporters into members. We do not have the supporter base to begin with, plain and simple.

It irks me a little that North supporters get slagged for not becoming members or not showing up to games. Every club only converts a certain % of supporters into members. I think you will find that our conversion rate is right up there. In effect you are slagging people that don't exist.


Fixing the problem:

The medium term fix is to unearth 1 or 2 megastar players and for the team to become premiership contenders. We would easily get 36,000+ members this year if we were serious contenders for the flag.

The long-term fix is 2 to 3 decades of sustained success with spectator friendly fixtures and a $hit-load more free-to-air exposure.

We need to find new members from new supporters, not new members from existing supporters. The latter is just painting over the cracks.

Great post.

I believe the club has invested in a new staff position in Supporter Development (or something along those lines). It was stressed at the AGM that greater supporter numbers leads to greater memberships, greater attendances, and ultimately, better fixtures and more FTA exposure.

But I agree - NMFC's conversion rate is the highest of all clubs. There's only so much you can do with limited supporters.

 

[Zvim]

I do think we are missing out on the potential to draw in the more casual supporters by not offering 1 or 3 game memberships which are cheap no frills memberships that allow some who aren't around much and might only want to go to a few matches a year.

It probably wont add a whole lot more to the bottom line but will pad our numbers like all other clubs pad their numbers.

 

[Mr Reliable]

I posted this elsewhere but this seems to be the right place for it. We need to pay the RIGHT professionals to increase our numbers. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Volunteers have their place, but it's clearly not in selling memberships to people who need convincing of the benefits. I don't know if Stuart McGill is the right person. Someone is and we've got to find him/her.

"Time to think outside the square. The way trade unions are successfully boosting membership is very impressive. We're not going to get to 35k or 40k or 75k by ringing people up and harrassing them at home.

[We should speak to this bloke!! He said one of the keys is the direct debit facility.]

STUART MCGILL, WORK PARTNERS: I simply train some of the people who work for unions to actually go out there and present the benefits in a way that works so that, you know, people hear what they have to say, which, you know, hasn’t always gotten through, I guess."


http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2843543.htm

 

[Rippednew1]

There is no short-term quick fix to this problem.

Why does everyone ignore the elephant in the room? It's not about converting supporters into members. We do not have the supporter base to begin with, plain and simple.

It irks me a little that North supporters get slagged for not becoming members or not showing up to games. Every club only converts a certain % of supporters into members. I think you will find that our conversion rate is right up there. In effect you are slagging people that don't exist.


Fixing the problem:

The medium term fix is to unearth 1 or 2 megastar players and for the team to become premiership contenders. We would easily get 36,000+ members this year if we were serious contenders for the flag.

The long-term fix is 2 to 3 decades of sustained success with spectator friendly fixtures and a $hit-load more prime time free-to-air exposure.

We need to find new members from new supporters, not new members from existing supporters. The latter is just painting over the cracks.

We are in a unique situation and need to go above and beyond.

If everyone had a black book and went through all the numbers, some would have a better success rate than others depending on angle, married or not. ;0

No reason why lapsed members can't be converted at a higher rate than other clubs.

We have shown that sucess doesn't necessarily lead to high members unless its finals success.

 

[speedy]

We are in a unique situation and need to go above and beyond.

If everyone had a black book and went through all the numbers, some would have a better success rate than others depending on angle, married or not. ;0

But we already have a better success rate than most, which is amazing considering our flirtations with relocating in recent history.

 

[Urmoe]

A low membership figure this year, while embarrassing, wont be the end of the world.

This year - if we have decent on field success giving new on field image coupled with a new improved off field image with the redevelopment, improved customer service, more favourable publicity and putting ourselves out there in social websites etc and we still fail to attract a decent membership then we are in strife.

 

[Rippednew1]

But we already have a better success rate than most, which is amazing considering our flirtations with relocating in recent history.

True, but we have the angle of need.

The Tiger muppets, Pies etc cant call up mr and mrs average and say we NEED you.

We have legitimate reasons including the redevelopment, new coach, players etc.

Like Brayshaw was saying the other day, need to spell it out and offer reason/viable option.

* Cleanest dollar

* New era/Melbourne club

* Member numbers in comparison

* Direction of club/plan

* Recent history

* Possible outcomes from low member numbers

* Importance of turning up

* Cheaper/less game options

* Benefits for joining

Perhaps the club needs to look at sponsors contributing to membership more and adding more discounts, goods and services with the packages.

 

[drew]

I like this idea

I already mentioned this in the large Membership thread, but may as well put it here as well. During our first few home games, club personell should target people in North colours queueing for tickets to the game, offering them to buy the membership on the spot to get in for free immediately. Month to month payments option should be offered for those who are reluctant to sign up for financial reasons, as well as the 4 game ticket (or whatever it is) to those who claim that they only attend 3-4 games a year.

You could have the volunteers in t-shirts that say:

"We are North Melbourne" on the front.

"Are you?" on the back. (with something underneath like NMFC 2010 Member)

The selling point could be something like "Did you know it will cost you $24 to get in? To become a member it only costs you $16 a month, you get into to all our home games and your helping the club!"

The membership tents also need to be brought closer to the gates so people don't have to walk all the way back to the bridge. Needs to be as convenient as possible.

(This is in no way related to the WANM and Roosistance groups - However - I do think if the people from the 2 groups got together they'd be able to increase our membership significantly)

 

[Event Horizon]

The point that Speedy brought up is certainly a relevant one. We all know the supporter base isn't big enough to set huge Richmond like goals, at least in the short term.
However, just because our conversion rate happens to be pretty good (there aren't too many stats on this btw), doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve it further.

These are two completely separate tasks - growing the supporter base and converting supporters to members. And the club needs to work on both, but as you have said yourself Speedy, there isn't a hell of a lot the club can do in the short term to find new supporters until the onfield success is achieved and some geniuine stars emerge out of our list.

Converting existing supporters can be done better however, including here and now.

 

[Better Loosen Up]

I dont see why we cant offer a range of membership packages from 3-10 games.

If people want to pay for a 5 game membership pay 5/11ths of a normal membership, 7 game membership 7/11ths etc.

It wont work for reserved seating but maybe we can have 'reserved bays' for less than 11 game memberships.

Or even allow members to put $$ on their card and each time they scan their membership card then $15 (or whatever) will be deducted. Allow the amount remaining at end of year to carry over to next year?

Again we can put these people in reserved bays rather than reserved seats.

I think this is a great idea. My understanding is that it would work similar to topping up a citylink account. The only issue with this is the cost involved in setting up a system to support it and it's forecasted ROI.

One of the issues as I understand it, seems to be finding supporters who have elapsed their memberships in the past and knowing their reasons for doing so.

I think it could be beneficial to provide a link on the homepage specifically for elapsed members to provide their feedback via an email. The link could be something like, "Are you no longer a member? We would love your feedback. Click here". It would need to be the role of the membership department to respond to EVERY email received.

I feel this could work for the following reasons:

1. Encouraging engagement from supporters.
2. Replying to and showing understanding of their feedback regardless of what it may be, gives those supporters a sense of importance to the club.
3. Provides real insights as to the issues our supporters face and what types of new and innovative membership packages can best address these issues.
4. Growing a database of non members.

In terms of membership packages ideas, one comes to mind.

A "singles" membership.

Could look something like this:

1. Reserved seating to 8 home games. Obviously you would seat them in the same area.

2. Option to attend 2 functions during the year for "singles members" only with players in attendence. Cost either built into their membership or part there of.

 

[Freeborn17]

Easy. 3 and 5 game memberships for Melbourne supporters.

Targeted at the 'lost' supporters from 2000 to 2007.

 

[Cosmo Kramer]

Please ignore this idea if North already do this but I don't believe they do.

What you can do is to send membership cards to all your members from the previous year and even over the last 5 years if you are being ambitious. They get a membership card and an information package about membership options, they keep the card and if they choose to sign up the card is simply activated and if not then they can just keep the card as a momento (but at least you have directly targeted them). You can actually go a step further and also send people a keyring, stickers, membership badge (a little item or 2 basically) as a taste of some of the extras they can get for signing up.

 

[Twinkletoes]

Please ignore this idea if North already do this but I don't believe they do.

What you can do is to send membership cards to all your members from the previous year and even over the last 5 years if you are being ambitious. They get a membership card and an information package about membership options, they keep the card and if they choose to sign up the card is simply activated and if not then they can just keep the card as a momento (but at least you have directly targeted them). You can actually go a step further and also send people a keyring, stickers, membership badge (a little item or 2 basically) as a taste of some of the extras they can get for signing up.

Not a bad idea Cosmo. A proactive approach is the way to go, although it's crucial that all things database related are 100% in order to do so efficiently. That's an area we definitely need cleaned up and fine tuned.

 

[Zvim]

Not a bad idea Cosmo. A proactive approach is the way to go, although it's crucial that all things database related are 100% in order to do so efficiently. That's an area we definitely need cleaned up and fine tuned.

I've been a member since 85 and I've been listed as a new member about 5 times and lets just say my name isn't Bob Brown or some other common name. There is no way I should be confused for a new member.

I mean i can go to my account status right now and it still tells me I need to renew my membership, which I had already done online and have the confirmation email. Not sure what is going on but the renewal system and database needs to be cleaned up.

 

[Cosmo Kramer]

Not a bad idea Cosmo. A proactive approach is the way to go, although it's crucial that all things database related are 100% in order to do so efficiently. That's an area we definitely need cleaned up and fine tuned.

It is something Hawthorn has done for the last 2 years and Collingwood are doing this year, not sure about other clubs they may be doing it to. But I like the fact it is pro-active but not pressuring people like getting players to call and urge lapsed members to sign up. I mean the mailouts do cost a small amount of money and maybe the reason North doesn't do it is because it doesn't make sense from a oost/benefit point of view (ie North already has a very high conversion of supporters to members and Norths membership gets more coverage than any other club in the media so it's not like North supporters aren't aware of membership and it's importance).

Also reading above I do agree that it might be a good idea for North to look at introducing 3 game memberships. 3 game memberships give you access to a new market of supporters and it has been proven to work for the clubs that have tried it and more are trying it going foward. At last count Collingwood, Geelong, Carlton, Dogs did it and there are probably a few others I have missed.

It's not really a membership idea but another thing you could do (and did do last year) is to restrict seating areas for low drawing matches (ie against interstate clubs) to create a better atmosphere at the ground and enhance the membership experience. Along those lines you could also look at increased pre-match entertainment, ie kicking contests where the winner gets a prize, raffle with a interstate football trip as the prize and cash give aways at half time (they are 3 things Hawthorn does but i'm sure there are better ideas out there).

 

[Limerick]

Some good ideas here that hopefully the Club will take notice of.

As stated by some above we have both a short term and a longer term issue. I'm more concerned with the short term as I can't see us getting any positive press if we are both the lowest membership club in 2010 AND the only club to go backwards in 2010. We do need to put extra energy into getting above the 2009 game attending total.

The Club should run with the identify North supporters who pay at the gate over the first 3 home games. Perhaps this is a group that a "one off" 5 game package could be targeted.

The problem with a general 3 or 5 game package is that it would cost the club serious money as many 11 game members would move down to this new package. Very few members attend all games. However it could be targeted at specific groups e.g.
1. A 3 game package that only allows entry into the three lowest crowd games (West Coast Rd 3, Melb Rd 6 & Port Rd 13).
2. Only available to pre 2008 lapsed members as a means of getting them back - first year only.
3. For specilally targeted groups i.e. the pay at the gate supporters.

Our database isn't as bad as has been indicated. The issue is that we need to be more targeted in how we approach members e.g. a different letter to lapsed members than the standard please join up this year approach. It should also ask for feedback as to why the person has lapsed their membership etc.

Just a thought to add to the mix.

There would be a number of couples that take out 2 adult memberships either as individual memberships or a family membership. These people could be contacted to see if they have children, young siblings, nieces or nephews that could be added to their family membership at NO COST. This would provide (a) an increase in the 2010 numbers, (b) possibly increase the attendances, and (c) potentially provide new future members.