Going paper-free to increase membership and reduce costs

If after reading this article you would like any advice on implementing these suggestions, Lawrence is happy to help. Contact him by email by clicking here.

Introduction

Chilterns Weekend Walkers operates very efficiently as a paper free organisation using many of the tools which would be used by our target membership in their daily life at work or at home.

Who do we try to recruit as new members?

We try to recruit walkers who live in or like to walk in the Chilterns. There are no upper or lower age limits to the group but we target our website and media to aim for those in their 40’s or early 50’s who might be looking to join a walking group and who have more time than previously or want to improve their fitness. In documentation we phase this as “CWW was set up by those who had been previously members of the 20’s and 30’s group”. We differ from other clubs by having an extensive social calendar and a number of weekends away in the UK and overseas.

Mailing List

Members, Associate Members and Prospective Members are all on a single mailing list hosted by Yahoo Groups. Friendly and chatty emails are sent out weekly with details of the upcoming walks, social events and weekends away. Only Moderators can send email which avoids trivial messages and SPAM.

The Mailing List can be exported to an excel spreadsheet and this shows the date of joining the list. The list is compared with the list of members, which comes from the RA and a list of known associate members (i.e. Members of other RA groups) which then leaves the group of prospective members, who can be chased up to join the club after a month or two.

People can add their address to the email directly by entering their email address into a box on the mailing list page of the CWW website.

Website

Our main marketing tool is our website. This has been constructed in a quite clear and easy to understand format, but has elements ensure that it is kept up to date.

Specific elements to help this are

1. Picasa

Picasa is a free web based photo service from Google and we have embedded this into the front page of the website and constructed a storyboard showing typical activities and this includes captions with additional information. It gives prospective members an idea of the activities and the type and age of people they are likely to meet on one of our walks or social events.

Rights to add or remove photos and captions are given to specific members of the CWW committee.

2. Google Calendar

We had the issue that the task of compiling the walks programme was shared and as a tool we looked at the Free Google calendar so that those working on the calendar could see what the other had already planned.

We have since embedded the calendar in the website and this has been enthusiastically received

We have now expanded this greatly and here is a list of areas where Google calendar can help a club.

Planning

• Walk Coordinators can see what each other has planned
• Members can look at the Calendar to find dates which are still free and then contact the walks coordinators to add a walk.
• We haven’t done this yet, but one could make this available to neighbouring clubs to facilitate joint walks.

Other Features

• The walks can be printed out in different formats such as a list or calendar and can be used to compile the weekly emails.
• Social Events and weekends away are shown in different colours
• Events can be updated to show if space is still available on events.
• The calendar can be accessed as a feed via Microsoft Outlook so that one can “drag and drop” events into the work calendar.

3. Google Maps

Google Calendar links in with Google maps. New walkers are much more likely to try to find the starting point of a walk via Google maps or via Sat Nav than via the OS Grid Reference.

The 6 digit OS Reference defines a square of 100m by 100m. The Global Coordinates are accurate to the nearest parking space in a car park.

For instance, for the walk, which started in Berkhampstead. The Information on the calendar for where the walk was:

Outside Tescos, High Street, Berkhamsted @51.760151, -0.56355 (map)

And this gives a very accurate starting point. In a town, the post code would also be reasonable accurate but as many of our walks start in the middle of nowhere, the coordinates are the best solution.

Additionally with most Sat Nav units, it’s possible to enter the coordinates directly. Usually go to “Where to” then “Coordinates”.

Facebook

CWW has been using Facebook for well over a year and we have 118 people registered on it. This is used as a forum with real comments from real participants good or bad and a place to put photos.

CWW would like to gain funding to trial Facebook targeted advertising. Facebook is unique in the way adverts can be targeted. They can be targeted by geography, age and interests and here is an example of how we could target adverts.

Facebook advert costs

I’ve tried this for a language club and paid on a “pay per click” basis. During this trial we had 16000 impressions (the little adverts on the right hand side of the screen) and about 20 clicks which cost around £4.00 in total.

This is much more efficient than printing leaflets as you would only target those in the age range and who have listed walking as an interest.