Turning "oh, cool" into "sign me up!"

[grammar king mike]

Fresher's Week and the first few weeks of term are when most societies gain numbers in membership. Does anyone have any tactics for turning people who seem interested into fully-fledged members? Since Edinburgh is one of the newest societies here, it would be good for us if more experienced people share advice on such an issue.

[norman]

1) Make your society their life - offer the full social package, friends, nights out, mentoring, etc.

2) Make what you do relavent to them - offer things liek city tours, tips on settling in, ready made friends.

3) Offer them soemthing in return - real discounts on events or products, exclusive access to things they want or need.

[Jenna]

Also drum home how good active membership in socs looks on their cv.

Make the soc look active, have evidence that you do go out, do have lively debates.

Tell them they can have lots of input into the soc's activities.

[AlexMagd]

Everything that's been said, plus:

1) Follow up with a social straight away. We have Freshers Fair and then let anyone interested in the society know that we're running a drinks social the following Friday (phrases like 'all you can drink for a fiver' make freshers happy!)

2) We use copies of the Secular Student to show people how interesting, fun-loving but also philosophical we can be. Failing that, nicely printed termcards work wonders; they let potential members see how many interesting events you have planned plus if nicely presented are pretty attractive on their own.

[norman]

It's all about making it personally and financially impossible notto sign up.

It is about making sure that the society is the firendship group and that the membership fee etc is enough to make people feel that they need their money's worth.

[Chris Worfolk]

Well unfortunately when it comes to signing people up in the first few weeks it's hard to impress people with our dazzling arrange of activites but they don't tend to turn up to any of them until they have made the decision to sign up so a lot of the excellent things we do don't really tend to get people into a "sign me up" attitude.

The number one thing we probably need to do is get out there and talk to people. Having people sat behind a desk in a big line of societies during Freshers' Week doesn't look too appealing. We need to be all over campus with stalls, stood in front of them chatting to everyone as they go past.

Also present a good brand - this year we're going to make sure that everyone is in A-Soc t-shirts and hoodies. When people join a society when they first come to uni they really want to be part of something and do something worthwhile. Nothing says we're a real, worthwhile society like branded clothing :D.

We offer membership packs which are just plastic bags with an intro leaflet, flyers, freebies, etc though I'm not sure how much that actually encourages people.

[AlexMagd]

Also present a good brand - this year we're going to make sure that everyone is in A-Soc t-shirts and hoodies. When people join a society when they first come to uni they really want to be part of something and do something worthwhile. Nothing says we're a real, worthwhile society like branded clothing :D.

We offer membership packs which are just plastic bags with an intro leaflet, flyers, freebies, etc though I'm not sure how much that actually encourages people.

^^ This!

Making yourselves look professional (i.e. with matching t-shirts or whatever) can be really helpful, and if they're fun t-shirts (like the Darwin is sexy one) then all the better. We have a massive banner that we usually prop up behind the stall, which really draws people in. It's all about catching people's attention.

In my experience, free stuff is good. Those membership packs sound good to me :)

This is basically how our stall looked this year, and we got about 500 signatures if I remember correctly (not all of them joined up of course, but they're all on the mailing list)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v481/Bhs_2004/n36818912_34915511_9782.jpg

[Chris Worfolk]

Good stuff. That photo reminds me of another tip - have girls on your stall. Guys are fine approaching girls or guys, girls on the other hand may be put off if there is just a males on a stall. And that tends to turn into a somewhat self perpetuating cycle.

[AlexMagd]

Ursula was our President at the time so we weren't really misrepresenting our membership, but it is good to show some diversity at Freshers Fair. Most of our lechy, not-very-good-around-girls members had left by then (hello anyone at Oxford reading this, you know who you are) so we were starting to get a little more balance.