Conversion Rates
What is your conversion rate? In Internet marketing speak they call when a user clicks from the front page to a sales page the click-through. In terms of membership organizations, the conversion rate is the rate at which you turn visitors into members? It is a little similar.
So what is the best way to convert guests to members? An Open House.
Open houses give you an opportunity to show off what your organization has to offer without the rigid formality of a standard meeting. It also might add an element that many college students find important, free food. I remember during undergrad and grad school, the organizations that had the most new members were the ones that had the best free food.
A lot of churches have forgotten this important membership building tool. My 93 year old Great Uncle has told me many stories of his famous pancake breakfasts. At these events, hundreds of people would come through the doors to have some free pancakes. Did they get every one of those people through the door to become members? No, but for open houses you are looking at the numbers.
It could be that you find your normal conversion rate is 1 in 5. So for every five visitors you get 1 new member. What if you are only getting one guest at each meeting? That means it takes 5 meetings before you convert a guest. What happens at a well organized and publicized open house? Maybe you get 100 guests? It could so happen that due to the nature of the event you get 1 in 10 guests to join your organization. That is still 10 new members in 1 meeting instead of 1 new member in five meetings. Under you old method it might have taken 50 meetings to get that many new members.
Think about if you made it a goal to have an open house every quarter? Even if you were at 1 in 20, you would still beat your old membership conversion rates. So I ask you, when was the last time you had an open house?
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