Yep I rate that. Good story.

I'm a Social Gold member and an AFL (Carlton club support) member as well.

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Today, when I take a close look at my Baggy Green, as I often do, I see mateship, camaraderie and teamwork, and a sense of belonging. I hope that its legacy lives on and the spirit it provides stays strong. Stephen 'Tugga' Waugh - Never Say Die.

HEY.............

my MEMBER'S a member...............!

get on board folk........!


kindest regards tommi











mymember'snotreallyamember.................iwasbeingsilly.........!

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that'siti'mnotchangingthistagain......!

Interesting reason he gave for not having a membership last year - said it was a certain player still being on the list, and further said he was still on our list this year - obviously not referring to Camporeale.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Back to membership......The season is a few weeks away. I haven't renewed yet for cash flow reasons, but will do. Have I had a reminder letter from the club? A phone call? An e-mail? Nothing, haven't heard a peep.

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"I had to eat"

Membership department is crap from my own experience (under respourced and no technology to be able to do decent database marketing). However it is a catch 22 situation. The club has so little cash that the club can not even afford to invest in this vital area.

A decent database that would allow effective telemarketing would be a start (e.g. NBH has not yet renewed and has not heard from the club, but myself and my wife got "calls" from Kouta asking us to sign up long after we had renewed our meberships). Next step would be a system where seat allocations can be done more effectively etc.

Renewing my membership this morning was a mind-numbing experience. Thew telephone consultant couldn't have sounded less interested had he tried. Presumably this is an out-sourced operation, but the lack of enthusiasm, particularly after the news of the last couple of days is abysmal.

On top of that, there's no additional merchandising, and much to my surprise, they don't even ask for an e-mail address.

It is 2006, and most people have e-mail. Surely this should be a mandatory question. I don't think any applicant would object, and the club is denying itself a marketing opportunity.

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"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything." Oscar Wilde

Yep, I volunteered to do it in 2003 & noticed the rest of the people they had on the phones were volunteers too.

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#DonTheStash

Mikkey sorry but being cashed reserve should have nothing to do with a database. For instanse, if you really wanted to you could do a MS Access database or even simpler an Excel spreadsheet. You don't need to fund such an exercise. I am sure the IT guy would be able to do one in an hour. Very disappointing to here.

Oh Surrey. How do you think the club currently stores its membership data? It will be a database of some description. Unless you're trying to tell me that each mailout I receive from the club is hand typed, of course the club has the information in a database.

Doing something with that data is a different story. Training and paying staff to call the 10K (I'm just guessing) currently un-renewed members is a large undertaking.

At the moment it sounds like the membership department is flat out just handling the renewals that come in. I'd love to see the club handle membership better, I think there are many areas that huge improvements can be made. But trivialising it as one hours work by an I.T. guy is either complete ignorance or just stupidity.

The stuff I'm suggesting from my previous post is not a cost issue, but simply a matter of having a scripted process for the operators. Finding a way to have the operators better motivated is another aspect that doesn't come down to cost.

The membership renewal (or even more importantly, the first time members) experience is probably the only direct contact with the club most people have each year, therefore it's crucial to get it right.

Make the experience positive and welcoming the first time, and they'll come back the next year.

As for reminding people to renew, a mail-out and e-mail reminder are good starts, assuming we get around to asking for an e-mail address.

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"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything." Oscar Wilde

You've got to be kidding me.

You can do mail outs, exports and many others, etc with any small databases ..eg... you can run queries/forms (access) , filters/pivot tables (excel), etc to get info out.

I just think it's a cop out. If you really want to you can do it without investing $$$$$$.

Sorry Surrey If our club reverted to compiling members details etc on an Access or Excel Database we really are in shit. Trust me I know. The company I work for did their books on excel a fews years ago and only had a crude debtors system to track outstanding monies. Note this is a company that employs 200+ staff and turns over 50mil pa. Pathetic but typical of the way this place is run.

All Carlton needs is a very simple system to track and record membership and members details and to allocate the revenue accordingly.

To be very honest however I suspect we already have one in place as I never fail to receive electronic updates or phone calls to but raffle tickets during the year.

Quite simply I suspect our Marketing department has no idea about promoting the club. The only people who seem to promote us is Collo and Malouf by using the media to promote our perilous situation to all and sundry hoping to incease membership by tugging at our heart strings and conscience.

I wouldnt be suprised that each department doesnt know how to work in unison with other departments to achieve club goals much the same as our team doesnt function well together. We probably have a lot of public servant plodders who have no real passion or enthusiasm for their career.
We need people who are passionate and innovative at all levels and we need those who make the ultimate decisions to be prepared to listen to these people and make gutsy decisions. We will never get anywhere unless we are prepared to step outside our comfort zone and have a go.

Exactly. But what are you going to do with the information? That's where the costs begin. The club does do mail outs, both email and paper. I'm not saying there isn't more they can do, but if the membership department is currently flat out just handling incoming memberships, what can they do?

Making the membership department more efficient and effective should be high on the clubs list of priorities. But to say it isn't a significant job, requiring money and time is just fanciful.

You may be right Jack. But without knowing what's going on behind the scenes it's impossible to know. You might have caught the person on the phone after they just missed their lunch break because the department is under resourced and under the pump. I'm not making excuses, and the membership department is under-performing, but you can't make conclusions based on one experience.

When I went and renewed my membership, I was helped by a pleasant guy, and it was quick and painless process. I couldn't ask for a lot more. They didn't ask me for my email address as I was renewing and thus they already had it. Were you renewing, or taking our a new membership?

I get the feeling that the membership department is just keeping its head above water. It's hard to make improvements like coming up with a script and training the staff to use it when you're flat out just getting all the memberships out the door by Round 1.

There is a fix to the problem, I just think you make it sound a litlte easier than it is. If you're right, and they have the staff to do the job properly but are still suffering the problems they seem to be currently then management is definitely not performing and something should have been done a few years ago.

I did it too CK.

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Witty signature required.

Guys they must do this because in years past I have received reminders etc when I've been a bit late renewing. We all got that SMS from Kouta a couple of weeks ago, where do you reckon the phone numbers for that came from? I got a mail out in Nov/Dec advertising early renewals, remeber you could get some calendar or something for an early renewal.

The info is obviously there if they've got my details, it must be in a deatabase somewhere and they are chasing up slack@rses like me (I've renewed 2 weeks ago). Maybe they arent chasing often or hard enough, but then again I am sick of people calling me and asking for $$$. Not everyone is as committed as the TC crew and all power to the volunteers, but it would be a tough sell for a voulunteer doing a cold call sale on a Carlton Membership, this week at least.

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"Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?" Billy Connolly

Any cold calling would be difficult - I had a really nice lady trying to sell me tickets in the $300 raffle, my heart was saying yes , but my head (and Mrs Agro) were saying no. I just couldn't afford it. But the memberships were paid for and generally we are good for some club merchandise come birthday's etc.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Surprised to see you posting in a Membership thread Surrey!

Bought one yet?

As a few others have said, great to see this thread....

I don't understand the people that won't buy/renew memberships "because we won't do anything this year". It's a p!55 poor excuse. The only valid reason would be due to finances.

Now more than ever is the time to get on board. I've been proud of the supporters who in 3 out of the last 4 years have broken membership records.....what other clubs can say that????

- Hawthorn supporters got on board when they were about to merge with Melbourne.
- St.Kilda supporters only got on board when their youngsters started kicking butt and with a premiership potentially being around the corner.
- Collingwood supporters set their records when Eddie jumped on board and they made Grand Finals

We are setting records when there is not much light at the end of the tunnel .......THAT'S LOYALTY and that's what true supporters do....let's hope it continues......

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That's right. Gather the nector my little drones and make honey. Honey for your children.......Fools!!!

Great post monty... So true!

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Witty signature required.