Communication failure - East-West day

[LostDoggy]

Yes, it has been and gone.

If it wasn't for this forum, many of the 300 or so supporters would not have turned up. Communication was very poor with an opportunity lost.
Lost memebership sales, food & drinks sponsored by the hard working East West group, and even the effort with tents etc.

So what can done about it?

For all who have signed up for this year (or did last year), we had the option of providing our email address.

Would you mind the club sending an email to members, of any upcoming 'significant' event?

One simple email could have hit the 'hard core' supporters, who inturn could spread the news.

Your thoughts?

[GVGjr]

Yes it wasn't a good turn out and so many people didn't even know that it was on. In previous year there has been constant reminders. I think we would have missed on getting some more members signed up.

[westdog54]

Cyberdoggie had similar concerns over the intra-club match.

Granted, the club have been trying to get the game moved, but its now only a week and a half away, and the 'news' was broken by TCD both here on BF.

Surely communication breakdowns such as this cannot be solely attributed to the redevelopment and working around it, the club still has to be able to effectively operate.

[Cyberdoggie]

Cyberdoggie had similar concerns over the intra-club match.

Granted, the club have been trying to get the game moved, but its now only a week and a half away, and the 'news' was broken by TCD both here on BF.

Surely communication breakdowns such as this cannot be solely attributed to the redevelopment and working around it, the club still has to be able to effectively operate.

yeah i was hounding tcd about it after the emw day, i think that sparked him to ring the club up and hassle them.


I'm also concerned about the membership packages and cards.
Seems each year they are arriving later and later. From memory they arrived last
year only a few weeks to spare.
last time i checked i'm sure we weren't a government department

someone needs to get out the preverbial whip and start crackin it!

[bornadog]

I think the East/West family day needs to be held in early February, not in the middle of school holidays when many are still away and not thinking of football. The ideal scenario is to have the intra club practise match followed by the meet and greet players. A ground in the eastern burbs would need to be found and communication obviosely has to be better. Personally, I find the east/West supporter group to be a bit amatuerish, and I am sorry if I offend any one, but Football is now big business and with membership approaching 30,000 things have to change.

[Mantis]

I think the East/West family day needs to be held in early February, not in the middle of school holidays when many are still away and not thinking of football. The ideal scenario is to have the intra club practise match followed by the meet and greet players. A ground in the eastern burbs would need to be found and communication obviosely has to be better. Personally, I find the east/West supporter group to be a bit amatuerish, and I am sorry if I offend any one, but Football is now big business and with membership approaching 30,000 things have to change.

What's the saying, 'If you want something done right you got to do it yourself'.

[GVGjr]

I think the East/West family day needs to be held in early February, not in the middle of school holidays when many are still away and not thinking of football. The ideal scenario is to have the intra club practise match followed by the meet and greet players. A ground in the eastern burbs would need to be found and communication obviosely has to be better. Personally, I find the east/West supporter group to be a bit amatuerish, and I am sorry if I offend any one, but Football is now big business and with membership approaching 30,000 things have to change.

I have been a member for a few years and and I have found them very professional. The work that Gwen McBeth has done to turn that group around has been impressive. Having said that, the day wasn't up to scratch or even the standard set in previous years for that matter.
Now that the club are coordinating all the supporter groups you would expect an improved day. Perhaps the communication lapse was due to the club not pushing the day well enough but every other year we have know about it three weeks before the day with constant reminders.

I have seen some of the things American sport does to entice and delight the supporters and we are a long way off the ball in that regard. It's probably due to the constant pressure on the budget but as Raw Toast always tells me, there is plenty of cost effective ways of getting the word out. Given that in previous years more members are generally signing up on the day it was certainly a missed opportunity in my opinion.

[MrMahatma]

Doesn't cost THAT much to do a mail out to all last year's members, a letter box drop to a few thousand houses surrounding the area and, of course, local PR is going to be free.

No real reason why something like this shouldn't get more support, and it'd pay itself off easily with membership sales.

[always right]

Doesn't cost THAT much to do a mail out to all last year's members, a letter box drop to a few thousand houses surrounding the area and, of course, local PR is going to be free.

No real reason why something like this shouldn't get more support, and it'd pay itself off easily with membership sales.

Letter drop to a few thousand houses:eek: Do you mean letterboxing it to addresses of existing members in the region, or a random few thousand? If it's the latter, I have no idea which houses you would target as I imagine the catchment area for people to travel to a place like Wesley College is quite wide. I know in my suburb alone you could letterbox three thousand homes and hit about 6 Bulldogs supporters.

I think a smarter way would be to run ads in the local suburban newspapers on top of an email and website alert.

[hujsh]

Letter drop to a few thousand houses:eek: Do you mean letterboxing it to addresses of existing members in the region, or a random few thousand? If it's the latter, I have no idea which houses you would target as I imagine the catchment area for people to travel to a place like Wesley College is quite wide. I know in my suburb alone you could letterbox three thousand homes and hit about 6 Bulldogs supporters.

I think a smarter way would be to run ads in the local suburban newspapers on top of an email and website alert.

Maybe a plane can drop them from the sky.

[Cyberdoggie]

Maybe a plane can drop them from the sky.

i don't know about a letter drop as, it is glen waverley and you'd be lucky if 3% of the population would follow the dogs. The idea is that people from the entire eastern suburbs can use the opportunity to sign up and get an autograph. Although i think it could be a good idea to advertise at the glen shopping centre prior to the event.

I don't have a problem with the date (ie january) i just think the club wasn't up to it's usual standards in getting the word out this year, as they have been with a lot of things.
This could be because they are under staffed due to other committments, or perhaps a change in staff?

What i'm getting at is that this should be pencilled in the calender permanently and the club should push each upcoming event the same way. The website, magazine and emails can do the job fine but for the east west day there was nothing.

[LostDoggy]

One easy way of getting the word out is to utilise sites like this. It wouldnt cost anything and would have hit 140 members plus any guests that just visit the site. There is heaps of inexpensive ways of contacting members.

[LostDoggy]

I appreciate the discussion provided so far, the club can't change what has happened, they can only move forward.

If 25 percent of the club members provided their email details on their membership application, that would have been well over 6,000 people who could have been contacted directly by a push of the button.

Would you mind the club contacting you by email about important events?

[The Coon Dog]

I appreciate the discussion provided so far, the club can't change what has happened, they can only move forward.

If 25 percent of the club members provided their email details on their membership application, that would have been well over 6,000 people who could have been contacted directly by a push of the button.

Would you mind the club contacting you by email about important events?

I always get emails from the club.

Looks like this:
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/3300/65147797ep5.jpg

[LostDoggy]

I got that email too.

And just got another dated the 31st Jan

[LostDoggy]

If we are serious about this issue, there needs to be a small review about what went wrong and why, and what the aim of such days is. And how to effectively achieve these goals. And does it matter? If you are arguing that its all about membership, then I'm sure members can be garnered from other days. Did we miss people who now won't join or did we miss those who will join anyway?

Without doubt, emailing would appear to be the easiest and most cost effective way of communicating. Posting out separate notices would be expensive and time consuming.

Maybe a leaflet or sticky to go on the fridge which highlights the key dates to remember, could go out with membership packs.

I think there is also some merit in getting people used to events occuring on the same day each year, such as the last day in January or whatever.

Just some ideas off the top of my head, said without any knowledge of how these things work.

[Cyberdoggie]

for me the problem is that there has been a string of instances where notification or organization hasn't been up to scratch.

the last time this was the case was back in the rohde era.
I can remember getting told off by someone from the club on bf because i made a post questioning the club and the football department and some of their decisions throughout the year, in particular playing daniel gia after he had injured his shoulder with only a handfull of games left in the season, despite the fact we were last on the ladder.
I questioned this because it would make sense to get him operated on and give him a full pre-season rather then play meaningless games. Someone at the club didn't agree with me and publicly had a go at me for saying it.

I like to think we are a far more professional outfit top to bottom these days, so that is probably why i don't like it when these things start to occur.

[alwaysadog]

In the past we have had plenty of warning/encouragement about the event.

We have new communications people and this is one test they failed. We don't need a review all we need is for them to go to the files and find out how we did it other years.

No point doing it and not worth the time and effort of the East West group if the club isn't fully behind it.

I went because I got a wake up call from GVG jn otherwise I would still have been waiting for the club to spruik the event.

[MrMahatma]

i don't know about a letter drop as, it is glen waverley and you'd be lucky if 3% of the population would follow the dogs. The idea is that people from the entire eastern suburbs can use the opportunity to sign up and get an autograph. Although i think it could be a good idea to advertise at the glen shopping centre prior to the event.

I don't have a problem with the date (ie january) i just think the club wasn't up to it's usual standards in getting the word out this year, as they have been with a lot of things.
This could be because they are under staffed due to other committments, or perhaps a change in staff?

What i'm getting at is that this should be pencilled in the calender permanently and the club should push each upcoming event the same way. The website, magazine and emails can do the job fine but for the east west day there was nothing.

Most DM campaigns, even with addresses, names etc, would have response rates of around 4-6%. It's as much about the proposition/message as it is about anything.

I'm not sure of the whole strategy behind the day, but I figure it's to get members. If they were smart, they'd be getting people to sign up, at the very least, to mailing lists that day so that next year they've got a list of people in the area to automatically invite - further, they should be able to mail all members who live within a commutable distance (be that 10km, 15km...whatever), should capture email addresses of all members, and better yet put in the Ts&Cs that being a lapsed member doesn't automatically remove you from the mailing list, so they should be able to mail past members over, I'd have thought, the last 2 or 3 years (although I'm not sure of current data handling laws).

Over and above getting doggies supporters to be members, I'd assume it's also about giving the club some more profile in that area and hopefully getting some new supporters (not just members), giving families something to come along to, and even opposition supporters something to come and watch during the footy starved off season.

It's all about what they're selling/how they're selling it. In DM piece to current/past members you say 'come see the dogs, support our club, get autographs, sign up for 08' , in blanket mailings you push the family day out aspect of it, kids get facepaint, have a photo with Woofa, blah blah'

Should be able to get good numbers to these things. It's not rocket science.

[LostDoggy]

Thanks TCD for info on the Bulldogs Direct mail out - I currently don't receive it and will take steps to be added to the mail out list.

Bulldog Direct would have been the perfect tool to inform us of this event - unfortunately, the opportunity has been missed and they can only learn from it.