Attracting new members, Promoting the club

[John Diaz]

I'm a 35 year old 356 owner. I love my 356 so much I even started learning German through a free phone app. Ultimately what brought me here was the need for information on my car. That's the only reason I joined and paid for my membership. I have come to love the magazine but if I sold my car Im not sure I would still be here, in all honesty. I don't even remember what I paid to renew but without my car I figure I would rather spend my money on something else.
Too bad there can't be a hybrid solution of opening up the general forum for the public but keep all other sections such as classifieds etc for members only. Or once a member pays for a year membership, they could still have access to at least the forums even if they don't renew later on. At a minimum it would at least curve the attrition.
That's one way I could view myself still dropping in even though I've parted with my car.
Ultimately there are free forums that could scratch my porsche itch, samba for example, until I became a 356 owner again.
Another great point is exposure. My love for Italian cars came from a friend that owns a few. Otherwise I would have no clue about Italian cars. Same with the 356. I just happen to be working on a home where the owner had one in his garage. He was nice enough to show me the car and the rest was history. I consider myself a car guy, but in 30 years my exposure had been limited to concours events. Not the place to sit, touch, feel and fall in love. Most of the older owners grew up with these cars and were exposed to them naturally over the years. I never even really knew of their existence, even though I LOVE cars.
Lastly, I think joining with other similar forums is key. I would have never considered karmann ghia or a 912 before owning my 356. Now I casually browse the forums looking at those cars. My automotive ADD leads me to believe I will own those at some point. My generation doesn't just own a dream car and call it a day. With the internet and ease of tranactions we turn over our dream car inventory from time to time.

Excuse the brief ending but my terror of a princess's nap time is over.

Until bedtime! Lol

[Rusty Ferrell]

Newest family 356 enthusiast; my 15 month old Greandson.
Showed up with his new shirt for a night out for Mexican.

[Adam Wright]

You can also put them to work, this is my nephew Calder Wright at the Hershey Swap, he loved it!

[Rhys and Karisa Haydon]

Just wanted to keep this thread active.
Do we have a place to discuss maybe offering New Member Membership options? I just spoke with a gentleman who is looking to get his first 356 and its hard to ask someone to commit to the club before they have a car even... Would be nice to have a welcome rate of membership, or something of the like. Also, when I received my New Member Packet I was blown away and stoked on what all is included!! Lets make that more public, if it isn't already...
My vote would maybe be for new members to get half off the first year.

[Mike Wilson]

You raise an interesting point. Having guest access to the Forum would be an excellent opportunity for those considering purchasing their first 356 to ask questions so they could be more informed prior to a purchase.

[Rhys and Karisa Haydon]

Mike, That would be a great idea in my book! If we only are allowing people to view the posts, we are not allowing them to interact with the community. Some people just need a little more interactive guidance.

[Jerry Henning]

This subject keeps coming up, but not ever thoroughly explored for its up and downsides. So answer me this. I haven't figured out a good solution for this myself.

If we open up the forum for guest access and posting, what is to stop just any yahoo from coming on the forum and posting unrelated trash, unacceptable pictures, or just becoming an internet flaming opportunist? Opening up the forums (again) for all will drastically change the user experience for all - more than likely for the worse, not to mention the exponential workload increase on our volunteer moderators to monitor and clean up the unwanted pollution. If there is a way that we can have cake and eat it too, I (and supposedly the Registry Forum operators) would be likely to entertain it. The only thing I could think of, but may not be possible with our current forum software, would be to set up only one forum area that the guest accounts could post to, thereby limiting the guest posting access to one area only, not on the main forums, and not to classifieds. Other ideas?

[Mike Wilson]

Good points, Jerry and thanks for bringing them up. One way to screen guests would be to have them submit posts to a separate area where they can be scrutinized by a moderator. If the post is acceptable, it gets forwarded to the Forum. I know that this would create a huge burden on the moderators. In addition, or another way, would be to limit the number of posts by a guest. I think in the past, there was a time limit on how long you could be a guest. This, too, could be another management tool.

[Matthew Devereux]

This forum is barely active. I don't see how that is supporting the club.

[Jerry Henning]

This forum is barely active. I don't see how that is supporting the club.

??? Comment not understood. Maybe I don't understand the context of your response, but the Porsche 356 Forum is a VERY active forum. It provides a great of amount of support for all kinds of club members. Please explain your comment if you will.

[Ron LaDow]

I count ~40 posts today (5PM my time) just in this forum. For tech question on a 50YO car, that sounds fairly active to me.

[Matthew Devereux]

As I have said before we are the only forum out there that charges to participate. Its highly unusual and surely turns away lots of folks who can participate in other forums for free. We know we have lost lots of forum participants for various reasons. This approach is exclusive and not inclusive. Its pretty clear that there is no will from the old members to change that. I don't know why I keep making this point only to be challenged. That is fine but let's not wonder why the newer members aren't showing up.

[Jerry Henning]

That is fine but let's not wonder why the newer members aren't showing up.

??? I don't undertsand this one either - by the statistics on this forum, there have been 158 members join since January 1 of this year. Thats more than one a day.

[Matthew Devereux]

That is fine but let's not wonder why the newer members aren't showing up.

??? I don't undertsand this one either - by the statistics on this forum, there have been 158 members join since January 1 of this year. Thats more than one a day.

???? Lets look at the subject of this thread.

[Ron LaDow]

???? Lets look at the subject of this thread.

OK:
"Attracting new members, Promoting the club"
Per Jerry:
"...by the statistics on this forum, there have been 158 members join since January 1 of this year. Thats more than one a day."

Matthew, do you have a goal in mind that isn't being met?