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Re: Using the internet to sign-on shareholders



At 08:13 AM 12/2/98 -0800, Christine Fowler wrote:
>You said in the following posting, "I'm not sure that we could justify 
>our web page if we had to pay for it given our traffic level. However, 
>most of the querries we receive from it, do end up joining."
>
>How would you characterize your traffic level?  And about how many 
>queries and new memberships has it generated?  AND, the big question:  
>how many of those new internet-generated memberships do you retain from 
>season to season?
>
>We want to increase our membership, and we dream of finding additional 
>shareholders who are likely to be committed to the farm and csa for the 
>long-term.  We're wondering how to do this here in the seacoast region 
>of NH.
>
>Thanks!
>
>Chrissy Fowler
>
>Christine H. Fowler
>ktaadn_me@hotmail.com
>Mill Valley Farm CSA, Stratham, NH
>
Our high point has been about 10-15 % of total shareholders recruited via
internet methods, either by their stumbling upon the page independently or
being told by a friend or poster that they could obtain a contract online
at our URL. (the internet contract looks somewhat different than our
regular paper contract so we can easily tell who came from where: we also
do coding when we attend different promotional events to track or
recruiting success.) In addition to shareholders for our own CSA we also
get at least 1 or 2 people a month who want to join CSAs in other areas who
are asking for our assistance, usually Chicago. We have been referring them
to Angelic. I'm sure there are others of you out there wanting to sell in
Chi-twon, if you're on this list, let me know and I'll spread the wealth.

I haven't went back through to check our retention on internet-obtained
shareholders, but it sounds like an interesting project (shouldn't take
more than an hour tops). My guess it would be similar (possibly higher)
to(than) our other shareholders. I would like to believe that internet
recruited people might actually read the brochure and contract instead of
blindly signing as our shareholders do their traditionally obtained
materials--I'll have to see if the numbers bear out this fantasy. Our
current overall turnover is about 35% given the transient nature of our
university community and a really great farmers market (which are farmers
also are at, oh well). 

To date, our best recruitment device tends to be our existing shareholders
both in terms of quantity and quality (perennially returning shareholders)
We try to send at least one extra brochure/contract out with each of them
toward the end of the season and encourage them to bring their
friends/colleagues/family to our end of season potluck. Typically they
bring in the people they've shared their share with while they were on
vacation or during the high point of the season, or people they've
acquainted with our produce through neighborhood bbqs and potlucks. Having
our shareholders give out the brochures directly works much better than
having them give us names for mailings. We find that context and "peer
pressure" are necessary elements to successful recruiting.

Because we realize that our site isn't our primary recruiting tool, we like
to keep it useful by posting related educational material, e.g. organic
standards and nutrition. This way our shareholders can get the info. when
they want it and easily pass it along. We'll be posting some more material
(pulled together by one of our shareholder volunteers) on production
practices (crop rotation) and health issues (endocrine disrupters) later on
this winter. We also want to put up a virtual farm tour, color share photos
(under the working title of "Show Me the Vegetables!"), and an archive of
the newsletters, since many are in PDF format.

You have to figure out the costs for yourself, however with the emergence
of several free hosting services, you might be able to run a fairly
low-cost experiment. One word of warning, the most I would attempt to do
with a site during the season is uploading newsletters (which we didn't
manage to get done (even with a dedicated volunteer) this year but may
next). And test your site on a variety of machines and monitors.

 



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