Posted by Harley Cartee in Proposal: a fun, rewarding referral program

Posted by Fleet Captain Geoff Joosten (Gamemaster Director) in Proposal: a fun, rewarding referral program

Posted by Fleet Captain Geoff Joosten (Gamemaster Director) in Proposal: a fun, rewarding referral program
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Problem

For reasons stated in the last Personnel Department report and in subsequent posts, we’re not recruiting enough members to STF. While that discussion is also raising issues about what the cause of the problem is, and why it may have occurred suddenly, it does not change the fact that we need to be thinking ‘outside-the-box’ when it comes to ways to get people to join the club.

One area we really need to take advantage of is our own members’ ability to sell and promote STF.

Proposal

I am proposing a referral system, where there’s some kind of in-club reward to members for making a referral (either a reward based on number of referrals, or based on a referral staying active for at least a certain period of time - the details can be worked out).

There’s lots of room to brainstorm what the reward will be… Some ideas I’ve discussed or heard privately include some special tech for one of your characters to get to use in an upcoming sim, some special Federation medal on your profile, etc. Again, the details can be worked out.

Discussion

Some useful discussion topics:

1) Is there any downside to this at all?

2) Who should be in charge of the referral system? (My suggestion is the PDept since we are basically tracking all of this info anyway.)

3) Should whoever be in charge of the referral system have the authority to set out the reward(s) or should that be set out more formally?

4) On a related point, there may be a few logistical issues to some of the rewards. For example, we might want the EDept to put together a list of “reward in-character tech” in consultation with the GM Dept. We may need to consult with TECH if we’re going to add things to people’s profiles. But I really, really want to avoid this getting bogged down in details and nothing comes of it…

Daniel

So… I don’t have a strong opinion about this… but I had some thoughts.

Shouldn’t the incentive for recruiting people be that you get to do something fun with your friends? Why do we need an incentive on top of that?

Do we know that there actually is a pool of people that could be recruitable but isn’t right now because there is insufficient incentive to do so? I mean, I think Amber DeSadier (there is a measurable membership spike of like 10 people in December 2012 that is entirely attributable to her) and Amanda Mercer have recruited large numbers of people into the club, but I think they’re outliers.

An in character thingy as a reward seems like it’s very difficult to do, because that would involve coordinating with lots of people to come up with something useful. Plus, it doesn’t seem very valuable, because you can almost always make up some cool thing that your character has anyway. Why not an out of character reward, like a promotion or something?

Joe

There may be a situation of people just not thinking of referring people. Having a sort of unique incentive may create some additional referrals from people who never considered it before. Even a few referrals every so often may help, and by increasing those who are incentivized (may have just made up a word?) to refer people they know increases the spread of sources of recruitment.

In terms of rewards, I’m just giving some examples of possible ways this could work. If there’s enough buy-in to try this out, and if it is the PDept who takes responsibility, I think the next step is some brainstorming threads in the PDept board about possible incentives and levels for different incentives. That would then lead to an actual plan to try out.

This shouldn’t be the only proposal coming out of the discussion. It’s just the first “out-of-the-box” idea I thought of that didn’t seem too hard to try to put in place.

Daniel

So, here are my thoughts off the top of my head, in no particular order. I will be picking on Lindsey and Sam throughout this brain storm for no other reason than they are fellow GMDept Staff and I can and I hate saying Player A, Player B etc:

1) I don’t think STF is currently architected in such a way as to give “tangible” rewards. Special items, or benefits, would be difficult because then we would have to template out a “load out” for each character. For example Lindsey is a Cadet… What items does she default have? Phaser, tricorder, uniform… At the end of the SIM does this item just poof? Does the GMDept need to notify the PDept? “Hey Sam used his Geoff’s Gizmo 3000 and I caused it to break on 7/11”

2) Does Lindsey get a benefit for returning members? Lindsey gets Geoff to rejoin, does she get the reward?

3) What I would suggest, perhaps, is more of a service bar type system that can be hung on our profiles. We could expand it to include multiple things such as:
* Passing Exams
* Graduating from the Academy
* Club rank (already exists)
* Years of Sevice
* Membership Ribbon for 5, 10, and 15 members

4) How long does the person have to stay to get the reward? I can go get 10 people to sign up right now and get that hot loots. I would propose the recruit has to stick around for 30 days, staying within AWOL limits, before the award is given.

5) Special recognition at the Emmas?

6) Word of mouth is always going to be our best recruitment tool.

Like I said just me brainstorming. Do with it what you will.

Geoff

I promise I will learn how formatting works one of these days, just not today apparently.

Geoff

I hesitate to add my two cents but I may as well. I agree that there really isn’t much of a downside to creating some sort of referral program, whatever form it may eventually take. I’m just afraid that it won’t really solve the problem and a lot of people are most likely going to be doing a lot of work to get it up and going. I believe the problem is within the trek franchise itself. Trek used to about the story, the characters, the relationships… everything else was just icing on the cake. That’s what made most of us fall so much in love with the Trek universe that we give a chunk of our time playing in it. That’s what is so great about this club as well. The message board style system of rpg that we enjoy, really only works when you focus on the story, characters, etc.

However, Trek has been moving away from that for quite some time. It started with the Abrams movies and has continued with Discovery. The old fans are still watching because we are so hungry for Trek that we will watch no matter what. But the new fans being brought in are attracted to the visuals and the action. Something that we really cannot compete with. I agree that there is a problem as stated that needs to be addressed. But if we are going to think outside the box, then let’s think outside the box. A referral program, while not a bad thing in anyway, is not exactly a new idea. Unfortunately, I don’t have one… yet.

I see a glimmer of hope on the horizon with the Picard series coming. Only time will tell. Anyway, a lot of words from me and not much contribution. If a referral program is started I will lend my hand anyway that I can.

-Harley

While I don’t disagree with Harley, I’d like to point out that the statistics suggest that the problems we are currently facing are a recent phenomenon rather than one we’ve been dealing with for some time. Like, those graphs seem to indicate a dropoff in activity that happened at either the end of April or beginning of May of this year. But new content in the Star Trek franchise as a whole has been pretty awful for 15 years or more.

Unless the Season 2 finale of Discovery was unusually depressing (which, actually, I have to admit I found it to be that way), I don’t think we can pin all of the blame on the Star Trek franchise. Even if we could, it’s still something we have to deal with.

Joe