Membership list analysis

[Forumadmin]

Now is a good time of year to analyse the membership list as it has all the members from the previous year including those that have not renewed.
From the list on 13 March:

Paid up memberships 576 made up of 233 joint full members, 267 single full members making 733 voting members. Then 39 single associates and 17 joint associates and 20 juniors who are paid up but cannot vote. Then there are 45 former Jowett employees and 16 other complimentary Jowetteers sent out.


Of the 576 memberships 199 have not provided an email address to the membership sec. That is 34% although I know many of these who have email addresses.

38 of the 45 FJE do not have email. Amazingly seven do!

By the way only 472 of the 576 members have paid for this year. So we need to chase those 104 members to see why they have not renewed.

Now 37 of those non-renewals do not have email according to our records but that means 67 do , so how about emailing them.......

I have sent the membership sec a list of non-renewals separated into those with and those without email, each sorted by section. So if somebody in the section wants to chase then I am sure your section secs will be glad of the help. Just contact myself or Mo.

[robert lintott]

Some interesting points about JCC membership . I am Chairman of a local Branch of a national organisation ( non motoring) to which members belong and pay their subs, so our Branch is like a JCC section and we have about 100 of the national members and run events ,mostly monthly meetings with a speaker and lunch .

We decided to ask "our " members to let us have their email addresses to save on postage and give them more frequent reminders of meetings , other information and confirmation of bookings at meetings . Some committee members were pessimistic ,thinking members either didnt have emails or would not want us to have their personal details . We assured members their details would not be passed on outside the organisation and started a campaign . We now have about 90% of members on our email address list and are sure the rest are genuine non emailers , we still send them letters by post . Interestingly virtually all the members who are active in the Branch have email addresses.

So it can be done and in our case we are saving £££s pa on postage and communicating with our members more frequently. JCC and the Sections would benefit too. One thing to watch is that in emailing out to a list of members the address should be done so that it cannot be opened to disclose all the othe recipients addresses, people prefer to control their own privacy .( I do not know what JCC's privacy policy is but of course all the details are published in the magazine and membership lists ?)



Best wishes Bob

[Keith Clements]

All mass emails should use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC), not really because of privacy but because it reduces the possibility of a virus or a trogan horse exploit from extracting email addresses from your computers. Recently I have received a lot of emails that are suspicious from members of the JCC. Someone's computer has been infected.

Do not open any email that is short and does not make complete sense to you. It probably contains a link that, if you click it, will infect your computer.

[Jack]

We now have about 90% of members on our email address list and are sure the rest are genuine non emailers , we still send them letters by post . Interestingly virtually all the members who are active in the Branch have email addresses.

So it can be done and in our case we are saving £££s pa on postage and communicating with our members more frequently. JCC and the Sections would benefit too. One thing to watch is that in emailing out to a list of members the address should be done so that it cannot be opened to disclose all the othe recipients addresses, people prefer to control their own privacy .( I do not know what JCC's privacy policy is but of course all the details are published in the magazine and membership lists ?)

Best wishes Bob

Hi Bob,

As you know the JCC offers the Jowetteer by e-mail, and indeed having this mailing list has allowed us to co-ordinate things like the campaign for Classic Car of the Year, which happened in between Jowetteer publications, unfortunately within the club there are a number of members who seem to be threatened by the use of e-mails to improve communication, and as a result getting approval to use e-mails and the internet to our advantage as a club has been slow.

The potential postage costs to the club of using e-mail to distribute the Jowetteer are fairly clear to anyone who has read the club accounts, it is one of the biggest costs faced by the club every year.

When we send out the monthly e-mail we BCc all recipients on the mail, so they cannot contact each other or see each others e-mail addresses, this is to avoid the kind of spam issue created by everyone having a copy of everyone else's e-mail address. Of course, these e-mail addresses could be used to communicate with the membership more often, but we would need to ask permission in order to do this, as all e-mail subscriptions are now opt in under the Data Protection Act.

Within the sections this is less of an issue, as there are usually a smaller number of recipients and many of those communicating with each other already have addresses for each other from personal communications. I know of at least one section using e-mail as their primary means of communication with its members. It also makes it very easy to send a note to people who have not renewed asking if they had forgotten and getting some feedback on why they have not renewed so we can improve as a club and retain these members.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

It is not necessary for members to ask permission to email someone (or a number of people) provided the communication is personal or club related. Former subscription forms stated this but may have been omitted recently.

However I have maintained the on line form with this declaration.

The data you provide will be stored on computers for use by the club in administration, spares provision and for producing membership lists. Names and email addresses will also be available on the club web site and may be used for access control to the site. Information about the Jowett cars you own or have owned may also be stored. By providing the information you are giving your consent for such use.
I confirm I give my consent for the Jowett Car Club Limited to store the information I provide electronically and that I will not distribute information on other members to non-members without authorisation from the club executive. A signature is required below for hand written forms. For electronic documents the email is regarded as the declaration of acceptance.

[Jack]

It is not necessary for members to ask permission to email someone (or a number of people) provided the communication is personal or club related. Former subscription forms stated this but may have been omitted recently.

One to consider, if people violently object to their data being held (for example in a previous register of vehicles) they are entitled to have it removed from our database. So a registrar for example could be asked to remove all data relating to a particlar person and their former ownership of cars or current cars owned. Several recent cases where people have pursued companies like Facebook regarding exactly this sort of thing, where the company (in this case the club, though we are a company too) is forced to give up and remove all information about people.

This is not a real issue in the club because most people tend to either keep all data secret (not sharing their e-mail address, vehicle details, or other info) or they provide it and recognise that it is likely to be kept by the club even if they subsequently leave. So very few ask for such a retraction of data, but the law does allow for it if individuals choose to be taken "off the radar" so to speak.

Jack.