Trying something new

YMX is like a laboratory. We try things all the time. Some things work out great and other things… not so great.

Great things…  new registration process, new tabs on the main page, youthministrytips.com, youthministrypro.com, blog network, and at least one other good idea.

Not so great things… youthministryclassifieds.com, ymxhosting.com, all access, and a few others too embarrassing to mention in public.

We consider ourselves to be innovators.  And like every innovator we have a failure rate we are proud of. If we hadn’t tried all of those stupid ideas we wouldn’t have found the 3-4 that are working.

Anyway, enough babble. Here’s what we are doing that is new. For ages, millenia even, we have sent new forum members an email. It was a nice email… in fact we still send it because it gives lots of info.  But yesterday we started doing something different. When I see someone has joined I’ve been shooting them a simple two sentence “hi” message. And so far I’ve gotten a 75% response rate. How cool is that? We’ve sent out hundreds and hundreds of the other notes and rarely gotten a response. (+/- 1%)

Here’s a sample of what I’m e-mailing. It’s different each time depending on my mood. 

Hi! I’ve bumped up your account so that you can see way more of the forums. Welcome to the most amazing community in the history of the world. Go get ‘em. Peace out. Got questions? I’m your man. - Adam

So here’s the thing. What is it about this type of quickie email that makes you want to respond when the one full of information isn’t? 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 5:01 am and is filed under Forum News, Site News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.