Club benefits - your ideas please...

[Karl V]

Following Alex's announcement that certain sections of the forum are going to become Members Only access - and why this is happening - I wanted to outline a number of other changes that we are working on in the background.

The focus is very much around reviewing and increasing membership benefits, which we hope will lead to growing membership numbers, which gives us more bargaining power on your behalf in the future; and so it goes on...

We have been taking some inspiration from other car clubs, but I'd love to hear from you if you have any leads on what could fairly easily be turned into an official Club benefit.

Please feel free to post here, PM me, or drop a line to membership - at - ariel.club

Or you could send a pigeon, but I'll probably be out...

[IanG]

Dead_pigeon.jpg (178.3 KiB) Viewed 706 times

No point in sending you a pigeon you killed the last one

[Karl V]

The 'benefit' of a windscreen...

[Trigger]

One thing the South East Lotus Owners Club (Seloc) do is send a calendar every year to paid up members. They are way bigger than our club - but its an idea. Maybe an extra amount would be needed to be paid but then I'm not sure that would matter if there was value.

T

[speedmachine]

I think its not a good idea to put more of the forum behind a membership. It’ll push away a lot of the overseas readers and posters as well as ex-owners, newbies and cheap asses like myself.
The community is all ready very small in here, lets not push the last folks away and have regrets afterwards

[Trigger]

Yes I agree with that - give more to member but dont take stuff away from non members.

T

[CAG3D]

I know of a great printing company, if you’re doing another calendar


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[reg]

I think its not a good idea to put more of the forum behind a membership. It’ll push away a lot of the overseas readers and posters as well as ex-owners, newbies and cheap asses like myself.
The community is all ready very small in here, lets not push the last folks away and have regrets afterwards

Agreed. Not to mention social media gives most if not all to everybody. Unless non payers aren’t allowed out to play with the rest of the forum

[VickersUK]

I was surprised that your not given some kind of membership card or at least a number, so that if a company that supports members can verify you do pay for the privilege of being a member.

I don’t think restricting access is the right way to ‘force’ non members to cough up, as mentioned above, social media (FB) gives most of what most people want, forums have been dying for a decade at least.

The perks of my membership is access to a few posts that were useful for my rebuild but that is the limit of it. Frustratingly using google I came across posts that sounded helpful but obviously did not migrate from the previous version of the forum so seem lost forever.

In all honesty I do not know what benefit it would be for me to renew when the time comes. When I insured the car I said I was a member prior to paying to be a member, I believe I probably got a small discount for being part of an owners club but it didn’t need any type of verification.

After writing this I realise it’s not offering much in the way of suggestions, but I can understand why many don’t bother.

[phil4]

Useful stuff...

The membership process should give you a membership number, and email confirming this. The problem with a card is the overhead, both cost and time of making and posting out, every year. If anyone is missing a membership number, I'm sure Karl V will be able to help.

I agree that forums have been on the decline, but the issue we've had is that almost all our most valuable stuff has been free for anything, including search engines. We also have the security issue of who's going to what available to anyone. We don't intend to force people to pay up, if you want to come and chat about your car/bike, and ask questions you're only too welcome. We just want to add value to those that do pay, by giving them even more.

Facebook and the like are great, and yes, people do move to them, but unfortunately they're hopeless as a way of storing or searching for info from a while back. Imagine trying to find the rubber seal material for the Nomad windscreen that Karl posted a year ago. They certainly have their place, and plus sides... but they're quite poor at maintaining material that people can read up on.

The perks are of course personal, the mainstay are 4 items:
1. You get access to more of this forum.
2. You get a discount on factory labour rates
3. You can tell your insurer you're a club member, for which many will give a small discount.
4. You can attend club member only events, such as the Midsummer Gas.

We're working on more.

They won't all benefit every one, and some won't benefit at all. If you're one of the later, then by all means don't buy a membership, but if it does, please consider it... the membership is our only source of income, and pays for the forum hosting, membership packs, MSG subsidy etc.

[NormLarson]

Maybe I want a lurker rate ... Since the last blow up on fees, I haven't posted much or been allowed in the special areas. I am not discounting the value of the paid area, but, when you are overseas some of the perceived benefits just aren't there. I will never use the special factory labor rate as the one in my country is literally across the nation, I will never use an insurer discount as they don't seem the exist in the US and finally the club only events are all in Europe or maybe only England (I don't pay much attention to them)

[GraemeW]

In all honesty I do not know what benefit it would be for me to renew when the time comes. When I insured the car I said I was a member prior to paying to be a member, I believe I probably got a small discount for being part of an owners club but it didn’t need any type of verification.

After writing this I realise it’s not offering much in the way of suggestions, but I can understand why many don’t bother.

Admittedly the club has not been doing much promotion of the benefits in the past, but we're changing that, as well as improving things across the board. There are already a number of benefits, which more than cover the cost of membership. Just one service at Ariel with club member discount will cover the annual cost.

Check them out, and suggest new ones or what you would like to see.

Or don't bother. Its up to you

[NormLarson]

Some American tomfoolery that you haven't seen in the UK ...

A 3D printed louvered fender:

image.png (517.46 KiB) Viewed 590 times

and boiling it to anneal the plastic:

image.png (534.09 KiB) Viewed 590 times

I like the new photo copy and paste! OK, back OT

[Karl V]

Thanks everyone for your feedback so far, and [mention]NormLarson[/mention] for the brief interlude... Good man!

We would not have asked for your thoughts if we weren't serious about trying to grow the club and doing what is best for as many users as possible.

A few quick responses to keep the conversations moving...

1) I have become aware that maybe not all members have received an updated membership letter for claiming certain discounts. Please accept my apologies for this. I will aim to get out updated letters by email to all current Members over the next couple of weeks so that our records are up to date moving forward.

2) This topic is more about what we can ADD in terms of benefits for members, but I understand that by moving 2 forum topics, this also equates to REMOVING benefits for non-members.

3) It is quite clear that we need to consider a tiered membership scheme of some kind, especially for those who are ex-owners / non UK residents who are not able to take up certain benefits such as Ariel factory labour rates or UK insurance cover. We really don't want to see anyone 'leave' or feel excluded because they can no longer access chats about Technical set-up or detailed information about Events that are planned. Introducing such a change will take time to investigate how the current systems could cater for such a change, but investigate we will...

In the meantime, if anyone has any ideas of what benefits we could consider ADDING as part of a Ariel.Club membership, please do let me know.

Current ideas include:

• Discount at Demon Tweeks - it was an option in times gone by. Is it worth revisiting?

• Discount at Halfords - Don't laugh, we all need to top up our oil levels from time to time and everyone has a daily drive that needs new wiper blades and air fresheners! This seems to be a staple benefit of many other car clubs. Would it be of interest here?

• Club rate at that cute little hotel behind the factory - Not everyone is able to get their car to Crewkerne and back again in 1 day. Of interest?

Of course, the elephant in the room is insurance...

We are a small club. Sorry, I meant... We are an EXCLUSIVE AND ELITE club! We simply don't have the numbers to be demanding discounts from bigger players right now, but as I'm sure you will have seen in other threads, we are also trying to grow our membership base to put us in a better position moving forward.

I appreciate all your feedback and I will do what I can to deliver as much benefit as I can to our members. Any steer or ideas you have on what you feel is a worthy benefit would be appreciated; otherwise I'll spend all my energy trying to get a 2 for 1 offer at Spearmint Rhinos on a Wednesday afternoon. You may need to Google that Norm, but fire up an Incognito tab first ;-)

^ Idea for a Christmas get together [mention]GraemeW[/mention]?



Peace.

[NormLarson]

There is one in Boise Idaho, ... just sayin'