Has your Lodge received (through your Grand Lodge) inquiries from beafreemason.org?
If so, has your Lodge created a process whereby these inquiries can be followed up on in a systematic way, so that none get lost, and that they are answered quickly?
Does your Grand Lodge provide your Lodge with any preliminary information about the fellow making the inquiry, or is it just his name and contact information?
Has anyone from your Grand Lodge ever followed up with your Lodge to find out what happened with the inquiries your Lodge received?
Let’s chat about it…
Like every Thursday we will have a Live Open Thread for those with a paid subscription to Emeth today. The email opening the thread will go out at 8:00 AM Pacific time, and I’ll remain on it until 6:00 PM. Please join us, we can chat about whatever Masonic subject is on your mind.
We have received 5 inquiries from the internet but not sure they originated from that site or not.
We track them on Grandview and have called and emailed them. Invited them to our Meet and Greet night designed specifically for this inquiries. The only call back is a young man in the Navy that hasn't been able to attend anything due to his duties have placed him out of state for a while.
We'll reach out again and invite for a second Meet and Greet in August.
We have emails and phone numbers along with anything other information he provided.
It's a shame that this chat is so quiet, as we have had well over 300 men inquire into our Fraternity through Beafreemason.org and the Grand Lodge website.
Good news is there are several Districts and Lodges who are processing these inquirers, and I have found a few of them are now indeed Entered Apprentices!
But, while it's great to see new members through these two internet channels, we must always remember to Guard the West Gate. Some of them do not even make it past my desk. Remember, it's Quality, not Quantity.
I'm going to give beafreemason.org an A for effort, but I don't think we've hit the bullseye yet.
In my term as DDGM I received at least a dozen new member inquiries from Grand Lodge. I called them and emailed them. I even charted them on a spreadsheet to keep track of my attempts to reach them. Through my repeated efforts I was able to have maybe three conversations, one of which led to a breakfast meeting. I offered to accompany those I contacted to pre-lodge gatherings so they could meet the various lodges in the District. Not one accepted my invitation. Ultimately the few that I connected with ghosted me. I'm very interested in responding to men who express an interest in Masonry, but they need to show interest in return. It's a fine line between responding to an inquiry and hounding someone to come meet a Mason.
12 leads, 3 initial connections, 0 subsequent connections. My experience may not be consistent with that of other Districts, however my experience suggests that beafreemason.org causes a few men to have a peek but nothing beyond that. Why is this?
Promotions such as beafreemason.org and the radio and TV ads that Grand Lodge started a few years ago are, as I understand it, our Fraternity's first efforts in mass media marketing. Maybe subsequent efforts will be generate better results.
I think that we Masons do an outstanding job of talking to ourselves. It's not clear that we've figured out how to talk to everyone else. I only know a little bit about marketing so it'll take somebody smarter than me to solve this puzzle.
The website beafreemason.org is a good marketing tool. It's akin to the thick "cold-calling" lists that marketing phone callers use to get "leads" for their businesses. Those who respond to the website are passed to our Masonic "salesmen." It's up to the salesmen to close the deal. How to do that? "Meet and Greet" gatherings are a good way to excite interest, or to weed out the thrill seekers. "Are you guys part of the Illuminati?" "Where do you really keep the National Treasure?" "Am I going to have to sell stuff to be in the club?" "Is this some sort of pyramid sales scam?" These questions, all of which I have personally been asked, tell me that the "Seeker" may not be really interested in Freemasonry. Careful question and answer sessions may or may not find the Seeker at the next Meet and Greet. What we get from beafreemason.org are leads. It's up to us to make the sale.
I think it's great we have a tool in place like this. I used to sell cars, and that is a number game. If I had 4 customers show up, 3 would test drive 2 would negotiate, 1 would buy. That's the nature of the game. If they were appointments, 4 would test drive, 3 would negotiate and 2 would buy.
The point is, we knew how many customers we needed to sell to, in order to hit our qouta. As was pointed out, someone had 12 leads, contact with 3 (25% contact rate) and 0% close rate. It would would interesting to see a total number from the sit-down, broken down by district and then grand lodge.
Does the site allow us to update it on the lodge side to track the information?
If 12 gets us a 25% contact rate with 0 return, maybe 24 leads at 25% would get us 6 and result in 1 mason.
We have received 5 inquiries from the internet but not sure they originated from that site or not.
We track them on Grandview and have called and emailed them. Invited them to our Meet and Greet night designed specifically for this inquiries. The only call back is a young man in the Navy that hasn't been able to attend anything due to his duties have placed him out of state for a while.
We'll reach out again and invite for a second Meet and Greet in August.
We have emails and phone numbers along with anything other information he provided.
DDGM has followed up with our inquiries.
It's a shame that this chat is so quiet, as we have had well over 300 men inquire into our Fraternity through Beafreemason.org and the Grand Lodge website.
Good news is there are several Districts and Lodges who are processing these inquirers, and I have found a few of them are now indeed Entered Apprentices!
But, while it's great to see new members through these two internet channels, we must always remember to Guard the West Gate. Some of them do not even make it past my desk. Remember, it's Quality, not Quantity.
I'm going to give beafreemason.org an A for effort, but I don't think we've hit the bullseye yet.
In my term as DDGM I received at least a dozen new member inquiries from Grand Lodge. I called them and emailed them. I even charted them on a spreadsheet to keep track of my attempts to reach them. Through my repeated efforts I was able to have maybe three conversations, one of which led to a breakfast meeting. I offered to accompany those I contacted to pre-lodge gatherings so they could meet the various lodges in the District. Not one accepted my invitation. Ultimately the few that I connected with ghosted me. I'm very interested in responding to men who express an interest in Masonry, but they need to show interest in return. It's a fine line between responding to an inquiry and hounding someone to come meet a Mason.
12 leads, 3 initial connections, 0 subsequent connections. My experience may not be consistent with that of other Districts, however my experience suggests that beafreemason.org causes a few men to have a peek but nothing beyond that. Why is this?
Promotions such as beafreemason.org and the radio and TV ads that Grand Lodge started a few years ago are, as I understand it, our Fraternity's first efforts in mass media marketing. Maybe subsequent efforts will be generate better results.
I think that we Masons do an outstanding job of talking to ourselves. It's not clear that we've figured out how to talk to everyone else. I only know a little bit about marketing so it'll take somebody smarter than me to solve this puzzle.
The website beafreemason.org is a good marketing tool. It's akin to the thick "cold-calling" lists that marketing phone callers use to get "leads" for their businesses. Those who respond to the website are passed to our Masonic "salesmen." It's up to the salesmen to close the deal. How to do that? "Meet and Greet" gatherings are a good way to excite interest, or to weed out the thrill seekers. "Are you guys part of the Illuminati?" "Where do you really keep the National Treasure?" "Am I going to have to sell stuff to be in the club?" "Is this some sort of pyramid sales scam?" These questions, all of which I have personally been asked, tell me that the "Seeker" may not be really interested in Freemasonry. Careful question and answer sessions may or may not find the Seeker at the next Meet and Greet. What we get from beafreemason.org are leads. It's up to us to make the sale.
I think it's great we have a tool in place like this. I used to sell cars, and that is a number game. If I had 4 customers show up, 3 would test drive 2 would negotiate, 1 would buy. That's the nature of the game. If they were appointments, 4 would test drive, 3 would negotiate and 2 would buy.
The point is, we knew how many customers we needed to sell to, in order to hit our qouta. As was pointed out, someone had 12 leads, contact with 3 (25% contact rate) and 0% close rate. It would would interesting to see a total number from the sit-down, broken down by district and then grand lodge.
Does the site allow us to update it on the lodge side to track the information?
If 12 gets us a 25% contact rate with 0 return, maybe 24 leads at 25% would get us 6 and result in 1 mason.