Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2 - The Failure Part
Sunday, May 25th, 2008As much as I think SMB:S2 definitely did better than the first, there are a couple of things that bug me:
1) Retention metrics
2) RSVP-ing
Retention Metrics
I ran through the name list from the last SMB and looked for overlaps with today and it showed that only 17 out of 34 people who came for the first SMB, also came for the second. A 50% attrition rate is pretty scary, especially when the feedback we got from the first one seemed largely positive.
RSVP-ing
A rough count on the Facebook page shows that about 24 of the 62 people who said “yes” to coming, did not appear in the end. That’s about 38%. Luckily this was offset partially by people who said “maybe” but came in the end, as well as people who aren’t on Facebook who came, but the point is: someone has to pay for the food/venue. We’ve been lucky enough to have a great sponsor in Caleb for the last two rounds, but not turning up means we’re potentially wasting money by over-ordering.
I have a few solutions to this:
1) Stop mass-catering. ie each person pays for him/herself, which could end up in the region of $20/person including drinks and venue charges.
2) Make the event invitation-only with a combination of registrations and/or white/black listing.
3) Take the amount of “yes” RSVPs on the Facebook event page and cut down by 30% to save cost, but run the risk of running out of food.
Feedback
So in light of this I’d like to hear feedback from both those who came and those who didn’t. Was there a problem with the timing? Location? Just didn’t feel like coming? Overslept? No value to be gotten out of it? I’m curious to know so that you can help us improve the event.
If you did come yesterday, do you want more or the same, or something different? What would make you come back again? What wouldn’t make you come back again? Is there a “fatigue” developing due to the high number of events (this week alone had three or four). Post anonymously if you must, but frank and honest feedback/constructive criticism will definitely help myself and the other co-organisers hold a better event in the future.
I know there are people who are really into building the community (you know who you are!) and I thank you for supporting us, your feedback will definitely be welcome too! If the results show that we’re the only people who’ll take SMB seriously, perhaps we’ll need to work around that.
Tags: constructive criticism, feedback, listening, metrics, retention rates, rsvp, Singapore, smb, social media, social media breakfast singapore
