Launched 1:1 member matching with 50% opt-in rate
by niviachantaI recently (in March 21) launched my paid membership community for social impact.
I'm trying out mini-experiments each month. In June, DESPITE HAVING A BROKEN LEG and being super out of it with painkillers and pain, I launched our most successful (in terms of engagement) experiment so far!
We offered 1:1 member matching (Soap Buds, as we lovingly called it because our community is Soapbox Project). 30 out of our 60 paying members opted in!
It's a simple Airtable form that just asks for your name, preferred email, and up to 3 interests (e.g. food waste, climate tech).
I sent the Airtable form via email and also embedded it in our Circle community. Once people started to fill it out, I manually matched folks according to their interests, sent them an email on who the other person is, linked them to their community intro post/reminded them to make an intro post, said what their shared interest(s) was/were, and how to meet.
I even set up a reservation system for our community lounge, a virtual Mixily venue inside our Circle community, in case people didn't have a Zoom link or Hangouts link they knew how to set up.
Finally, I rolled out a points system -- 5 points for opting in, 5 points for completing a chat, and TWENTY FIVE POINTS for writing about it in the community -- yay for user-generated content and an easy way to understand what people are looking for!
We now have a leaderboard embedded & I'll be getting coffee (or drink of choice) for the winner. We have a few other points incentives too.
