Background
Ripon is a delightful cathedral city in North Yorkshire with population of almost 17,000 and is a magnet town for retirement. The Bridge Club rents space in the community centre in the conservation area of central Ripon. Bridge is played two evenings per week.
![image_thumb[2]](https://ebumemberdevelop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image_thumb2.png "image_thumb[2]")
Ripon Market. Photo by Chris, Creative Commons License
The Bridge Club was formed in the mid-1970s and has always been an EBU affiliated club. In the last decade, membership fell to the low 40’s but, by careful management, had recovered to present day 60 members in part due to a Friday afternoon teaching programme. This programme was in jeopardy due to dwindling new recruits.
David Guild, Yorkshire Regional Development Officer (RDO) as part of the EBU’s membership campaign, first met with the Club Executive in late May 2017 to confirm a rejuvenating campaign and then to plan its development. The RDO assisted on leaflet design to Club specification and the Club led the media distribution plan.
The Campaign
The campaign was built around three consecutive “Friday taster bridge sessions” leading into a formal weekly Friday teaching programme. The campaign was mixed media with both printed and digital delivery. The Club had very high members involvement in “getting the word out” and placing leaflets.
Results
Taster sessions were well attended at six to seven tables each week. The subsequent teaching broke into three student courses: twelve complete beginners, twelve intermediates and an advanced course for eight students. This effectively increased students to thirty, 50% of current Club membership. This has strained teachers, with three core teachers plus volunteer assistants required, but they have come through the year. In October 2018 the Club started another recruitment drive, using the lessons learnt from their 2017 campaign.
Professional home delivery of 10,000 leaflets were distributed. Whilst two students resulted, this was not seen as cost effective and will not be repeated. The print cost was £109 and home delivery was £550.
A further 200 leaflets were placed by members at “footfall location notice boards”. Digital versions of the leaflets were also placed on community and related leisure activity websites. These digital placements were particularly effective.
A supplied bridge article was placed in the local newspaper at no cost but the editor ran it late and there was little response.
Overall, the success of the campaign was due to the excellent involvement of the general members in the campaign and “word of mouth” was the top source of enquiry. The campaign also showed that a mixed printed leaflet and digital leaflet placement works equally well. Home delivery ranked poorly in the results.
The campaign succeeded without substantial advertising spend and showed that such campaigns can be run at under £100 cost (for print and excluding home delivery charge) and achieve success, provided they have substantial club membership involvement.