Hitting the Target Size of a Feedback Community
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Aug 07, 2008
Michael asks, "If you have an upper limit on the size of your FC [feedback community], do you simply do a first-come first-served?"
No, because then you have to turn away people, which can annoy them; presumably these are customers or resellers or some constituency whose feedback you value and therefore you don't want to antagonize them.
Instead, I'd recommend that you do a pilot email-invitation campaign and see what your conversion rate is after two weeks (e.g., new community memberships divided by mailings). Then use that to determine approximately how many more emails you need to send to hit the target size of your feedback community.
That way you won't have to turn anyone away.
P.S. When creating your pilot, and all subsequent mailings, make sure to select a random sample of constituents to invite. You don't want to bias formation of your community by selecting only your most recent customers, for instance. A random sample will ensure that your feedback community is representative of the constituency you are seeking to understand.