Friday, January 21, 2011

FED UP WITH MEETUP

As part of our marketing strategy last year we signed up for Meetup, through which you can post your events, attract people to join your group and hopefully attend your events.

Sounded like a plan. However it was a lot of work to post the events each month, (we offer 10-12), do the follow up ranking of the meetings and keep connected with those who joined our group.

We ended up with 39 members, none of whom attended any meetings. So while posting on this site was perhaps creating awareness, it wasn’t generating participants, and definitely not recruiting new members.

So I cancelled the listing, informed the members of our decision and encouraged them to come to an event to check us out.

You can therefore imagine my surprise when I get a copy of an email that Meetup has sent out advising the 39 members that we have discontinued the group, not found an organizer to take over and so they are opening it up to the “membership” for someone to apply to run the Company of Women group instead. People had 15 days to submit their application.

I don’t think so. As I said to the folks at Meet Up, “this is my company, my business and I have chosen not to do business with you..“ End of discussion. From my perspective, they have no right to approach complete strangers to see if they want to run a group that bares the name of my company and would have nothing to do with us.

What do you think?

2 comments:

Linda said...

Hi Anne: I enjoy reading your very informative website and magazine since teh beginning.

Thanks for bringing to attention this poor behaviour by 'MeetUp".

Good for you to stand up to them.

If it hasn't been resolved, I have found in the past when someone tries to infringe upon my business 'good-will', a letter from a lawyer with a 'cease & desist' request often works.

Let me know if you need further help with that.

Keep up the good work.

Karen D. said...

I've been using meetup.com for almost 2 years, and have been VERY impressed with the terrific features and support available. I've seen groups startup and dwindle, and I even rescued one that was closing down because the organizer lost interest and left without offering her role out or appointing a replacement (which is very easy to do).

The system is programmed to automatically announce the coming end of the group when this happens, and members have the opportunity to pick up the reins. IMHO, it's a smart function which enables the members to carry on if they choose.

Your situation is quite different because you chose to use meetup.com rather than have your business website modified with similar functionality. (I'm actually very surprised you didn't get a bigger response by creating a meetup group.)

In any case, I believe the meetup support is quite good, so I'd be surprised if you have to "stand up to them" at all. A simple explanation to them with the request that the standard programming be overridden and the group closed down completely should suffice.

Best wishes,
Karen