Clan Recruiting (getting new members)

[Zaranthos]

 Anything to do with the Kingdom of Loathing SevenLances.com clan goes here.

Clan recruiting:

There is more to recruiting than asking someone to join the clan. Recruiting should be done with a few things in mind. Be polite! Don't tell people to join, ask them nicely to join. If you're going to take the time to invite people don't be lazy or cheap. Some people get many, many clan invites and many of those offers include large meat bribes to join. Bribing is a common practice that I don't agree with. I think the value of the clan and its members should be the main reason to join. Having said that I still think it is a good idea to send a gift along with the invitation. Why? Because when you're inviting people you may very well send an invite to the same person more than once or someone else may have invited them. A bunch of spam is annoying but if there is something worthwhile other than just the message not only does it remove the annoyance factor it also gets the persons attention.

So send something decent with the message. If you're inviting low level players that haven't ascended yet you can send something less expensive like a sausage or mushroom pizza, fine wine or maybe even something like an extra-spicy bloody mary. If you send an invite to someone who's higher level or has ascended those items won't be as worthwhile so send something much better like chow mein or something they might be collecting in their display case. Experienced players are worth a little extra effort.

Send clan invites as kmails (green messages) not as private messages or in open chat. Clan invites in chat will get you in trouble with the MODs. Look professional not like a 3 year old. "hey join my clan cuz itz kool" won't impress anyone. Tell newbies how to join the clan because they most likely have no idea how to even join.

If you want credit for an invite the person you invited has to send a message to Elemental_Burn saying that you invited them. If they don't send the message you won't get credit. The message can't be a private chat message or a post in the message board, it has to be KoLmail (kmail). You're also responsible to follow up with people who show an interest in joining. I get messages from people saying someone refered them to join and they never joined. I often don't have time to follow up on messages like that especially during recruiting contests. If I have to send them a message explaining how to join I'm not gonna give you credit for the invite since you should have done a better job explaining how to join the clan. The account you recruit with gets the credit. I don't care if I know who your multi's and main accounts are or not. I won't give MyMainCharacter credit for MyMulti's recruiting. It might be enough to tell the person you're recruiting to say "Please send a message to Elemental_Burn that MyMainCharacter invited you to join the clan." but they might not listen or get confused if MyMulti actually invited them. Just a fair warning.

Be nice to the new members! It doesn't do any good to get a bunch of new members if someone flames a new member about rules or behavior. Remember a lot of new people aren't going to know the rules or what's expected of them. Explain things nicely and have a little patience.

Example invite:

If you need a good clan to join you might want to consider SevenLances.com clan. We have all the good clan stuff (meat tree, calendar, gym, etc.) and are allied with a clan that provides a nice buff bot service. We are also on the leaderboards for most clan warfare wins. To join just click the clan link (text links at the top or clan district from the main map) and search clan recruiter for SevenLances.com and apply. So if you want to join a friendly clan give us a try. If not sorry for bothering you. Enjoy the game! :-)
You acquire an item: extra-spicy bloody mary

Warning! All contests will be closely watched. I will ask Multi Czar to check any suspicious recruiting. If you start making multi's and having them join to increase your recruits you're likely to get checked by Multi Czar and possibly have all of your accounts disabled. Don't cheat because it's really not worth it. Multi Czar hates cheaters and so do I.

[septembada16f]

ermm Z, what kind of gifts shall we send them, cos we dont wanna seem desperate, but then again we dont wanna seem to cheap! any suggestions?

[Glittster]

ermm Z, what kind of gifts shall we send them, cos we dont wanna seem desperate, but then again we dont wanna seem to cheap! any suggestions?

Bro - read properly!!! At the bottom of Z's posting it say's "You acquire an item: An extra Spicy Bloody Mary"   

[septembada16f]

sis trust me im not that retarded. I wondered if that was an example! cos i dont wanna send alc. incase there teet   lol

[Zaranthos]

Well I got tired of waiting for the recruiting contest to start so I recruited some new members on my own. First I tried my old tried and true method of parking in /c newbie and sending invites to all the people chatting that weren't in a clan. I decided that was too slow so I came up with something new.

I did a /whois on some new members and then started /whois'ing player ID's until I found out what the latest new members were. I started with the newest members and started sending invites with twinkly wads attached (I always send some gift with my invites). One day later I've spent over 700,000 meat on twinkly wads and raided the stash of pulverizable items for about 700 more twinkly wads since my meat supply is limited and recruiting is a valid clan expense I think I can justify it.   I sent invites to player ID's 1061051 - 1062901 plus the random ones in /c newbie. So I sent out about 1850 invitations to join SevenLances.com.    Pretty crazy... Since most were not even level 3 yet it might be a few days before some of them can even apply. My guess is that method will have pretty low yields but so far I think about 100 new members have joined which for one day is pretty darn good.

It'll be interesting to see how you guys can do once the contest starts. It's gonna be some heavy competition I think.

Oh, I did all the invites by hand in the browser. I tried to do it with KoLmafia but that was actually slower when I tried using the GUI. At times it was a mad frenzy of "change ID number, paste invite message, select twinkly wad, click send, and repeat". So if I was ignoring you in clan chat, sorry. 

Don't worry I can't participate in the recruiting contest. It'll be hard enough keeping score and answering my kmail while that's going on anyway.

Edit: well we're over 120 new members and new ones keep applying. It's crazy.   Oh and we now have more members that the great KoL Addicts which at one time had (I think) over 1000 members.

[Zaranthos]

Well I expect by morning we'll have well over 500 members and my days worth of recruiting will have brought in over 200 new members in few days. Since most invites were to < level 3 characters they keep applying as they hit level 3. I didn't expect to recruit that many new members but then once I got started sending invites I got kind of carried away.

[Mephista]

Wow.  Gogo Zaranthos bringing fame and fortune to the name of Sevenlances. ... com.  =P

[Zaranthos]

From xxxxxxxx (#000000) [reply] [quoted]
Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2006, 05:22PM

    Your recruitment campaign seems to be working; I started playing KoL just today, and two of your clansmen have invited me to join. I looked up your clan and its website, notably the forum thread about recruiting new members.

    Your member runzwifscissorz's message was very polite and explained to me just what I need to do should I want to join, and even apologized in advance if I wasn't interested. I must admit, that did get me interested in such a polite, helpful clan.

    However, member A Dude sent me a two-line message with the same goal of getting me to join and specifically naming him to you as my recruiter. He used no capitalization whatsoever nor punctuation (other than the dot in your clan's name), which I find disappointing given the game's emphasis on literacy. Also, he sent me 10,000 meat, fully 10 times what I had saved from my first 120 turns. This, to me, triviallized a lot of the work I had done in the game so far.

    Now, I didn't read the forum thread long enough to discover what incentives you are providing to successful recruitment efforts (as I wanted to get back to playing KoL), nor do I know if you provide your members with that polite message as a form letter, but A Dude's message pretty much cancelled out the enthusiasm for your clan that runzwifscissorz's generated.

    So for now, I'm holding off on my decision to join your (or any) clan. Also, please take your 10,000 meat back to your clan stash.
    Meat   You gain 10,000 Meat.

This is exactly why you should learn to use the english language instead of your lil' kiddie MSN Messenger slang. 

[Sankekur]

Feh, talking to people is troublesome. Then again, playing KOL is troublesome too, so I guess I have to have a go at it.

Are Snow Queen Crowns a good enough gift? I'm basically overstuffed with them.


Note to self: Never use Ultima Esper on Yiazmat. EVER.

[Zaranthos]

Snow queen crowns are a good gift I think. Especially for newbs.

[peacecraft]

I know a couple of friends of mine are desperatly in need for a new game I'll just ask ... and i'll see what i can do ...

[deepshadow]

Oh if I just recruit My self 

-.- well I just made yesterday sel clubba ^^, lvl 4 now a bit strange I am gladiator now having pet(larva) and looting the knoll place, buffs usually(seal,beefed up).

I am doing the meat tank quest now, and how much lvl should I get for the rat quest? everytime when I get there I get beaten.

do I get price of recruiting my self?

applied to clan allready, my name on KOL is indeed deepshadow ^^

[cutiepie]

i guess all we have to do is be nice to the newbies.give them some newb items you don't really need.

[DrClaeys]

Clan friends,

How is recruiting going??   It seems like you have hoards of people.    new people never know whats going on.  Clans scare them.   

ONe thing I notices was some clans advertise on the spray paint wall.    That seems to be a cheap, and almost free, and easy way to get the name out there.   

I think you want a NewBie friendly theme.    I know newbies are big sponges, and most of them dont stick around.   But the few that do, might turn into real Power houses, and support us all when we are old and to feeble to type.   

So thats my idea.    There is another thread about clan Mentoring program, I think that looks great in our clan Advertising.

Dr. Darrell of Michigan. 

[achtung5]

I have been inviting tons of people lately, and for the first time, I was sent something back thanking me!

From Captain Squeezeh (#1253913) [reply] [quoted]
Date: Wednesday, February 21, 2007, 09:54AM
Thanks alot for the invite, i will definitely have a look when i reach the right level!