Essendon Football Club has released the findings from its 2016 member survey.

The Club values the input it has received from members and those insights will assist in making decisions that best represent the members for the 2017 season.

The findings were discussed at the Member Forum and the Club is keen to share these with the wider membership base.

Essendon Chief Marketing Officer Justin Rodski said the Club was always looking to improve.

“Feedback from our Members is very important, thank you to all of our members who participated in our member survey," he said. 

“This year, and moving forward, we will be sharing the results with our members to be open and inclusive about the areas we need to improve and get better as a Club.

“Thank you to all of our members who attended our Member Forum and have joined Our Comeback Story ahead of the 2017 season.”

Key highlights from the results this year were:

• 57.5k members signed on with the Club in a year where almost 1 in 4 expected a wooden spoon.
• 53% join “to feel like a true supporter”.
• 55% follow the Club because of a family member.
• Members weren’t happy with where the club finished on the ladder, but rated the effort of the players 9 out of 10.
• Further, despite the lack of wins, satisfaction with all aspects of Membership were not only rated higher in 2016 than 2015, but most were rated higher than they have ever been with 7 out of 10 key measures the highest on record and 9 out of 10 measures equal or higher than the AFL average.

And some key areas we’ll be working on based on the survey results:

• 25% member show rate is very poor, there were extenuating circumstances but this has traditionally been an issue and something we will be looking at ways to improve again next year – apart from the obvious of improving on-field performance (it was 29% in 2015, and 36% in 2014).
• Over 3500 open text comments which we are going through and responding directly to people where appropriate.
• While we saw strong improvement from 2015, scores for Personal Involvement (recognising member contributions, members feel part of the club, opportunities to mix with players and other members) are the lowest of any measure.  This is typical across the league, but an area we’ll be looking at ways to improve.
• We were ranked 17^th across the league for satisfaction with speed of delivery of packs.  We’re delivering out of Australia this year instead of overseas and we have already seen fulfilment time of membership packs halved.
• Community Partner recall is low.  We’ll be conducting further research into this area and looking at a shift in positioning for The Long Walk to ensure people understand there is a charity element and have visibility of the many great community programs the Club delivers.
• Increase awareness and usage of our member payment plans to help people afford the cost of membership.  We're introducing a plan starting in February – closer to the start of the season – rather than November.
• Ensuring each question in the survey is relevant to reduce time required to complete it.  For example, exclude game attendance for those without access.