How to entice inactive members to come back to your forum?

[JennyorAlice]

What do you do to entice inactive members to come back and visit your forum? Does it work or do they just go back to being inactive again?

 

[Paul]

e-mails usually, often works. But as the forum is 20 years old, some that do return realise that their life now at 40 or 50 isn't quite like it was in their late teens and twenties so have moved on.

 

[Cory]

I don't really have any means of enticing inactive members to return to the board. I used to send out bulk emails on a monthly basis with news and updates regarding the site, but I was starting to run out of things to put into the email so I just stopped sending them. For a resource board like mine, most people come for the resources and leave and may come back if they ever have an issue with the resources or want to make a new code request. Since discussions aren't the main objective of the board I don't think it's overly important to try and bring inactive members back to life. Most of them have probably moved on to other things in life.

 

[Reverie]

Sending out an email and reaching out is typically the best way. Sometimes I add people from forums on some form of Social Media and I can reach out and just check in with them as well. Starting contests often is helpful for users and spreading the news of contests on other forums brings users back from time to time.

The question is why did they get inactive in the first place, and you may need to fix those things. If it is just due to life, they may have forgotten the community... but if it is due to the site in some form and way, maybe you can reach out about how things were going in the community for them. See if they have any suggestions.

 

[Aussie]

People get inactive for a variety of reasons, stuff happens in their life and they get distracted, or maybe they are like me.. I tend to visit forums heaps for a few months, then normally ill get sick of it and take a break for a few months and just pop in every now and then. Then ill get interested again and start posting heaps for a few months, then bored again.. spasmodic is my posting style.. but this is a personality trait for me where I get really interested in something and go full on then kind of wear myself out of that topic...

but in answer to your question, email really is the only way.

 

[Empire]

Still learning that myself, what makes you as a member to keep coming back?

 

[Reverie]

As a member I return to a forum when I feel like I’m being responded to. When I feel there is a purpose to a community. A gaming community for example would bring me back if they were supportive and perhaps if they played the same games as me. Forming a group that plays together would end up keeping people posting on the same site.

The biggest thing - seeing there is a common interest and being able to discuss it.

 

[Debashis]

I think it's important to identify first why those members are inactive and then see if your forum is now taking care of those reasons. Basically, if your forum is giving now what they were looking for earlier, they would come back. But if the reason is something not related to your forum, it's hard to bring them back. They might not just have the time to spend on forums or might have lost complete interest in forums.