Emissary #7: Year One Recap

2025/01/22, 9:17 PM, Emissary - The Council

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Happy new year, everyone! I know it's been a little while since you heard from us. It's been a wild ride at the Emissary Staff lately.

This report marks one year since the Emissary position was re-established, and (approximately) one year since I was appointed to the position. When I came into the role, Bubtra (my first achievement as Emissary) made it clear that my highest priority was to bring more members into the club, whether new recruits or returning Rogues.

I'll release a Part 2 of this report shortly that outlines the Emissary Staff's plans for 2025. For now, it's time to go over 2024, because there's a lot to talk about.

2024 Recruitment

If I had to sum up the first year of the Emissary Staff in a gif, it would be this one:

GIF from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace of Anakin shouting "it's working" while testing his podracer.

We're Getting Noticed

One of the most important aspects of Brotherhood recruitment is getting people to notice us in the first place. The internet is big (shocking, I know) and we're only a tiny corner of it. The Emissary Staff's main strategy in 2024 was to get our website in front of more people, by updating the visitor home page to perform better in web search results and posting more consistently on social media.

The result? Our overall website traffic, according to Google Analytics, grew by 82% compared to 2023.

A few key stats:

Site traffic from organic search (i.e. people searching for things like "star wars fan club" on Google) was up by 92%.
Site traffic from direct links (i.e. people clicking on a link to a news post in Discord) was up by 48%.
Site traffic from organic social media (i.e. people clicking on a link on a social media platform like Instagram) was up by 40%. This happened despite some complications in the content pipeline that interrupted posting in the last quarter of the year.

New Joins Are Growing

First, we kept up the same stellar recruitment pace in 2024 that we had in 2023. We brought in 54 new recruits in 2024, after pulling in 56 in 2023. That means we've recruited almost as many members in each of the past two years as we did during 2020's post-Rise of Skywalker membership spike.

Our total active membership grew to 268 members at the end of 2024, up from 261 members at the end of 2023. This was the second year in a row that we've seen our membership levels increase over the previous year. We also hit a 2020s record of 273 members in Q3 of 2024.

On top of that, our proportion of non-referred new recruits is growing. In 2024, we had an almost even 50/50 split between members who found us on their own, and who were referred by existing members.

This is super important. In the past, referred members have made up closer to 2/3 of our total recruitment. That meant our recruitment efforts had been bottlenecked by how many people our existing members can convince to join us.

While our recruiters have been doing a fantastic job (see the next section for more on that), each of us only knows so many people. More recruits finding us on their own means we're doing a better job of getting ourselves in front of a bigger audience.

More People Are Recruiting

We've made a lot of fuss about how important recruiters are to keeping the Brotherhood's member count up, but many people (myself included) have underestimated just how many people are going out of their way to bring new members into the club.

Here's our list of recruiters:

Ahathr’iss’asapla (Thrissa)
Albrecht Aschenrabe
Declan Roark
Hector von Ricmore
Ikarri Itinen
Jade Hext
Majyc
Masahiro Haku
Nikora Rhan
Ruka Tenbriss Ya-Ir
Rulvak Qurroc
Selika Roh di Plagia
Syrena Valkar
Tali Sroka

Please join me in giving a massive thank-you to everyone on this list. The Brotherhood still relies on its recruiters for most of our membership growth, and these people are on the front lines of making that happen.

2024 Retention

Of course, getting recruits only works if you can keep them. Fortunately, there's been good news on that front, too.

Of non-referred members, 68.4% (26 out of 38) were still part of a Clan at the end of the year. This was up from 41.9% (18 out of 43) in 2023.
Of referred members, 80.0% (28 out of 35) were still part of a Clan at the end of the year. This was up from 63.3% (38 out of 60) in 2023.

Member retention mostly happens at the membership level, not the Council. People stick around because their Summits and fellow members feel welcome. In other words, you are what keeps your fellow Brotherhood members here. You all deserve credit for that.

Closing Thoughts

All in all, 2024 was a fantastic year for the Brotherhood's recruitment and retention. The Emissary Staff can only take partial credit for that. You all deserve recognition for the role you play in keeping the club growing.

If you have any feedback for the Emissary Staff, please don't hesitate to contact us via one of the methods below. We'll do everything we can to answer your questions.

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which I'll lay out the Emissary Staff's plans for 2025.