Chambers are Busy
No matter the size of your chamber, there never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done. As a result, we tend to prioritize the most urgent tasks to be done first. This constant triage of tasks inevitably leads to certain tasks falling lower and lower on the proverbial to-do list. We may not notice the cost of procrastinating some tasks until it is too late. One of these tasks that can easily fall by the wayside is new member onboarding. This article will explain the benefits of creating an automation series to onboard new members.
Traditionally, many chambers of commerce will assign a chamber ambassador to help orient a new member on everything the chamber has to offer. I know you probably have fantastic ambassadors. Ambassadors tend to be those who are hyper-involved and want to be a part of everything the chamber is doing. This is great. These ambassadors also have businesses and families to run, and life to live. Your ambassadors are also human and subject to human error. Inevitably something will slip through the cracks, not on purpose, but missed nonetheless.
Email Onboarding
By creating an automated email onboarding campaign, you can drip feed relevant information to new members while also making sure all of the basics are covered. By setting up the expectation with your new members to be on the lookout for emails, maybe on a weekly basis to help them get the most out of their membership, then you have their attention.
As new members join your chamber, it is always a good practice to learn more about the reason(s) they decided to join and what their expectations are. Are they a transactional member or a transformational member? Should they be connected with your young professionals group or a senior service alliance? By gaining this knowledge, you can create an experience for them where you are connecting them with appropriate events, committees, and people. This information will also help you decide what information you send them in your onboarding email series.
Relevant Communication
Sara Ray from the Douglas County Chamber was a guest on the podcast a couple months ago and she dove in deep about creating relevant and personalized communication. If you are at all interested in this topic, I would highly recommend you going back to listen to that episode.
As much as you may disagree, not every member needs to get an email about your next luncheon or mixer. You should segment your email audience to only deliver the most relevant information to each recipient. Mass email campaigns run the risk of finding their way into junk or spam folders if there is not enough engagement by the recipients.
There are many software options out there for sending automated emails. If you are like many other chambers, then you are likely using Constant Contact, or possibly MailChimp. These have been the most common options that I have seen. Setting up an automated email onboarding series will require some dedicated attention to get started, but that brainpower and attention should only need to focus on this task one time versus creating a custom response every time a new member has a question. Your goal should be to put yourself in the new member’s shoes and provide answers to the questions that they have before they ever ask the question. I had once heard a quote that said something like “if you can define the problem better than your customer, then they will assume you have the answer”. Defining your member’s problems or needs before they ask will also build credibility that your chamber understands what their expectations are.
Consider Community Matters, Inc. for your next chamber publication.
Learn to Automate for ROI
I am not the expert in creating email automation campaigns, but Sara Ray and the Douglas County Chamber have a great template. Google will also provide some great tips and resources to get you started. There are also online trainings available across the web that can help to shortcut your learning curve drastically.
“Associations with onboarding, orientation, or welcoming plans boost their new member renewal rates. Local/State associations show the biggest difference in new member renewal rates, jumping from 75% to 82% after similar program implementation.”
2017 New Member Engagement Study by Dynamic Benchmarking & Kaiser Insights LLC
Depending on the size of your chamber, a 7% increase in your membership renewal rate could be a substantial amount of revenue, not only from the increase in membership dues but also the non-dues value that comes from retaining these members for a longer period of time.
Create Deeper Member Relationships
We now live in a time where AI learns our habits. Predictive text assists our typing by showing us the word or phrase that we were going to type letter by letter with a simple keystroke or tap on our screen. We have a curated viewing experience on platforms like Netflix. Our attention spans no longer allow for the extra clutter. No matter what platform you decide to use, it is important to your relevance to only send emails to your members that they will care about. This will result in building a more meaningful relationship with each of your members while freeing up some of your bandwidth.
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