Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Sara Ray. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
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Introduction
Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host…He encourages chambers to collect quality data so they can better segment their lists.
He’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Kris Johnson, President and CEO of the Association of Washington Business in Washington State to learn how Holman Brothers has provided value for him.
Kris Johnson 0:50
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber and now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.
Brandon Burton 1:31
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Sara Ray. Sara became the president and CEO of the Douglas County Chamber in April 2018. Sara has more than 15 years of chamber corporate and nonprofit leadership experience including UPS Yancey bros as Strayer University, the Cultural Arts Council of Douglas, and four positions at the Douglas County Chamber. Sara serves on the Regional Business coalition executive committee is Vice Chair for the WellStar Douglas hospital regional board, and as a founding partner in Elevate Douglas economic partnership, a public private partnership created in 2021. She also serves on the board of the Georgia Association of Chamber of Commerce executives Georgia Academy of economic development, Cobb and Douglas public health steering committee and founding member of keep Douglas County beautiful. Sara received her Georgia certified chamber executive designation in 2021, making her one of only 22 in the history of the organization. She is a graduate of the US Chamber institutes of organizational management in 2015, the US Chamber business leads fellowship Regional Leadership Institute, Georgia forward young game changer, leadership Douglas and is it active in these alumni associations. In 2019, Sara was named by Georgia Secretary of State as outstanding Georgia citizen. She was also named as the West Georgia livings 40 under 40 in 2019, and a top 10 Young Professional in Douglas in 2015 and 2017. Her service to the community does not go unnoticed. She was recognized as Volunteer of the Year for the Georgia Ovarian Cancer Alliance in 2010 and 2012 Spirit Award by the city of Douglasville, Sara received her bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. When she isn’t working to support businesses and Douglas in the metro Atlanta region. Sara spends her time traveling and being outdoors with their children, Anna and Avery. Sarah, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, we will take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little bit better.
Sara Ray 3:53
Yeah, well, thank you for having me today. I have thought long and hard about this question. But I think something interesting about me is while I was born and raised in Georgia, my parents are both from overseas. So I’m a first generation American. And my dad is from England and my mom is from South Africa. So a lot of times when people meet me they see you know, cute little you know, southern girl and they don’t realize you know that my summers were spent in Africa and in the wild so so it’s it’s people always kind of that’s kind of throws them off.
Brandon Burton 4:31
So you get together with your family to get a variety of accents going on.
Sara Ray 4:34
Yes, yes. My mom always joke that like when I was in preschool, I came home and the first time I said y’all, she just cried because I had a British accent until I went to school because that was all I ever heard. So
Brandon Burton 4:48
yeah, it’s funny. I can just see that British accent you know, saying Yo she’s like, where did my baby go? Well tell us about the Douglas County Chamber just to give us some perspective, maybe size budget staff, that sort of thing
About the Douglas County Chamber
Sara Ray 5:06
before we get us. Yes. So our chamber is 77 years old. We have about 650 members that are investors in our organization. And we are located in west, west, just west of Atlanta, we’re about 20 miles west. So we are considered the Metro Atlanta region, but still kind of close enough. We always say, you know, close enough to the city to be able to catch a baseball game with our, you know, world champion, Atlanta Braves. But also, we still have plenty of green space and amenities where we can explore and enjoy the outdoors. So yes, so our team we are, we have and we have an interesting kind of space, we are in the process of integrating staff with our economic development organization elevate Douglas, so we share staff, but our full team is about 12 Strong between both organizations. But as far as chamber employees, we have about eight, so I think it was there anything I missed?
Brandon Burton 6:02
No, I think that that pretty much covers it. And so it sounds like you’ve said that before. Yeah. how close you are to Atlanta. And notice you you mentioned Braves and the Falcons but that that’s okay.
Sara Ray 6:17
We got we got UGA we’ve been
Brandon Burton 6:20
you gotta get your highlights, right. Yeah.
Sara Ray 6:22
Falcons fan. I know. I still have like, you know, wounds from five ish years ago. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. We’ll definitely talk about the Braves all day long.
Brandon Burton 6:32
That’s right. That’s right. So as we get into our topic for discussion, today, we’re gonna focus our conversation around creating relevant and personalized communication, which I think is going to be something relevant for listeners as we try to figure out the best ways to communicate with not only our members but people in the community and really, you know, be in that that voice for business community. So I’m excited to get into this discussion with you as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Topic-Relevant & Personalized Communication
All right, Sara, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about communication, creating relevant and personalized communication. I’d love to hear what you guys are doing there at the Douglas County Chamber to do this. Yeah, you know, what, what spurred the thought for this to be the focus of our discussion.
Sara Ray 9:36
Yeah, so I think it’s probably best to start up I’m gonna say the beginning. You know, I’ve been at the chamber as, as you mentioned, for just around 12 years and took over SEO about four years ago. So I felt like I’ve seen a lot of different things and you know, experience different trends and marketing and communications. That was actually the role I started out in being at the chamber so then seeing it grow and evolve. But I would say the beginning of our journey to where we’re at now and how we have moved into a space of having more customized personal communications was like a lot of people during the pandemic. So, you know, as a, an organization that was primarily in person with our events, that leaned into that space we were very accustomed to, like, I would assume a lot of chambers are is casting a net at, you know, at all your businesses, you know, the more people the merrier in a room, you know, that that equated to a successful event. And that was very, very true with myself in spaces, but also with my team. So when we had to go into an environment where we couldn’t do face to face, or, you know, we were just trying to still cast that net, but not being able to have those one on one conversations, we knew we had to do something different. So I remember specifically, we had brought back, and it was probably like late 2021 of our after hours events, it was outside, you know, open air. And I remember, in our, in our after hours, events typically have about 75 to 125 people, this one, there were about 27 or 28 people, and my team was coming up to me, this is a failure, this is not great. This is you know, we’ve lost our you know, our our mojo, this is awful. And I just remember being like, you guys are missing the big picture, look around the room and see what is happening, I said people are able to not come into a space where they don’t know anybody, you know, or they feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed, because of the number of people that are there. I said, people are able to come in and have a conversation, they aren’t worried about working the room. And and you know, getting as many business cards out as, as they can, they’re able to sit and have actual conversations. And I was a perfect example of that. I mean, as, as our viewers probably know, chamber execs you’re out work in the room, making sure that everybody feels welcome and included. And I remember sitting down with one of our youth leadership students, high school junior, and having like a 10 minute conversation on their career path and their trajectory, and all of these different you know, like just actually getting to know them. And, and that was a conversation I had with my team. And I was I was like you guys are missing the big picture, like people are having more authentic intentional interactions with one another. And that fosters a relationship and a depth of depth to a relationship that we can’t touch. Like we can’t, we can’t touch that in an email or communication, not the way we’re set up right now. So we ended up working with an organization to do again. So we kind of looked at, we started shifting some our events, instead of being a catch all for everyone. And during the business after hours, we had targeted industries that we were networking with, we had, you know, different themes. So we started a minority business group, we started a women in business group. So we started out with our events, but then what we realized quickly was, how are we getting the information out to everyone in a way that they can, that it that it resonates with them, and that they find value in that. So we went through the process of doing a marketing communications analysis and looked at all of the different things that we were doing email, social website, how we were how people were getting the information, and that was members, and it was non members. So we were polling and surveying our business community at large. And one of the things that kind of came back to all of it was that people don’t like getting the emails that are that are sent to the droves, you know, email was definitely their number one choice for how they wanted to be communicated with and this is in my community could look different. But even with the way that you interact with people on social media, like it’s great that we were posting, you know, we had a content calendar, and we were posting something on wherever, every other day, and we had a process behind that. But people wanted the engagement, they wanted to see themselves they wanted, you know, they wanted to know the stories about people so so we’ve gone through the process of customizing how we communicate with our businesses looking at we’ve created like a preference center. So you know, what Brandon might want contact information on it might be leadership and events and I might want information on policy and economic development. So we’ve created a you know, an infrastructure in our in our communications and how we do our events, that it’s customized and catered to the individuals just so that’s kind of the high level, how we got there. So
Brandon Burton 14:30
I love this. I just in fact, it was a week or two ago, I actually wrote and shared out a blog post about this very thing. Well, when you’re talking about these mixers, it was about that very thing. It’s like you know, so many people show up at a mixer. They’re new to the chamber, right? They show up, got a pocket full of business cards, or they’re gonna get their drink and they stand there totally awkward. Yeah, they don’t know anybody. And then you know, 10 minutes later they leave because Yeah, nothing happens that they’re super uncomfortable and That’s one of the huge value propositions, you know, for joining the chambers and networking. Yeah. Well, if it doesn’t resonate for them, they have a bad experience at first time, how likely are they to come back. So being able to have these personalized, you know, relevant events for them to attend, and really make sure that they resonate with not only the topic, but the other people that are there. So it makes sense to communicate with them.
Sara Ray 15:24
Yeah. And it’s not just about like getting them to the event, it’s the before and after to like, we’ve incorporated pieces into the process where, when they register, it’s, Hey, thanks for registering. And it’s all automated through chambermaster. You know, and it just says, Thanks for registering before you get here, check out our speakers, and we have links to the bios, and then two days before they get an email that’s like, you know, get excited, these are things that we’re going to have here, if we have kind of upcoming announcements or things you need to know before you get there. And then on the backside, we have follow up emails that are thanks for joining, here’s the pictures, here’s the links to whomever was speaking, you know, share your experience, and we put in there literally a copy and paste of post this on so on your LinkedIn, and they just have to drop it in there. So it gives them a good way to engage with us outside of just the event. And we you know, we’ll put in there register for our next event. So it’s all about creating, we call it an engagement pathway. So it’s all about creating that it’s not ever a start to finish. It’s always the what’s next behind things. So
Brandon Burton 16:27
so how do you go about in your, in your database to segment your lists? You’d mentioned you know, what their interests are I, the way I’ve envisioned it is you have a conversation of sorts, and in some of these, you probably have to guess if they’ve been a member forever, and maybe they’re not super high, you need to make some guesses. But as you onboard a new member to be able to have a discussion of what’s your expectation from the chain? What are you joining for? Is that how you guys go about it? Or what does that look like to be able to Yes,
Sara Ray 16:59
I’m going to call I’m going to call it bite sized pieces, I’m getting an email about like this long, you know, like, four pages long, is very inundating and overwhelming for someone. So we’ve actually shifted to I would call it like a drip campaign. So when they get their first email, it’s, you know, Hey, welcome to the chamber, we’re so excited to have you, here’s your login, be on the lookout, we have this next thing coming up, your next email will be about XYZ and then the next email that they get is, hey, we want to learn more about you. Right, so talk to us about the things that interested you in joining the chamber. And we capture some of that through our member application. But then it’s getting more into the space of what did they as the primary contact one, the next email is, hey, tell us about your team, let’s make sure and add in anybody that you have that as a part of your team that we need to include in our conversations, because, again, Sara raise preferences, and Julia in my office, it might be different. And the things that they find value in as a member would be different. So we’ve shifted instead of it just being this one dump of information into small videos and and kind of little snippets, that cycle out, I would say at least once a week for the first month, and then we kind of lag it out a little bit. But that way, it gives them the information kind of on a consistent basis without overwhelming them. Because that was another thing people don’t want to read through, like I said, five pages of information. So we’ve we’ve just shifted to that kind of little bite sized piece of information. And then there’s some other things, we mail them some stuff too. So they’re getting that attention, we send we have somebody that does a phone call. So we have a whole process in place. But yeah, identifying their specific needs and interests, we do that some through the main contact through when they apply. But then it’s part of the process. And we just capture that through our CRM. And then we actually connect it into the campaign system that we use for email marketing. So and then you can go into if we’re getting super granular, like the tags and segments within your email marketing system. So then you can go through and kind of pick and choose and say, hey, I want to send this piece of information to people who are tagged that they like information about women in leadership, or it could be about policy. So we kind of lean on those different tools to to segment it out, because there is information you want everybody to get and know about your big signature event or your upcoming event or training that you have. But then some of the information, you know, might not be relevant to you know, a solopreneur that’s never that doesn’t need to hire anybody doesn’t necessarily need to have all the information on how to post a job on our on our job site. So yeah, it’s just trying to try to funnel down and fine tune that information to where it’s what they find this value in. And then you can track it all on the back end through analytics and see again, and we drive almost all of our activity, I would say all of it to our website so that we can track the analytics and know where people are going, what information that they’re actually likely looking at and learning from.
Brandon Burton 19:54
I love that and I think this is going to be one of those episodes that people go back and listen to or at least You know those last few minutes? Like, okay, take notes, and how did you do this step to the next day? So, simple question, what, what email platform do you guys use?
Sara Ray 20:11
Yes. So, we have tried a few, we use Constant Contact for a long, long time. I know as chamber people, we get it for free, which is great, but I and I mean, contact is wonderful. But there are other paid platforms that can give you more. So we actually investigated using Campaign Monitor, but then ended up going with MailChimp. So it integrates with chambermaster, which is our CRM that we use. So and has a lot of capabilities and even the visibility, the open rates are better with MailChimp than some of the others just because they don’t automatically pop into your junk folder and things like that. So we have some great partners that we work with, that are investors with the chamber that helped us kind of work through all that process, it wasn’t, you know, I don’t have a crystal ball. And I will say to that doesn’t mean what works for us will work for everyone. And Constant Contact has does have some great tools that are associated with it, if you’re on a little bit of a tighter budget, but that was we ended up moving forward with MailChimp was what we ended up going with.
Brandon Burton 21:11
So and I wanted to highlight that just so listeners when they talk about when they hear you talk about segmenting tags, and all these things like, Well, my software doesn’t do that, or where do you find that? So it’s within MailChimp that you’re doing those things. Yeah. So I love the way that you go about with that kind of introductory email, you know, here’s some things to look forward to. And then the follow up as to, you know, what kind of things are of interest to you? Where do you do you see, as people, you know, have a longer time with the chamber with their membership or investment where they learn about new offerings that the Chamber has and to be able to add that to their interest. So they’re getting those those pieces of information? How do you add that in along their membership journey,
Sara Ray 21:59
oh, you’re gonna laugh at this one, we have a nickname for how we do that in my office. So um, you know, we’ve used MailChimp for a lot of our you know, we use that for our I would say standard, we do a top five email that goes out on Mondays, you know, we have social that we post we did videos, those kind of things. If we are in a space, and we want again, because a lot of people just see chamber emails, and they’re like, Oh, I’m just gonna keep clicking through. So what we learned, and I honestly don’t remember how we got into the space. My team calls them, Hey, friend emails. And it’s literally me, emailing our entire database through chambermaster. And I write them just like it’s coming from, I mean, it is coming from me, but I read it just like I’m emailing you directly. And the tone and the language behind it is just as if I was writing to any, you know, any of my businesses that are members. And it’s, Hey, how are you very generic entry. Hey, there, and it’s, you know, I always try and make some kind of interesting subject line, like, got a second or one quick thing for you. And then I go into, hey, hope you’re doing great. Getting ready for the weekend, or whatever, you know, whatever, just some kind of little intro, but like, I just wanted to make sure, I don’t know if you saw the emails, but I want to make sure you knew about XYZ event or training or whatever that we’re doing. That’s coming up, I think it might be great for you. You know, we’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And we’d love to see, see your face at it. If it was an event or whatever. If there’s anything that you need from me, you know, I’m always here, have a great day. And I literally, that’s basically what are our response rate? And people like people have no idea? Well, some of them start picking up on it, they have no idea that it’s sent to 1000s of people. So I get responses from people. They’re like, Oh, my gosh, it’s been so long since we talked hope you’re doing well, thanks for checking on me, you know, so we call it Hey, friend emails in my office. And that’s a great way because then we’re able to go back. And if I get an email from someone, like I said, that I haven’t heard from in a long time or haven’t seen an event, and they’re responding to an event that we’re talking about, you know, going to our cap the state capitol, then I know that that’s piqued their interest in some space, if they’re choosing to respond to me, Hey, I hope I can make it please keep sending me the this this way, you know, would love to have this in a virtual format like we get we I get honestly I get better open rates on those than any other email platform that I do. And again, nobody knows what I mean. A few again, a few now know the secret, but for the most part, but that’s the bottom comes in. I have to be so let my team is there. There’ll be like, can you send a hey, for an email? I was like, I’ve already sent one this week. Like we’ve got to limit or they lose their hour. But yeah, so yeah, so Hey, friend, emails work really well. I actually had one of our state our congressional senators offices call me she’s like, I need to set up a meeting with you. She goes are those emails like really to everyone? Or is it just to me, because she said she forwards them out to her team every time and it’s like This is how we need to communicate with our business, you know, with our constituents, and it started as a random thing, but that’s kind of our, our secret sauce that you know, we have our templated emails. But if we need to pull a friend one out, then it works almost every time.
Brandon Burton 25:16
And I imagine that those Hey, friend emails are also going to help with your open rates and deliverability of the emails going out through MailChimp to see that those are getting delivered and opened and responded to, they’re gonna deliver more of those inboxes. Exactly. That’s, that’s awesome. But then, so you’re taking those manually those responses and saying this members interested in this and then updating their profile
Sara Ray 25:39
that, yeah, I have somebody on my team that I’ll just forward them to. And it’s also a great way to make sure we have bad emails that are coming through or bounces or changes in role, you know, because there’s lovely member info updates that we all try and send are only so successful before we have to get on the phone. So this is a good kind of consistent way to kind of work through that process. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 25:59
So one of the other things he had mentioned, I want to make sure that I understood it, right. It sounds like one of those follow up emails and member first joins is saying who else in your organization would be interested in XYZ. So you’re, you’re getting other contact information for each business, but then also able to further the segmentation to that person’s over HR versus, you know, over, you know, the CEO, as the company, they’re going to be, you have different interests, so you’re able to touch them on different levels at the same
Sara Ray 26:31
business. And I was trying to add something, we always add some language like, if this isn’t for you, please feel free to share with share it with somebody, you know, and make sure a lot of people and I know that you’ve heard this before, but they think that they’re the only person that’s a member of their chamber. I’ve had several conversations with our school district. I’m like, every teacher, every educator is a member of the chamber. So you know, like, use that leverage that leverage that bandwidth. Oh, yeah.
Brandon Burton 26:57
Yeah, no, I think that’s key. Yeah. They think whoever was the one that signed up to chat. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, crazy. Yeah. Or just the owner. But yeah, it can. And obviously, every chamber is a little different. But most chambers that I’m aware of is opened it. Yeah, buddy within their business. So good point. I think this topic is so important. I’ve mentioned this a few times. And I think it’s worth mentioning again, just with the topic is my background is in chamber publishing says I would go out and meet with different Chamber members. And they find out that I’m not actually with the chamber, but they open up to me. Yeah. It’s like, I’m a bartender, and they just start telling me, you know, this is this last experience, this last event was awesome. Or I get way too many emails from the chamber. You know, I’ll ask them, Did
Sara Ray 27:46
you get to see my, like, little chamber therapist?
Brandon Burton 27:48
Exactly. They’re like, I get so many emails from the chamber. I probably got it. But you know, yeah, I deleted or I just opened it moved on. So yeah, being able to segment make it highly personable, I think it’s so important. And that’s, that’s the age we’re in today. Anyway, I mean, if you’re just doing a blanket email, there’s, there’s a purpose for it, you know, at times, but if that’s your only communications, a blanket email, you’re missing the boat, and you’re missing opportunities to connect with members. So yeah,
Sara Ray 28:17
and our ultimate goal is to, for people to have value in what we do, right? Like the end game is for someone to say that they got what they were looking for out of their membership. And if you have simple tools in place to be able to pinpoint that so a year in you can say, Hey, you said you wanted information on policy, or you wanted us to go to bat for you, as the voice of business in our community, you can go back on that and say, You, this was what you you know, this is what you said you find value in here. Here is how we took that, like, let’s talk about that. So being heard is so important for businesses.
Brandon Burton 28:52
How do you use the information that you get? I’m calling it segmenting, just for maybe lack of a better term? How do you use that information to create content or plan future events? Do you ever look into it to weigh that into what you’re doing?
Sara Ray 29:08
Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, so think of Okay, so we’ve had events, okay. Our breakfast series is a great example. So we used to have a, you know, you know, just a networking breakfast. It was just putting people in a room together. And that was it. Like there was no agenda. I mean, we will get up give door prizes, you know, that normal kind of, Hey, everyone, thanks for coming. And we shifted that and based off of feedback from people saying, you know, what are you doing for minority owned businesses? Why can we have women’s programming we’ve done you know, we did surveys and focus groups talked with our board, of course, and then we’re able to create those events and then solicit feedback on Did you like this, what did you think? And then just continue to craft our programming to meet the needs of our members? You know, we’re a member driven organization as all chambers should be, and so meeting the needs of what our business is our and that looks very different than two years ago, it looks very different than 10 years ago. So just continuing, you know, I am, I am always a proponent of new and different, and sometimes I think exhausts my team. But at the same time, the things that were relevant, you know, three or four years ago are very different. Now, we were never in a space where we thought we’d be relying on Zoom to do, you know, a majority of our work for six or eight months, so. So I think just being open minded and nimble listening to your members, and then and then being okay with adapting and changing, you don’t have to go and completely rebrand your whole organization, you can do it in small spaces, do a beta test of something, try it out, see if people like it, get their feedback. And then you can look at expanding that. So we do a lot in that space of trying things with small groups of people before we pull it into a larger space.
Brandon Burton 30:49
Yeah. And I think as you gather that information on what their expectations are, as they join the chamber, you’re able to then speak their language. And then when it comes time to renew memberships, it’s very hard for them to say, you know, the Chamber didn’t do anything for me, I didn’t see any value out of the chair, if you’re sending them those direct communications and talking to them in exactly what they’re looking for. So yeah, I hope everyone’s taking notes. Yeah, and
Sara Ray 31:15
I think you one more thing, because you asked me about like sharing information, articles and things that you’re what we’ve what we do is we do a lot of alcohol, like inbound marketing. So sharing resources, I’ve always been a firm believer, we don’t have to be the doer of all things, or the creator of all things. So we have a huge focus on building partnerships with other organizations. So we have a great partnership with the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, right? We have, I’m going to call it a language barrier with dealing with our Hispanic business community, they are successful at that. So why would we sit and recreate the wheel in bringing that into the mix. So we have a lot of content that we gather from our members, subject matter experts, we partner with our colleges and universities, you know, they’ve great economists that work at colleges and universities, why not lean on them to do our economic development reports and things of that nature. So I think that that’s very important. Even with trainings and professional development opportunities for businesses, you don’t have to create things. It’s it’s even thought more highly of if you partner with others, so we have gone that direction. Our new our new tagline is where partnerships and businesses thrive, because that’s the environment that we try to create. So it’s a lot easier to than trying to recreate the wheel on things.
Brandon Burton 32:27
That’s right. I love that. So as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you what might be one tip or action item for chamber champion listening that they could do at their chamber to help take them up to the next level?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Sara Ray 32:40
Yes, um, so I would say, and this is a super simple Hey, friend, email that basically anybody can send out is send an email out, I did this, I tried to do it about once a year. But send out an email to your membership and from from your executive, or whomever you deem that you think would have the baby could even be your board chair, and ask them how you what, you know, kind of three questions What what are you getting from us that you love? What are some things that you need from us? And what can we do differently? You know, and just get that feedback from them. It doesn’t have to be this highly calculated survey. And again, if you go with that personal approach of how can I best support you? I guarantee I remember the first time I did, I got like, 300 emails back and I was inundated, but took the time to respond. And because it was coming from me, it wasn’t again, this, it doesn’t have to be this robust, well thought out process, just zap out an email, ask them how they’re doing how you can best support is there anything I can do to support your business? And you’ll be amazed at the results that you get, it’s super simple, but I promise you, like people find value in that kind of thing.
Brandon Burton 33:47
Absolutely. lets them be heard. Yeah, yes, that’s awesome. Then you
Sara Ray 33:51
can just make a list. And then you know, and you have your marching orders for the things that you can look at adapting and changing. So yeah, and listen and listen to them. And share that information back with your members is also important. Don’t just take it all and keep it in a dropbox folder somewhere, share out with people what, what, you know what your membership is saying. So,
Brandon Burton 34:09
for sure. So as we look to the future, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Sara Ray 34:18
Oh, um, you know, I’m sure you’ve chatted with my buddy Casey Steinbacher. Before. She is a great friend of mine. And, you know, she preaches a lot about going from being relevant to being essential. And I think that and I have others that have kind of lived in that space. And I feel like that’s the environment. The things that we have done in the past, as far as chambers go, you know, think 30 years ago, chambers used to be the place that did parades and you know, they might have done ribbon cuttings every now and then. And now we have chambers that are moving the needle in Washington DC advocating on behalf of businesses and helping businesses stay afloat, you know, during the pandemic. So I think I think where I see it going is just continuing to move into that space of being essential. And that looks different for every community. And for every business. You know, during the pandemic, I had a business that was it, they it’s like a kind of like a farm of like a petting zoo farm. And she needed to feed the alpacas on her farm. And the only way she raised revenue to do that was by having visitors and she couldn’t. So helping her figure out what was essential to her helped her us be essential to her. Does that make sense? So. So I think that where we’re headed is into a space of, I mean, it sounds silly, but it’s a space of humanity, it’s listening to people, it’s talking to them. It’s providing a space where they can have those open, honest, intentional conversations, whether that’s about diversity, or whether that’s about you know, growing a company, I think it’s just giving people that personalized attention, where they feel that there is not another option than to be a part of the chamber. I think that that’s kind of the direction that we’re headed in. And that looks different for every business, and it looks different for every community. Yeah, it’s been open to that, too, is important.
Brandon Burton 36:07
I love that you brought up Casey, and in her book, you know, relevant to essential. And if anybody hasn’t read it, it’s a it’s an e book. So look it up on Amazon. terrific book, but I mean, she talks about being relevant to your members becoming essential to your community, which really changes perspective, as you read through the book and read, you know, see the ideas that she shares in there. Yeah, changes perspective. So thank you for that. What would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect with you if they have any questions about, you know, how you’re doing things their communication wise, or they couldn’t keep up with what’s the best way to reach out,
Connect with Sara Ray
Sara Ray 36:48
I get excited, and I talk fast. So I would say the easiest way is on LinkedIn. And it’s just my LinkedIn profile, you can search at Sara Ray. You can also get to us through our very snazzy new chamber website. It’s DouglasCountyGeorgia.com. Or I’m happy to share my information with you. It’s ray@douglascountygeorgia.com is my email where you can look you can look me up anywhere.
Brandon Burton 37:14
That’s right. And we’ll get all your contact information in the show notes for this episode, which will be at ChamberChatPodcast.com/episode166. But Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today and talking to all the Chamber Champions about this great work that you’re doing and really moving your your chamber forward with your communication channels, and really being more essential to the businesses in your community. I appreciate that.
Sara Ray 37:40
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Brandon Burton 37:43
Brandon Burton 33:56
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