Four Tips for a Better Chamber Newsletter

The average email user receives 121 emails per day. If you’ve been using email for any amount of time, you know that many people delete the vast majority of these messages without opening them or even reading the subject lines. 

So, what makes people actually open an email, read it and engage with the content? As a chamber of commerce marketing or membership director, this question probably frequently crosses your mind.

Email marketing can be an essential component of your overall retention strategy and membership marketing approach, but only if you use it effectively. Incorporate these four strategies into your email marketing approach to make your messages more engaging.

Tell members’ stories.

Each member has a unique story to share. Storytelling can increase your subscribers’ emotional connection to your content, which is critical for improved email communications. As Wild Apricot’s membership newsletter guide points out, sharing stories about real people helps your email subscribers feel more emotionally connected to their fellow members, even when they’re physically separated from them. 

One of the best ways to showcase members’ stories is to create a member spotlight series. 

Identify members who would be good candidates for membership spotlights. For instance, you might tell the story of a new business owner in your area who has found camaraderie as a member of your chamber. Or you might interview a long-time local business owner who’s been testing a new strategy for increasing foot traffic. 

Send these members a survey or conduct a brief interview with them to gather background information on their businesses, personal histories and history of involvement with your chamber. Highlight just a few of their answers in your newsletter and direct subscribers to your website’s blog for the full interview. 

Share valuable educational content.

One of your most important membership benefits is helping members grow as leaders and business owners. Provide valuable educational resources via your newsletter to supplement the information you offer on your website or during chamber meetings. 

For instance, you might include a snippet of a blog post on your association’s website or a post from another website that you think members will benefit from. Or you might offer a recap of your most recent chamber meeting. Cover important business topics like:

• How to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. 
• How to use technology effectively to advance business goals. 
• How to handle modern business challenges, such as maintaining a COVID-safe environment.
• How to grow your business sustainably. 

Share a short poll or member needs survey on your organization’s social media pages to identify the topics that members are most interested in learning more about. Doing so will allow you to appeal directly to members’ interests and demonstrate your commitment to listening to and incorporating their feedback. 

Try out new and creative content ideas.

If you send identical newsletters week after week, your members are going to get bored. It doesn’t matter how educational or relevant your content may be. Change up your newsletters’ structure and content to offer members something different and unexpected.

Try out one or two of these creative and engaging content ideas:  

• Highlight changes to benefits. Your organization is probably consistently adjusting its membership benefit offerings. Use your newsletter to communicate these valuable changes, whether you’re adding a new benefit, improving an existing one or reminding members about an underutilized, yet valuable, opportunity.  
• Use creative multimedia elements. Visual content tends to be much more engaging than written content. Include videos, GIFs or educational infographics in your newsletters to catch subscribers’ attention and break up text blocks. 
• Share unique or valuable podcasts. Podcasts help auditory learners absorb information about topics relevant to their interests. You can even create a podcast discussion group for members to discuss what they’ve learned. 
• Embed recent social media posts. Your email newsletters offer an effective way to cross-promote your social media content. You can also share recent posts from your members’ business pages to provide them with greater publicity.  

By keeping things fresh and unexpected, subscribers will be more inclined to click on your messages to see what interesting new or interesting tidbits you have to offer. 

Use data to determine the most effective strategies.

Most email marketing platforms or membership marketing software offer a dashboard with data that the system tracks each time you send a newsletter. This data includes metrics like:

• Open rate: This represents the number of people who open your newsletters. 
• Click-through rate: This describes the number of times recipients click on the links in your emails.
• Unsubscribe rate: This metric shows the number of recipients who unsubscribe from your newsletter after receiving it.
• Engagement over time: This illustrates the most popular times and days for recipients to open your newsletter. 

Review these metrics each time you send a newsletter to determine which types of messages receive the most engagement. For instance, you might discover your newsletters have the highest open rates when you send them at 9 a.m. on Monday mornings. Or perhaps text-only emails result in the highest unsubscribe rate, meaning you should try adding multimedia elements to boost engagement. 

Over time, you’ll be able to refine your email content to appeal directly to members’ interests and significantly boost your engagement results. 

This is just a brief overview of ideas for making your chamber of commerce newsletter more enticing for subscribers. MemberClicks’ member newsletter guide provides additional guidance on everything from ensuring your newsletters are mobile-optimized to choosing a name for your newsletter. 

Ultimately, when you understand and appeal to what your subscribers want, you can increase their engagement and satisfaction with your newsletter. Good luck!

Kerry McCreadie | MemberClicks, Senior Content Marketing Manager What matters most to membership organizations? As the Senior Content Marketing Manager for Personify’s Wild Apricot and MemberClicks products, this is the question always on Kerry’s mind. Their goal is to help nonprofits, associations, and clubs discover the solutions that solve their most frustrating pain points—while growing and retaining their member base. The CEO and Founder of their nonprofit organization, Kerry is passionate about nonprofit and charitable work—especially in the arts.