Advice I got from a past president, that proves true over and over:
Groups use whatever amount of time you give them to make a decision.
If it’s a year to decide, it takes a year;
If a month, it takes a month;
If two meetings, it takes two meetings;
If five hours, it takes five hours.
Try these:
1. Educate in advance. Educate a lot. Why they need to respond, how easy it is, what the importance of the issue is. Doing it all at once much harder.
2. Always identify the sender. Your association acronym should be in every subject line so it’s clear who it’s from. This alone is continuously screwed up by organizations.
3. Use a return email that is known by users. The first occurrence of an email address should not be the Call to Action.
4. Tell them it’s coming. Preferably a day or two in advance. Then when it arrives they’ll recall it’s what they were anticipating.
5. Activate the other messengers. If you have other communications vehicles — be sure to use to inform Call to Action is out — e-newsletters, MLS sign-on, web site, RSS, meetings, local presidents who will email others, legislative committee who will email others, asking company owners to send under their name (again, the known sender factor).
6. What’s in it for me? If you aren’t clear in both the Subject Line and the first two sentences what’s in it for the end user, don’t count on them to go much further. If promoting someone else’s Call to Action (like national association), then you need to sell it your way — and hope that works. Do not get overly technical or many will stop reading. The text of the email could still contain technical details, or a “for detailed information” link.
7. Tell them you’re watching. Call to Action software exposes who does and does not respond. There’s a degree of influence in saying - half of you responded, and we know who you are.
8. Do not use something goofy in the Subject Line. One organization used “Santa or Scrooge” as the start to a Call to Action message. Which meant we had to educate everyone to hunt it down in quarantine, spam, and recently deleted folders.
9. Do not use “spam” words and punctuation in Subject Lines that spam filters will trap — like Alert, Urgent or multiple exclamation marks.
10. Consider engaging the public - ask your members to email their friends, families, clients, etc. Consider running print ads, radio ads, web placement. But if you send public to a site, make the domain short and easy to remember.
Any other tips that have worked for you?
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to respond to my last post and point out that certification for certification professionals does exist (it took about an hour). Let me just say, Buyer Beware. There is a secret club operating that “certifies” certification professionals. Why do I say secret club? 1) Try to find them on the Web. Even if you know the organization’s name, good luck. They do not have a…
“We” being business-to-business magazines and meetings. For example, David Shaw points to the “10 deadly sins” of B2B media, as outlined by Hanley Wood’s CEO, Frank Anton, at the Folio: Publishing Summit: And they are:
“…underperformance, cowardice, technophobia, inferiority, complacency, coziness, stinginess, cluelessness, disorganization and dullness….”
Sound familiar? Let’s all work on these, shall we?
Anthony Williams’ keynote at the Association Technology Conference inspired me to order the book, Wikinomics, that he co-authored with Don Tapscott. It is a fascinating book that provides insight into the potential power of mass collaboration and how it is…
Read & discuss at rjohnston@ironworks.com (Ironworks Consulting)'s blog.
Never underestimate who might be reading your blog. From post to conversation to action - in large and small ways, I bet that happens ALL THE TIME.
Sorry I have been a bit quiet here recently… Busy managing a conference this past weekend. Always lots of mopping up after…
Some miscellaneous other stuff worth mentioning.
Just started a big project offering individual webpages to my members, based on a template, and tied to their directory profiles. This will hopefully be a great source of non-dues revenue, for a start, and an ongoing one, since we’re charging a small annual fee. But it’s clearly a win-win, because all these individual members’ pages should come up in searches, and anyone clicking through will see our website and links to all our other programs and events and whatnot.
I’m also encouraging everyone to post pictures of themselves in their profiles. You’d be surprised what a big deal this seems to be. But we bought a small digital camera, and offered to take thumbnail pics for free for anyone who stops by the office. I heard that someone surfing for a doctor/therapist is more likely to choose someone with a photo than not - when I remind them of this, I suddenly get more interest. Shyness seems to prevail here, though, and boundary issues, and all that… pish posh, I say. Excuses, excuses. Ya want more patients, or not? : )
I set up a new alumni committee for one of my programs, whose graduates seem to have mostly drifted off into the mists of time. The goal is, of course, to keep our students involved and engaged after they graduate, and if we are lucky, to attract some of these lost folks back to the ranch. There a long history of exclusion, though, which I am battling against, but I’ll get there. As I mentioned in a previous post, sometimes all it takes is to reach out to people and prove that we care what they have to say.
It’s budget time here - I’m losing hair already, since I have to manage the whole process, but at least this is a great way to get a snapshot of where programs overlap and might be able to share costs. At least that is what I tell myself, when I am not screaming inside….
Have a good weekend, all.
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