3 Tech Boosts to Improve Member Communications
By Christine Saunders
As a marketing and communications professional, I am always learning. Here are some new things from my own desk that you may also find useful.Podcasts Are
As a marketing and communications professional, I am always learning. Here are some new things from my own desk that you may also find useful.
1. Podcasts Are Here and Ready for You
Podcasting is now a mainstream media channel. More than 13 million Canadians listened to a podcast in 2021. It is an extremely valuable way to communicate longer and more nuanced information. Think “mini-radio” story.
You can produce a bunch at once and roll them out. There are options for levels of quality, and you can do them remotely or in person. This means there’s a solution for every budget.
We like podcasts for association clients who have a lot of policy or complex issues to explore. It’s on trend, where your audiences are, and great for the type of content you likely have.
2. Email Deliverability
You and your team probably already dwell on open rates for your email communications. But do you focus on deliverability?
This is how many of your emails, sent through a program such as an AMS or MailChimp, have a chance of being opened. There are many internet, domain and system points that can gum this up. Last year Halmyre switched our internal customer relationship management system and we noticed a drop in open rates.
Ask your system administrator to check on settings within your email system and at your domain level. There are often a few loose ends that weren’t configured correctly and it’s about a 15 min job. At Halmyre, this small under the hood tune-up clearly increased deliverability as we’ve already seen a lift in open rates.
Put it on your list to ask and check back annually.
3. Social Listening
Everyone reading this has one or two social media channels on the go by now. Many will also have a tool to coordinate, approve and schedule posts for optimized engagement analytics.
In case I’ve just lost you, many organizations use tools like Hootsuite. Halmyre has selected Sprout Social as an agency reseller for our clients at a discounted price because we like it so much.
But these tools only take you so far. If you’re not actively listening to what your audiences are talking about in social media – when they are not engaged with you – you are missing out. These tools are equivalent to overhearing lots of hallway conversations at your AGM, except it’s analyzed and organized for you to take action.
What’s the benefit? Good marketing. When you know what your audiences care about, you have a better chance of showing you understand them and you care about the same things.
There are advanced tools to do it, including a boosted Sprout Social service and Meltwater. The prices can vary and you should always negotiate. Halmyre’s done lots of recent research on pricing and features and are happy to save you a little legwork.
I hope these three tech tune-ups will help your 2022 communications with a little boost. Please reach out if you’d like to understand more – I am always happy to share what we know and have learned.
Halmyre President Christine Saunders is a marketing consultant to service-based organizations, a strategic advisor to marketing executives and leaders, an entrepreneur and a hobby farmer. Prior to founding Halmyre in 2014, Christine owned a traditional integrated marketing and communications agency specializing in financial services, public services and not-for-profits. Her education is in politics, ethics and philosophy, and she is a proud Maritimer despite living in Upper Canada today.
