Note: this is part one of a two- part post.

Why track email?  You’ve already got enough to do running your chamber.  Why would you want to spend additional time and resources worrying about who’s reading your email? 

Let’s first consider some other methods of one-way communication.  When using direct mail, print advertising, television or radio to promote your programs and events, you have no real way of knowing how many of your target audience actually received the message.  You may get a general feel for how many people potentially saw or heard your message, but you can’t really use that information to do more targeted communications in the future.

Email, though, can offer fast, flexible communications that can be relatively easily customized for each recipient.  And email can also usually be tracked (more on that later) and used to refine your marketing efforts.   Email, when read, can even increase traffic on your website as members follow links back to articles, event details, etc.  And increased traffic can help your chamber through increased event revenues, additional member referrals and site advertising.

 Tracking when emails are opened, links are clicked and when someone forwards an email is a good way to measure a member’s involvement or “engagement” with your Chamber.   Since many of them may never come to events, serve on a committee, etc., it may be the only tool you have to measure that member’s activity.

 As you continue to face more competition for your members’ time and money, your ability to deliver relevant communications becomes increasingly important.  Your members are becoming more tech and data-savvy and they expect you to do so also.   For example, have you ever wondered why you get solicitations to subscribe to a magazine when you’ve already been a subscriber for years?  You probably feel like the company doesn’t care enough to be careful or that they don’t “know you.”  Your members will feel the same way when you send them email about registering for an event that they signed up for three weeks ago. Tracking your email and using the data acquired can help you avoid such situations. 

To help your emails get through, the software and/or the company providing it must ensure that the emails are being sent to people who want to receive such communication – this is frequently called permission-based marketing.  Many times, when using a bulk email service, you must agree that you are using it to email only to those people who have granted you permission to do so.  This helps the email service provider show the various internet service providers (ISPs, such as AOL, Yahoo, cable companies, etc) that the email they are sending isn’t SPAM. 

Your email software must have easy-to-use tools for recipients to unsubscribe and for you to manage the “unsubscribes” and flag or delete bounce-back addresses. In addition, it should also track/log the times the email was opened, any links in the email that were clicked and if/to whom the email was forwarded. 

You should also be able to assign groups of recipients who performed certain tasks (like click a link) to a new group so you can include or exclude them in a new/different communication. 

For example, in one email you may send a link to your sponsorship document.  Next time, you could then send a follow up email to only those who clicked on the link.  Or send another email to those who didn’t click on the link.  Being able to group recipients by their past activity allows you to be more segmented in other communications.

The software company needs to have very close relationships with the ISPs to constantly stay on top of the latest spamming trends.  This way they can help clients avoid looking like spam and can check with the ISPs to make sure email coming off their servers isn’t being globally caught. 

There are a number of email service providers that can provide many of these functions and more, such as Constant Contact, eNewsBuilder, ExactTarget, Campaigner, iContact, Bronto, Emma, Vertical Response and many others.  (Full disclosure:  WebLink is an authorized reseller for ExactTarget)

What service does your organization use? What do you like or dislike about them?  How are you using these email services to manage the relationships with your audience to improve member retention and generate new member sales?

 Part 2 of this post will cover why you should pay for email services and how effective the tracking it.