Hi {{first_name | there}},

Most member newsletters get produced the same way. Somebody pulls together the calendar, drops in a board update, adds whatever came in from the state association, and reminds members to buy tickets for the next event, and then hits send. It happens late in the day, late in the month, usually after everything else on the list is done.

That makes sense given what's on an EO's plate. Advocacy, budget, board meetings, membership applications, four major events a year plus monthly socials. Communications sits at the bottom because it feels like the piece with the least riding on it.

Here's the argument for moving it up.

Look at the three numbers your board actually asks about at the annual meeting.
Event attendance. Non-dues revenue. Renewal rate.

All three run through the same channel.

Event turnout is downstream of promotion. A golf tournament or a parade of homes lives or dies on how many members knew about it, how early, and how many times. When registration comes in soft, the instinct is to blame the date or the venue. More often it's that the event got one mention in one email two weeks out.

Non-dues revenue depends on having something worth selling. Sponsors don't buy space in a publication nobody opens. They buy attention. A member newsletter with real readership is inventory. One that gets deleted unopened is a line item with no value attached to it, and every sponsor conversation gets harder because of it.

Renewals depend on what happens between renewal notices. This is the one most associations underestimate. A member who hears from you twelve times a year and finds something useful in it has a different relationship with that dues invoice than a member who hears from you once, when the bill arrives. Retention research keeps landing on the same finding: members don't leave because of the price. They leave because the price reminds them they weren't sure what they were getting.

None of that means you need a magazine. It means the newsletter isn't a chore sitting off to the side of the real work. It's the thing carrying the real work.

When was the last time you looked at your open rate? Not to feel good or bad about it, just to know the number. If you don't know it, that's the first thing to fix, because everything else is guesswork without it.

Does your event promotion run more than once? A single announcement is an announcement. Three touches over three weeks is a campaign, and the difference in turnout is not small.

Is there anything in it a member would actually forward to somebody? That's a higher bar than "is it informative," and it's the bar that determines whether people open the next one.

Would a sponsor pay to be in it? If the honest answer is no, that's not a sponsorship problem. That's a readership problem wearing a sponsorship costume.

Your member newsletter is probably the cheapest infrastructure your association has. It touches every member, it runs year-round, and it feeds the three metrics your board grades you on. Treating it like the last thing on the list is expensive in ways that never show up as a line item.

I send Builder Playbook to more than 9,500 builders and remodelers each week. If you need assistance with your newsletter, let me know! I’d love to connect and see how I can get your Association on track. Just hit reply to setup a quick chat.

Timothy Dahl
[email protected]
Founder - Builder Playbook
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