Please Note:  Due to the New Year Holiday, there will not be an Executive Administrator Training meeting in January 2014.  The meetings will resume again on Wednesday, February 5th.

Here are the Chamber Nation system updates for the past 30 days (November):

1. We have added an option to hide member's emails on the member directory.  If they are optimized, they will have a "contact us" button that will lead to a form to fill out - still keeping the members' emails private.
2. There is now the option in System Links 4.22 to display Chamber Only events on one of your calendars instead of all events.
3. The "Spam Report" in the Broadcast Email section has been updated to explain in greater detail what the numbers mean and how to interpret that data.
4. More videos are continuing to go up on the Chamberclassroom.com website for the "On Demand" Training.
5. We have changed the feature in the CRM to display all communication with a member from newest (on top) to oldest (on the bottom), instead of the reverse (which is how it was before).

DOWNLOAD LATEST MEMBER BROCHURE AT:

http://www.MemberBrochure.com

Colleen Rosson *
Historic Silver Valley Chamber
Website
director@silvervalleychamber.com
Join Date: 09/11/2013

Emily Moss
Elko Chamber
Website
chamber@elkonevada.com
Join Date: 09/13/2013

Naomi Penney
Melbourne Regional Chamber of East Central Florida, Inc.
Website
naomi@melbourneregionalchamber.com
Join Date: 09/16/2013

Christine Michaels
Melbourne Regional Chamber of East Central Florida, Inc.
Website
christine@melbourneregionalchamber.com
Join Date: 09/16/2013

Karen Robinson
Cottleville / Weldon Spring Chamber
Website
admin@cwschamber.com
Join Date: 09/18/2013

Sandy Smith *
Lancaster Chamber of Commerce
Website
sandy.smith@lancasterchamber.org
Join Date: 09/27/2013

Miranda Moore
Valdosta Chamber
Website
mmoore@valdostachamber.com
Join Date: 10/29/2013

Tom Graver
Melbourne Regional Chamber
Website
tom@melbourneregionalchamber.com
Join Date: 11/19/2013

David Larson *
Pleasant Grove Chamber
Website
chamber@plgrovechamber.org
Join Date: 11/21/2013

Marla Lewis
Maricopa Chamber of Commerce
mlewis@maricopachamber.org
Join Date: 11/22/2013

Cinnamon Paula *
Join Date: 11/22/2013

Cynthia White
Join Date: 11/22/2013

Dave Moss
Maricopa Chamber of Commerce
Join Date: 11/22/2013

Kay Keller *
Oconee Chamber of Commerce
kkeller@oconechamber.org
Join Date: 11/22/2013

Monika Holder *
Pinckneyville Chamber of Commerce
Website
Join Date: 11/22/2013

Pinckneyville Chamber of Commerce
Website
Roxanne Valladao
Plumas Arts
Website
Join Date: 11/22/2013

We really appreciate your referrals. We're making investments to improve our programs every day and we'll invest in you too! 
 

Day: Wednesday 
Date: December 4, 2013 
Time: 11:00 AM (PST)
12:00 PM (MST) 1:00PM
(CST) 2:00PM (EST)

Scheduled Topics:

• Continued promotion of Commerce Control Panel, and information on how members are responding.
• Formatting Tips for Broadcast Messages
• Avoiding Spam Filters
• Fully utilizing chamberclassroom.com
• General roundtable opportunity to cover all kinds of system questions. Both Richard and Sam will be on the call to assist you.
• Any other questions any of you may have. 

Bonus Time:
We want to respect your time and feedback.  So, we are excited, starting this month, to offer "Bonus Time."  This will occur immediately after the Regular Meeting and will feature a special guest sharing about what they have to offer to Chambers. 

This Month our special guest is Clay Rankin with Broker Savant.
BrokerSavant is the first automated property inventory solution for commercial real estate (CRE) organizations.  Chambers across the country are progressively thinking and using this cutting edge technology to drive value to their business members.

Chamber can play an integral role in helping your business members grow.  As a critically important decision for a business is to find the right location, Grapevine's Property Index (PI) is helping their local business members get started on the right foot and be primed to grow day 1.  As a CRE Broker of nearly 7 years in IL, I’ve personally seen many businesses fail because they chose the wrong location.  Not only that, but they couldn’t recover or start over and their dreams for that business were over

HOW TO JOIN THE MEETING 

1. Screen Sharing: http://www.TrainingScreen.com
2. Phone: (530) 881-1212
3. Access Code: 901-325-889

Would you like to join the meeting with your >>APPLE or >>ANDROID mobile device? Click link above for either device and once installed be sure to USE MEETING ID: 901-325-889

MEETINGS MAY BE RECORDED FOR EXECUTIVES WHO MISSED IT LIVE:
Watch Today's Training:  http://stme.in/1gXES74li

Strategy:
Richard Scully, CEO
855-233-6362 Ext. 701

Billing Systems:
Sam Azzam, Operations
855-233-6362 Ext. 704

Educational and Administrative Support:
Dr. Ryan Nielsen, Education
855-233-6362 Ext. 702

General Support:
Brian Sundberg, Support
855-233-6362 Ext. 705

Member Support / ChamberSquad Questions:
Jim Etherington
855-233-6362 Ext. 708

Administrative System Training:
www.ChamberClassRoom.com

Member Education:
www.CommerceControlPanel.com 

The "On Demand" Videos continue to grow!  I now have a new structure I am implementing to be able to produce these even quicker and easier for your benefit.  So keep on the lookout for more and more being added.

The Newest "On Demand" Videos are:

• Session #12 (Basic) - Sending a Welcome Email.  This video shows you how to go in, whether you are a new chamber or need to send a batch of new welcome emails to new members, and send the welcome email including the username and password to your members.
• Session #13 (Intermediate) - Adding a "Referred By" Option.  This video quickly shows you how to set up the drop-down menu for individuals to choose to communicate how they were referred to your organization. 

With our desire to equip you, I want to share some things here in the newsletter that will also be addressed in our meeting this month.  But this way you have it in writing to refer to for the future as well.  The two new things I want to share with you (below in separate sections for clarity-sake) are: 1)  Formatting Tips for Broadcast Messages; and 2) Avoiding Spam Filters.

When editing a broadcast message, you have access to a fairly sophisticated editor (CKEditor), which allows for rich text (HTML) editing.  However, given the power of this editor, it allows you to do things that unknowingly may cause problems for some end users that read your emails.  It's important to be aware of these issues related to HTML-formatted broadcast emails.  If you're aware of these issues, it will aid you in creating messages that reliably look good to all of your recipients.

Different Email Clients

Since you will be sending email to a variety of different recipients, the recipients will be viewing the email in a variety of different email clients (Outlook, Gmail, Entourage, etc.).   Your emails are formatted as HTML emails, which means they are built using HTML, much like a web page.  But, unlike web browsers, which are fairly predictable in how they display web pages; several email clients will not display things the way you would expect them to. (notably, older versions of Outlook)

Some Tips:

• As a rule-of-thumb, we recommend that you keep it  simple. The simpler the formatting of the email, the less likely there will be formatting problem on the receiving end.
• If you need to arrange items in a grid or in columns, use tables.  Tables are more likely to work in older email clients, and cause the fewest problems.  Do NOT try to use spaces to format items into columns.  Spaces do not have the same width in various email clients, and will never reliably render well, use a table if you need to organize items into columns
• Do NOT copy-and-paste from Word.  Copy-and-paste will frequently bring along non-standard markup.  What this means is that it may look ok to you, but to many recipients it could look bizarre.  If you need to copy-and-paste content, use the paste-as-text tool, and re-apply formatting to the email.
• When inserting images, add some margin (right click on the image, select image properties, and enter 10-12 in HSpace and VSpace).  Otherwise the text will be up against the image and look crowded.
• With images, also be sure to set alignment (also done via image properties as well).  The text will wrap to the left or right based on the alignment.
• Keep font usage simple and consistent.  Use one font, and only change the size or bolding for subheadings or emphasis.  Overusage of bolding  will defeat the purpose or bolding, causing no particular text to stand out.
• Keep color usage limited and simple.  Overusage of color will similarly defeat the purpose, and possibly trip spam filters.

Although we are working constantly to improve deliverability of emails, many problems with spam filtering are related to the content or formatting of the emails themselves.

Here are some tips to avoid having your emails get mis-identified as spam.

• Avoid all caps in the subject
• Avoid excessive exclamation points (Sale!!!)
• Avoid certain keywords in the body, but especially in the subject
  • Sale
  • Free
  • Attention
  • Any typical sales verbiage - buy direct, cheap, act now
  • Any common pharmaceutical trade name
  • Any adult-only type product
• Avoid referring to the attachment in the subject line (this is done in viruses)
• Avoid using brackets and parenthesis in the subject line
• Limit the number of links within the body, less than 5 if possible
• Avoid using large images in emails - the proportion of images to text in terms of area, if too high, will trip some spam filters
• Avoid lots of red coloring on fonts