Q: Ray,
I am wondering if there is an actual requirement to use LodgeMaster to communicate with the lodge members? Including elected, Ordeal, Brotherhood and Vigil members. I ask this as LodgeMaster does not have the capabilities that other servers have. Sending emails to the youth and adults in this day in age requires a certain level of professionalism. Unfortunately, most people we talk to look at our emails from LodgeMaster and delete them prior to opening them as they don't look professional. Are there other options we have available as a source of communication to our members? In addition when we send emails out only a very small portion receive them, even when the email is sent out lodge-wide including all members dues paying or not. Thank you for your time.
Adam
A: Adam,
Thanks for your email. There is no requirement to use LodgeMaster to send all or any lodge communications. In fact, many lodges use a mix of technologies, sending chapter, event and other emails to subsections of the membership database through LodgeMaster and use other technologies such as Constant Contact, Robly, MailChimp, etc. for the main weekly or monthly lodge-wide newsletter. Usually, youth and adults collaborate on content and build a professional looking email newsletter through these services.
The benefits of using LodgeMaster for emails is that the system allows you to slice and dice your membership into small groups and then send specific emails to those targeted groups, while always knowing that the list you are sending to is as up to date as your membership records. LodgeMaster has recently added HTML and graphical capabilities to emails allowing all emails to go out in a more attractive and perhaps more professional fashion. In the future, the LodgeMaster team is working on a number of enhancements, including automatic removal through links in the email, open and possibly click tracking, and also a better “template-able” content builder using building blocks like many of the other online systems.
If you are having specific issues with emails not being delivered to members, we would be happy to work with you to see if we can identify any systemic issue for lack of delivery. You can send an email to @email and our team will be glad to begin a review of the issue.
Thanks,
Ray