Monday, June 15, 2009

Membership News

Commanders:

If you’ll look at the attached graphs you’ll see a disturbing trend. Membership losses, which have run at nearly 6% per year for the last few years are suddenly over 8% in 2009. What’s going on here? Our losses due to non-renewals are running about the same as previous years. What’s causing the problem is that were not recruiting new members as successfully this year as in the past. The number of new members recruited this year is 968 members fewer than recruited the year before (2,816 vs. 3,784). Since those lost recruiting opportunities are history, it seems to me that we need to redouble our retention efforts. At this point you should be able to clearly identify those members who have not yet renewed in May which is our largest renewal month. Please put together a committee to personally call each of those members who’ve not yet renewed and make sure they know how important their membership is to your squadron and ask them to renew their membership. The sooner you do this, the more successful you’ll be.

This past weekend the Board authorized a plan that will provide new members a free copy of the USPS cookbook “By Land or By Sea”, which includes shipping, as an incentive to join USPS. Each new membership application will be eligible, with a limit of one per household. This offer will be in effect until the current inventory (969 copies) is depleted.

Thanks for all you do for USPS.

John Alter
National Administrative Officer



Click on graph to enlarge


Click on graph to enlarge





















Saturday, June 13, 2009

Marketing/PR Update

 

Two Marketing Seminar Sessions In Kansas City

USPS is offering two marketing seminars at the Kansas City Governing Board designed for squadron education leaders and all members who are trying to publicize USPS public courses and seminars.

"The Tools of Marketing Squadron and Courses", is a Thursday PM session presented by an MPRCom team who will help members develop squadron publicity programs and videos.

"Selling Public Courses" is the Friday AM session presented by HQ Marketing's, Tom Kemp. It will focus on the preparation of publicity materials and press releases. It is planned that there will be prizes for contest winning participants.

Get your squadron members to these two key programs.

 

PROLOG

PROLog, our “electronic marketing cookbook”, is online to help develop those squadron publicity programs. It makes fascinating use of the latest media devices. Learn to use it at www.usps.org

 

The National Ship’s Bell Award

The Ship’s Bell Award is open for nominations by any squadron, district, or national USPS leader. It is one of USPS’s key awards for individuals, groups, or even outside organizations that make significant contributions to USPS marketing. Past recipients have been: a national corporation, a tri-county newspaper, and a squadron assistant safety officer, who became a regional writer on boating safety.

If you have any candidates who are giving extraordinary marketing service contact R/C Greg Scotten at gscotten@comcast.net.

 

Calling all writers

The Marketing/ PR Committee is seeking to expand its writers team. Members who have experience in the writing of marketing releases for large organizations are needed as the Committee expands it work. Contact R/C Greg Scotten at gscotten@comcast.net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, June 6, 2009

How to Sell

 

Successfully Selling America’s Boating Course 3rd Edition®—a 26 slide sales presentation that will convince boating course students to join your squadron.  A narrated presentation that will take you through all the benefits of the course, overcoming objections and making the sale.

 

http://www.usps.org/national/natsec/marketing/SellABC.htm

 

Successfully Selling the United States Power Squadrons—a carefully planned 56 slide presentation that will help you recruit new members to your squadron.  The narrated presentation covers the skills from Successfully Selling America’s Boating Course 3rd Edition® and will give you the tools to “ask for the commitment” to join.

 

http://www.usps.org/national/natsec/marketing/SellUSPS.htm

 

Tom Kemp

Manager Marketing & Development Services

 

Note:  Both of these presentations are in QuickTime format and require a QuickTime Player.  If your system does not have the player, you should be prompted to download and install a free player.