The Data-Driven Chamber

How Chambers Use Data to Monitor Event Success, Improve Operations, Report on Their Communities and More

By Katherine House

“I think the best-in-class chambers are keeping up with a whole lot of data both internally and related to their community,” said Aaron Nelson, IOM, president and CEO of The Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro in North Carolina. Data may verify one’s intuition or support a hypothesis, said Jonathan Packer, senior vice president, customer experience, for the Austin Chamber in Texas. It can also support and give confidence to decision-makers, while helping them make the case that a decision is not personal. Conversely, Packer said, “Data can also lead you to make decisions that you didn’t anticipate.”

Tracking Event Metrics in a Pre-COVID World

Aaron Nelson President & CEO The Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro

For the past seven years, Nelson has kept a detailed Excel spreadsheet related to each of the chamber’s major ticketed events. Besides capturing attendance and revenue, the spreadsheet includes the event’s Net Promoter Score (NPS). Sensitive to how much time it takes to plan and execute events, Nelson also records staff time by total hours, something often overlooked in budget discussions.

But executing successful events means more than making money and/or increasing the NPS. Nelson also tracks how well each event aligns with his organization’s mission. One additional column indicates alignment with the chamber’s mission to connect. Another indicates alignment with the mission to inform. A third field indicates the extent to which the chamber is “uniquely qualified” to offer that event. In all three cases, the chamber scores alignment by shading the field red, yellow or green.

“The spreadsheet really unmasks challenges,” said Nelson. A declining NPS may indicate that it’s time to retool an event. If the chamber is not uniquely qualified to hold an event, like a golf tournament, for example, what data supports retaining or eliminating it?  “The data really helps us decide,” he explained. “It keep our eyes wide open about events that don’t align well with mission.” 

Conversely, tracking and analyzing data helped Nelson justify canceling the Business Hall of Fame gala. Even though it garnered strong Net Promoter Scores, attendance was declining. Over time, the event lost money. Canceled events remain on the spreadsheet indefinitely with all fields shaded gray for comparison to other events, in case someone asks why an event was axed.

Britt Delo Director of Membership Michigan West Coast Chamber

The staff at the Michigan West Coast Chamber in Holland, Mich., produces a post-event report card. Each one typically shows data from the current year and two previous years and includes many of the metrics that Nelson’s spreadsheet does. In addition, the report card features fields listing event location, number of no-shows, sponsorship revenue, registration revenue, total revenue and net revenue, as well as the net revenue goal for comparison. By tracking the typical no-show rate, event planners can feel more confident when reporting head count to catering before an event, said Britt Delo, director of membership.

In addition, the report card includes a comments field summarizing positive feedback, as well as “opportunities,” such as limited parking. “The gold is in the feedback,” Delo said.  If the chamber tweaks an event based on comments, the staff explains that to members. Since the Michigan West Coast Chamber runs on the Entrepreneurial Operating System™, some of the data collected is used on monthly scorecards - a hallmark of EOS - to track progress of the entire organization, each department and volunteers.

Tracking Membership Sales and Retention

The Michigan West Coast Chamber also uses custom reports to monitor the sales pipeline, track membership leads and monitor first-year engagement. A source tracking report, which is utilized during recruitment and through the first membership year, lists company name, sales stage, date of first contact and the source of lead (an event, person, or social media source). Two more fields, forecast month for joining and estimated dues, help the staff gauge progress toward monthly sales goals.

Finally, a seventh field lists the all-important A, B, or C rating assigned to prospects based on pre-established criteria, such as business location and sponsorship potential. The prospect’s rating allows staff to make critical decisions about how much time and effort to put into recruitment. “An A member we will follow until the end of time,” said Delo. Comparing the sales stage to the rating “gives you permission to let go,” of B and C members after a certain number of contacts, she said.

Monitoring the pipeline also enables the chamber to customize marketing efforts. Prospects with an A rating may receive a promotional code to attend an event, and testimonials sent to prospects can be tailored accordingly. Another report indicates the number of prospect companies who attended key events, the number of discovery meetings held and most importantly, the percentage of prospects who joined, providing insight about which events attract serious prospects.

But as every membership director knows, it’s imperative to track not only membership sales, but also engagement and retention rates. The Michigan West Coast Chamber sends a series of emails to new members within the first year at preset times. Statistics show which members opened emails, as well as those who clicked on a link. This data allows the staff to create a report card showing engagement by member.

Among other metrics, the report card includes the number of unopened emails and an at-risk rating assigned by staff based on that number. Another field explains staff action, such as a phone call, meeting or follow-up marketing piece. Without this report card, it would be easy for new members to fall through the cracks, and staff might not realize there was limited engagement or interest until the second-year dues notice went unpaid, said Delo. 

In North Carolina, tracking retention rates by membership tier helps Nelson home in on which members to engage - or not. After noticing low retention rates for very small businesses, the chamber enabled Micro Enterprises to join online for a monthly fee. Businesses must cancel the membership if they no longer value it, similar to subscription-based models like gym memberships, instead of having the chamber’s sales team spend time reaching out to businesses unlikely to renew. Nelson encourages chamber executives to think like university presidents and track over time all members who join in a certain year to compare retention levels. Universities track persistence rates to see at what point students tend to drop out.

Data Helps Drive Internal Changes

Jonathan Packer SVP, Customer Experience Austin Chamber

In 2018, the board of the Austin Chamber invested in a digital transformation project with money from reserves. That meant migrating from chamber management software to a financial platform, marketing platform and cloud-based customer relationship management platform, all of which are integrated. Implementing Salesforce, a real-time CRM, has been a game-changer, said Packer, because managers can see “not just what happened but what is happening. We can get a pulse on very important business processes.” 

Because all employees can easily contribute information to the CRM, the organization is “capturing data we never captured in a formalized way before,” he said. Salesforce’s high level of customization suits the business structure and strategy of the Austin Chamber, he said, but requires an in-house administrator, something that may not be cost-effective for small organizations.

In large part, data analysis led to restructuring the chamber’s member development team in late 2020. “Certainly, the pandemic increased the potency of issues that existed pre-pandemic,” said Packer. Thanks to easily accessible data, “We had everything we needed to test our hypothesis and the data overwhelmingly supported the hypothesis,” he said.

Before the restructuring, every salesperson had the same set of responsibilities and received leads from all sources. By analyzing data that showed length of time to close each sale, as well as the source of every lead, managers confirmed that certain salespeople were more adept at leveraging technology to close quick sales from marketing leads, like the chamber’s website, for example. Other salespeople excelled at making complex sales that required follow-up over a few months. Now the team is “better aligned with opportunities,” he said.