Communications basics
How to send email from your portal. Choosing an audience, writing something worth opening, and reading the results honestly.
This article is for the administrators who run an organisation's Portava portal.
The Communications area is how your portal reaches members between visits. Used well, it is your most reliable engagement tool. Used carelessly, it teaches members to ignore you.
Compose and choose an audience
Create a message, write it, and choose who receives it. Resist "all members" as the default. A message about an exporters' briefing belongs with the members it concerns.
Every irrelevant email uses up a little of the attention your next relevant one needs. Unsubscribes are how members show you that.
Write for the skim
Members give an email seconds. A subject line that says the actual thing, such as "Networking breakfast: Thursday 14th, 3 places left", beats a clever one.
Keep to one main message per email, put the key detail in the first two lines, and give one clear link. If you find yourself writing three announcements into one email, that is your next three emails.
A rhythm beats a burst
A predictable cadence works better than sporadic bursts. Send a fortnightly or monthly roundup, plus targeted messages when something genuinely concerns a group.
The roundup is also where your portal content pays off twice. The events, news and resources you have already published are the newsletter. Link to them rather than restating them.
Read the results honestly
After sending, look at what happened. Opens show curiosity, clicks show interest, and bookings and reads show results. Compare like with like across sends and reuse what worked best.
Watch unsubscribes too. A spike after a send is members telling you something specific about that send.