Hello Skålleagues,

I hope you are all well and managing to enjoy the Winter months. It’s been freezing in Sydney lately, so I am very much looking forward to next month and heading up to Cairns for the National Assembly to defrost! If you haven’t registered yet there is still time, just visit the link elsewhere in this newsletter.

And on that note, there are still a (very) few tickets left for the Skål International Sydney Mid-Winter Ball next week at NSW Parliament House. Get in quick to secure your seat and dance the night away with Skålleagues from across Australia and New Zealand.

A couple of weeks ago I visited Adelaide for business and while I was there, I had the pleasure of catching up with a group of Skålleagues – National VP Taylor Spinks and Adelaide President Renee Shearer, as well as another visitor to Adelaide, Ali Banks from Skål Perth. It was a fabulous evening, with wonderful conversation and a delicious dinner (thanks to getting the inside knowledge from the locals!) and it really made me think about how great it is to have the network of industry friends that Skål brings us.

One of the things we talked about was how we all promote our various Skål Clubs to members and non-members alike. The strength of a professional networking association such as Skål really is in bringing people together and providing the opportunity to build relationships. This isn’t just the job of your Committee, or your President, or the National Exec, it’s the job of all Skålleagues – basically you get out what you put in. And when you get a group of Skålleagues together like this, you often hear a whole bunch of great ideas for promoting your Club and your business.

I wanted to tell you about a couple of the promotional ideas I have seen or heard about in my recent travels and chats with Skålleagues around Australia.

When I visited Perth last month, I was fortunate enough to tie it in with the Perth Club event. They had a great turn out and number of guests and potential members in attendance. Now we know from the March National Assembly that the Perth promotional machine is a slick engine and they really know their stuff. But one of the things they use to promote their Club and provide information to potential members on regular basis is presenting each guest at their monthly events with a postcard to take home. The postcard not only has a beautiful image of Perth, but also provides some information on the benefits of being a member of Skål, in particular the Skål Club of Perth and has a QR code with the link to join. Very simple, but very effective and an excellent promotional tool for their Club.

The Darwin Club has designed another excellent promotional tool to remind their members of the benefits of being part of their local Club and to help foster connections among them. They have produced a Member Directory which is available to all members of Skål Darwin. The directory introduces the current Committee, it outlines the membership benefits of Skål Darwin, as well as some more general information about Skål and a couple of our traditions and then provides a full contact listing of each of their members, making it super easy for them to “do business amongst friends”! And finally, it acknowledges their Club sponsors for their support of the Club and their activities. It’s an awesome tool for keeping their members engaged and for membership retention, as it is a tangible reminder of the value of the network they are part of.

So that’s just a couple of promotional ideas that you might consider for your Club.

Let me know if you have other great promotional ideas to share from your Clubs – as I said, you get out what you put in and creating a vibrant and strong Skål network is up to all of us.

Yours in Skål,

Melinda Brown

Director - Skål International Australia

Communications, P.R. & Media