Why are you sending this email? Xander Sobecki asks that before every send—and the answers have made the Surplus Line Association of Illinois real money.
Sobecki built his association’s email program from the ground up, and in this episode, he shares what that looks like in practice: auditing the database before designing a single template, and running bracket-style A/B tests that settle the big structural questions first. He follows every email past the open rate to the registrations it produced—one send to 1,000 people drew 400 targeted clicks and traced straight to paid conference registrations.
He also breaks down the parts of email that rarely get airtime. Consent laws modeled on GDPR are spreading across US states. A rebuilt unsubscribe page can let members opt out of one email genre while staying on the lists they value. And transactional emails, like dues notices and renewals, carry protections most associations don’t know exist.
If you own email at your association, or you’re the leader deciding what it’s worth investing in, this one earns its runtime.
