Today I attempted to send emails to new members. In many ways, this attempt failed. It has been a practice for some time that the president of the NIOA send a letter of welcome to the newest members.

I have found over the past year that more than half of the emails that I attempt to send to new members are rejected by the receiving agency for various reasons. The most common reason is that the email address on record simply doesn’t exist. Executive Director Lisa McNeal tells me that much of the handwriting on the membership application forms is very hard to read.

The second most common reason that messages are returned is that the recipient agency requires that emails be “whitelisted” before acceptance. Some organizations automatically reject email addresses not in their accepted list.

This situation does not exist solely with new members. Much of the correspondence that the Board of Directors sends is bounced back to us. We have looked at several ways to better communicate with members, but we need to ask the following:

1. Be sure that your information is accurate and up-to-date. Find your info in the member directory (password protected section). If anything at all needs to be corrected email the changes to Lisa McNeal at nioa@comcast.net. Be sure to put your first and last name in the message so that she can find your record more easily.
2. Enter the email addresses of the Board of Directors and your regional director into your whitelist. You are missing key messages throughout the year if these cannot get through your postmaster system.

We want to help you get value from your membership. If you are not in the communications cycle, it is possible that you are missing some great information about your organization. Thank you for helping us communicate with you.

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