Help Us Re-Name our Membership e-Newsletter

April 30, 2014 5:18 PM

I work for a national association of 12,000 women sales professionals. Our current newsletter is titled e-Connect, which is obviously generic and boring, and we’re looking for something better. This newsletter, a monthly publication, features organizational news, along with sales and marketing topics and features on women doing interesting things in their profession, particularly with regard to how they translate community and industry involvement into business success.

From our strategic plan, which pretty much describes us at our best:
- We facilitate the professional growth and credibility of our members as experts in their marketplace
- We are a dynamic, accessible and diverse network, linking resources and member expertise to drive business success
- We identify, support and promote business leaders
- We highlight and promote the achievement and influence of women in our profession
- We are a network of strong local chapters that consistently deliver value and provide
a collaborative, trusted and welcoming environment in which members can achieve their business goals.

Names we have considered and rejected as too generic, platitudinous or just plain stupid include:
- Pro Impact
- Lead Pro
- Leading Edge
- Game Changer
- Impact
- Success Journal

Maybe we need to hire a marketing professional, but I thought I’d check in with the hive mind first.

posted by Puppetperson to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Best answer: That the name is generic and boring says nothing about the content. Have people been complaining? Cosmetic changes like this are usually overvalued by their advocates. My vote is to keep the name because people probably won't care.

If you're trying to make a change to get peoples' attention, for an email newsletter changing the Subject: line is probably enough, like going from "e-Connect Newsletter" to "e-Connect April 2014: Increasing Engagement."
posted by rhizome at 5:25 PM on April 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

In the interest of going out of the box a little...the words in your plan which jump out to me are growth, dynamic, support, influence, and network, all of which connote (to me) something natural/organic. Something large-scale and alive. So I'm thinking botanical, plants and trees maybe. But huge, like Pando or the Sequoia.

(and posting after rhizome, no less!)
posted by jquinby at 5:41 PM on April 30, 2014

I think rhizome is sort of right that rebranding is often an exercise that means more to the people doing it than those outside the organization. However, e-Connect is sort of generic and boring and is the kind of thing that people called their newsletters in the 90s when email was cutting edge. As a membership organization that's always trying to recruit members, image is important and I think it might be worth changing the name (and updating the newsletter format if it hasn't been revisited in a while--mobile is where it's at these days).

Are there any sales terms that might lend themselves to a gender-related play on words? Slates' "Broad Sheet" is a good example of an industry-specific term that also has a gender angle. Is there a way to incorporate the name of your organization? If your organization's acronym is ISDN, you could go with something like ISDNews.

You probably don't need a marketing consultant just for a newsletter name change, but if you're thinking about revisiting your branding and messaging more broadly, then it might be worth considering. Professional/membership association marketing has grown quite sophisticated.
posted by Colonel_Chappy at 8:07 PM on April 30, 2014

XXelle

1. Homonym for "excel"
2. XX as in chromosomes
3. Elle as in, you know,
4. XX as in signing a letter - XO so-and-so, but in this case, XX elle
posted by univac at 11:42 PM on April 30, 2014

- (Org Name) Exclusive
- (Org Name) Advisor
- (Org Name) Closer
- The Presentation Deck
- The Hook
- Follow Up
- Recommend
- Lead Essential
posted by faineant at 1:11 AM on May 1, 2014