Latest / Beyond the Ribbon Cut / Ep. 6 - Dom Provenzano (Staten Island Chamber of Commerce)

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Ep. 6 - Dom Provenzano (Staten Island Chamber of Commerce) · Beyond the Ribbon Cut

• Dom Provenzano: AI is what everybody's talking about. I admittedly I am not an AI guy. my whole kind of perspective changed at IOM. We had a class on some AI uses use cases for for chambers specifically. And then my kind of eyes opened up to what is possible. So Claude, it's twenty dollars a month and you can get you can spend more, but for us all we need is twenty dollars. And I then took that API And built a retention dashboard completely customized to our chamber based on that API. So it's able to see all the stuff on our member, on our membership history and data. And it's able to make an analysis on it that our CRM simply cannot do. So Ted: Hello, and welcome back to Beyond the Ribbon Cut, the podcast for chamber leaders. I'm your host, Ted Wind from Diagonal for Chambers, and my guest today is Dom Provenzano, marketing, communications, and member relations manager at the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce in New York City. Dom, thank you so much for joining us today. Dom Provenzano: Yeah, thanks for having me. Ted: Awesome. So to get us going today, obviously, you know, everyone's heard of Staten Island, but most chamber folks have probably never seen it from the inside. Can you tell us a little bit about the chamber and the business community you guys serve? Dom Provenzano: Yeah, so Staten Island is one of the five boroughs of New York City. people say that we're the forgotten borough. I don't like that. we're not forgotten. but we are just different. we're definitely not what you think of when you think of New York City, you're thinking of probably Midtown Manhattan or Brooklyn. we're very different. We're a more suburban, small business borough. We have, you know, many, many, many small businesses here, multi-generational businesses. families that have owned businesses for you know for generations and everybody knows each other. for better or for worse, literally everybody's separated by it's not two degrees of separation or three degrees of separation. It's usually like one degree of separation. So it's a very small community. It's like a little mini it's a small town in a big city. it's a very, very great place to live, a great place to to work. and the Santalan Chamber of Commerce we have just under seven hundred members. We've been around since eighteen ninety-five. and we have eleven people on staff and our president has been with the organization for close to forty years and we have a very, very strong team and we are a five star accredited chamber. We are we're very proud of that. We got that last year in 2025. we're the first chamber in New York City to be accredited, let alone five star accredited. And we're one of only five chambers in New York State that it is accredited. So we're very proud of that. we do a lot of really, really great work here. very proud of the work that we do. and St. Island's a great place. Ted: Love that, love that. And yeah, you you talked about, you know, multi gener generational businesses, but the chamber being around for a hundred and thirty years. I mean, you guys are multi generational as well. That's that's really, really incredible. Dom Provenzano: Yes. Yeah. we've been through the worst of the worst, in terms of when you're looking at economies, both world wars, you know, everything but the Civil War we've been around for. So we've seen it all. So we have a deep, deep bench of experience here at the chamber and we've we've again we've seen everything there is to see. Now that we've had a p global pandemic, I think we've really seen Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: everything. everything that that the small business community could see. Ted: Yeah, hopefully checked off most of the most of the boxes there. Dom Provenzano: Yeah. Yeah. Actually this this was our second pandemic because we did see the nineteen I what was it, the nineteen nineteen twelve was it? the previous pandemic. So yeah, so we experienced two pandemics. I don't know how many chambers can say that. Ted: Wow, that is probably not one you'll see on the website, but pretty pretty impressive. That's incredible, though. Well, thanks for sharing that. I'd love to if you know you could give our listeners at home a little bit more about kind of your background. You're you know, have an MBA marketing background, maybe not the typical chamber origin story. How did you kind of find yourself at the Staten Island Chamber? Dom Provenzano: Yeah, so I worked in Midtown Manhattan for a couple of years. from twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen and was working a job in Midtown in actually illegal marketing at a at a a pretty sizable law firm. and it just it was a good job, but I it was just not the industry I wanted to be in. and the commute we have Staten Island has some of the l longest commutes in in the country. And so I really wanted to gain a lot of my time back. I was spending three hours a day on on just commuting. So once an opportunity arose with the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, and I just kind of jumped on it. I thought it was a good opportunity to work where I live. I I'm born and raised in Staten Island. the office was literally minutes from my house. And I again I thought it was great opportunity to do local work and meaningful work in my own community that I grew up in and love. So yeah, so it was a great opportunity to work and be able to serve the small business community in my own backyard. and then it really became something I really fell in love with. I joined in twenty nineteen, September of twenty nineteen. And then a couple of months later, in March of twenty twenty, something happened that really changed the trajectory of of my whole career. it when COVID hit, it was just transformational for our chamber. I mean there's it was just so just consequential. and we really stepped up. I'm super proud of the work that we did here at the chamber, in 2020 because I was just saying to this this morning, a lot of businesses in chambers f when times are good tend to forget why they join the chamber because times are good. You know, when the economy's good, when you know in times of of just you know of plenty, people kind of s tend to forget why they join chambers. And then when the bad times hit and whether it's you know a tariff or you know the w the economy is not great or a global pandemic, people realize and they're a member, that's right. I'm a member of the chamber because they they can help me. and they do all this work for me. And whether it's behind the scenes or or one-to-one, they're there to support me. and we really demonstrated that in 2020. we became just an information hub for all the stuff that was happening in that time things were changing literally daily. Especially here in New York City. So we were really on the forefront of making sure that people knew what was happening, what the laws were and what the guidelines were Ted: Mm. Dom Provenzano: at the time. and that making sure that people were able to not only synthesize the data but use it. and when the time came to reopen, we r worked with our partners in the borough president's office, and the SIEDC and with other community organizations to get out hundreds of thousands of PPE items. So like gloves, masks, hand sanitizer, all this stuff in the peak of the pandemic. And I really feel good about that. I think we really did a a lot of work in not only making sure that our business community was informed, but our community as a whole was armed Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: to, you know, protect themselves, take care of themselves. and we did some of the best work we we really, I think we we've ever done as an organization. So Coming out of the pandemic, we really demonstrated, I think, our value. Our membership has grown significantly since 2020. and we've really just really planted our feet in our new location. now here located in in the in Bullsead, right outside the Staten Island Mole. and yeah, we our membership continues to grow and evolve and diversify, and we're really proud of the of where we're at here in twenty twenty six. Ted: Yeah, that's that's an incredible story. And I think, you know, that that really just goes to show like when times are tough, you know, the chamber is there. And I think that ties into the kind of conversation I want to get into in a little bit about, you know, member retention and renewals, which we'll talk about in second. One more thing on your background I do want to touch on. you've gone through the IOM training program. I believe you're only the second person in your chamber's history to earn that, right? Yep. Dom Provenzano: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Ted: So Did that program change how you think about member relations? Could you maybe just share a little bit more about kind of that Dom Provenzano: Yeah. Ted: experience? Dom Provenzano: Yes. Institute for Organizational Management. got my certif my IOM certification actually last last month, July of twenty twenty six, at the Southeast site. That was in Athens, Georgia. And yeah, our president had gotten it sometime in the nineties. I don't remember the exact date. but it was a great program. it's run by the US Chamber of Commerce and it not only changed how I look at at member relations, but pretty much everything. I mean, it gave me the full kind of education in terms of how to be a chamber professional. but also it it's all about the relationships, right? and the relationships that I built with my class there. it was it it cannot be understated how truly impactful those relationships were. all the stuff that I learned there was really largely due to them because just the conversations you have with them, you get to kind of commiserate over things like, Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: you know, whether it's the common things that chamber professionals face in in their day to day, no one gets it but other chamber folks. So those conversations were worth every penny that we spent really there. and, you know, we had the best class ever. I will proudly say that we truly Ted: Ha ha ha. Dom Provenzano: were the B C E. And we I think we made our mark on Southeast. I think a lot of people knew about us and our our I won't say antics, but our our the fun that we had. it was a great, it was really great. We had a great time and learned a ton that we've brought back to our chamber and stuff that I'm literally working on minutes before I got on this call that are I'm like implementing on a daily basis that come from that. so it was really impactful. R I I would recommend any chamber that's listening. if you really value professional development, there's someone in your organization you think could be a a possible leader or really just is a leader in their department, look into IOM. It is excellent. And look into the Georgia, this the Athens Georgia site because it is really special. There's something so special about that site. it can't be put into words, it's just very, very special. so definitely check that out. Ted: That's really, really cool. Definitely, definitely should be checking that out for folks that are listening at home. Now, I want to get over to the reason why I'm so excited to have you on. When I talk to chamber leaders, you know, most conversations were so focused on getting new members, the ribbon cuttings, the recruitment pushes, But meanwhile, you know, retention. and the kind of renewal process is often a coin flip that we often don't necessarily want to talk about. Why does member retention deserve more attention than most chamber members give it? Dom Provenzano: so retention is a big focus of what we're looking at in the past couple of years. We've really made retention and retention strategy a key part of our of our day-to-day. And the reason is I think is again, like you mentioned, you're focused on the member onboarding, you're focused on selling the membership, and you're focused on making sure that they renew. Where that kind of falls into the the pitfall of that is that you're looking at their join date and if they join in August, just say they get a lot of attention in August and then it trails down and then all of a sudden come July of next year, you're coming at them with a with a renewal invoice. So I looked at that and and I'm not the first to to do this, but a lot of people are are saying like, all right, how do we make it so that when you know we're we're touching them throughout the year? And we're making sure that that we're communicating all year long about all the things that we're doing for them. not just an event invitation whenever we have an event, but making sure that they're aware of our advocacy efforts, we're making sure that they're aware of our of our workforce programs, things like that. And just making sure that they're educated and knowing that, like, hey, even though you may not have come to an event this month, Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: you should know that we're doing all this stuff in the background. So we've really made it a focus to make sure that every member And doesn't not just the one year members, not just the the members who have been with us for a hundred years, not just the members that spend five thousand dollars with us or the member that spends four fifty. we want to make sure that every member is reached out to all year long. and not just blasting out, you know, the same email to everybody. We want to make sure that we're doing smart retention so that people are getting stuff that is tailored to them and important to them. so that they know when it comes time to renew. they know why they're renewing. and it's not just because, you know, that's what you do, it's because I need these valuable tools that they've been giving me all year long. So that's a huge, huge initiative for us. And something that we've really in just the past four weeks have really revamped. I'm happy to chat about that. But it's it's something that is vitally important for every chamber. and I think it's key to your long term survival. Ted: that's really interesting. I wanna touch on that because you know what you just described there, it's not just you know a process, it's also it's a full system, right, that you've put in place. And you know, you mentioned you're constantly revamping that. Now, from what I understand, it's a little bit of a combination of kind of customized touch points. ROI reports, individual account management. Could you walk us through it? What does a members year actually look like inside the program that you've built? Dom Provenzano: Sure. Okay. So there's a lot of there's a lot of different components. first of which is they join. so let's just assume that they've joined online. they are now into our CRM. We go in on day one and we make sure that their listing and all their information is as perfect as it can possibly be from our end. So we look at their website, we make sure their listing is correct, we make sure that punctuation is correct. Literally I look at everything just to make sure that they're set up for success. that's day one. Also day one is I send over a welcome email, which gives them orientation essentially. It gives them access to their member listing. It gives them access to the member marketplace is other service that we have. it gives them basically all the information that they need to get started. we record what we call a new member spotlight. all this good stuff on day one. and then typically we would set up a meeting over the the the first week of joining, We get in a Teams meeting. we record their new member spotlight. We chat about their goals. We chat about what's you know what's happening in the bit in their business. and then I log all that into the CRM. So I am logging their goals. I'm logging any key points that I think are essential to their membership. So if they tell me they're joining the network, I note that in the CRM. If they're telling me they're joining because they want to get more visibility, I'll log that the system. So I make sure to be be very, very mindful about what I'm logging, just to make sure that I can track that later in the year. We then send out the new member spotlight, typically within a week or two. and then we stay on top of them with member updates. I send out one every week. that goes out to all the members with anything that's happening within the chamber. any news, events. sometimes they go out multiple times a week depending on the the what's happening. Last week we had a very, very busy week with our mayor. He announced all kinds of stuff for for the small business community. so sent out a lot of emails last week. and that that is the mass side of things. Then we set a number of touch points per member age. So if a member is zero to one year old We they get a X amount of touch points. If they are one to three years old, they get a different amount of touch points. And then if they are three years old and beyond, they get X amount of touch points. those touch points vary, and this is something that's evolving internally. So typically what they'll do in the first year tends to be the emails that I'll send out is at six months. or in three months it'll be, hey, haven't seen you in an event yet. or hey, you didn't take advantage of any member spotlight. Just want to flag that for you. or it's, you know, this it's very personalized things and I'll get into how I do that later. but it's meant to one, poke them so that they take advantage of things. and two, make them aware of anything else that were happening. That were anything else that is happening in the future. So I sent out one this morning that said, Hey, you're set to renew in two months. I noticed you haven't attended a single event this year. and you joined for networking. Is there a reason for that? there are times that work for you. and if everything else is is fine, here are the list of events that are coming up that you may be interested in. And I send that out. and then for the year group one to three, they tend to be a little bit more in the vein of did you know? Did you know that you can refer a member? Did you know that we have this 401k program? Did you know that we offer billboard advertising? Things like that. we're assuming that they're a little bit more educated than the first year member. And then the three year and above members are really based on personalized touch points. Just checking in, how's your business doing? How's that issue that you had? Is that how's that going for you? Checking in on stuff like that as best we can. we do a lot of phone calls, we do a lot of individual emails, it's a lot of work. but we really want to make sure again that we're giving them every member the attention that they deserve because that's why they join. and we believe that again, like I said before, if a member it regardless of their age, I think it's not just about the renewal, it's about the whole membership year and making sure that they're getting, you know, constantly reminded of why they joined the team. Ted: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I I think that personalized for every member piece. I can already, you know, imagine the chamber leaders listening at home. You know, that that sounds great until you you do the math there, right? Roughly 700 members, Dom Provenzano: Yes. Yeah. Ted: a small team. How do you keep it personal at that scale, especially without burning you or your staff out? Dom Provenzano: Yeah. So this is key. so I would say to the chamber professionals of the world, bother your CRM provider, I don't know who whoever you use, have sure they have an open API. so then you take that API and you just check it, see what it's giving you. if the if the API gives you data that is safe to use. So things like membership name, join date, category, notes in the CRM, things like that. Stuff that is like not sensitive data, then great. you will then be using that data. If it contains sensitive data, credit card information, information about mergers and acquisitions, like anything like that, you will have to work with your CRM provider to create a custom API for you. In our case, our API does not include any sensitive data. It includes all publicly accessible, anything that we would publish on our member directory, things like, you know, again, joint date and basic information about the business, purchases, but not their credit card information, things like that. and then I got myself a Claude subscription. so AI, it's the hot topic of I I was we s you know, I'm sure you experience in in New Orleans at the ACCE conference, AI is what everybody's talking about. I admittedly I am I am not an AI guy. it's not my thing. I'm not like a, you know, vibe coding or especially when it comes to AI artwork and and that kind of stuff. Not for me. my whole kind of perspective changed at IOM. We had a class on some AI uses use cases for for chambers specifically. And then my kind of eyes opened up to what is possible. outside of what is currently the you know, what people are talking about in AI is a lot, you know, the flyers that look terrible and things like that. this is much more much more purposeful and useful. So Claude, it's twenty dollars a month and you can get you can spend more, but for us all we need is twenty dollars. And I then took that API And built a retention dashboard completely customized to our chamber based on that API. So it's able to see all the stuff on our member, on our membership history and data. And it's able to make an analysis on it that our CRM simply cannot do. So our CRM is not good at analyzing data. And so this does what our CRM does not. It takes the raw data. And makes decisions and says, okay, this member is likely to drop, or this member is set to go. He's this member is great for the next year. So I told it, I gave it all the parameters. I said, give every member a drop risk rate. So I determined that the risk was a combination of the age of the membership, events attended, any purchases with the chamber, things the chamber purchased from them. all these different things, draw join reason. And again, that all goes back to inputting data into the CRM. Very, very important. and then it synthesizes all that and puts it in a nice dashboard for me that myself and the rest of my team can access and use. So I actually pushed it to a local server so that you can access it on your phone, on your computer via a web browser. and it has all of the it's it's live. Yeah, you can actually it works like a Google Doc. Like so if I go in there and I check someone off, in real time, another member of the team will actually see it. And it gives us month by month all of our activities for that month. So our 10 month check-ins, our six month check-ins, our three month check-ins, and it rates them by by drop risk factor. So I can tell that, you know, there are, you know, just in August, there are 20 high-risk members. Those 20 is what our team will be focusing on, give putting our most attention to. So that means phone calls, that means, you know, possibly even visits passing by. and then the people that are at a lower risk, somewhere in the middle, we do it by c on a case-by-case basis. We just scroll through, and these are all people that we're familiar with. We know we love all of our members, we know them all well. So we l we scroll through and we know, okay, this guy, I just saw him the other day. He's good. this woman, she I know that she needed help with you know, the city agency. Let me check in on how she's doing with that. So it's much more it's very mindful. and it also cuts down the work because then there are a whole swath of people that are in the green that are like very, very likely to renew. And those I draft this nice email template that goes out to those members. at the tenth month at the ten month mark, at the six month mark, just to make sure again that they're getting everything they want. It pushes them possibly an option for a meeting with me or a meeting with a member of the team so that they can revisit if they'd like to. And it's just showing them, hey, like we're s I I know you're set. I know you're getting what you want out of the chamber, but I just wanted to check in. it's all about hospitality. I mean it's really that's really what it comes down to. and it's using a lot of common sense and but it's also using a lot of personal information that you've collected as staff members of the chamber team. Everybody's role here is different, but we all share the same common goal of serving our members. So we all are have a vested interest in knowing them and knowing what their goals are. So we factor that all in. And I have to say this dashboard, it's something that I created fairly quickly. Maybe took me, I don't know, if I was to put an hour count on it, I would say maybe 20 hours of work. of just toying and tinkering. and I am not a coder. I am not it's not, you know, something I have any skill set in. and I was able to get this thing up very quickly and and making edits to it are wildly it is wildly easy. Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: and just right before I got on this call, I I was going over this dashboard with a member of of the team and he said, can I filter it by by their risk rate of dropping? I was like, probably, yeah. I didn't consider that. So I went in, I went into my terminal into in my Mac and was like, all right, I'd love to be able to sort this by risk factor. And you know, while you were getting me acclimated to the to the podcast setup, it updated for me. So it's very easy to do. I would say that, you know, it takes a little bit of patience, a little bit of tinkering. And again, it takes a good API. It's key. I would never advise anybody to plug all your information into an AI tool. it it's you have to you have to have an AI policy. and you have to make sure that there's no sensitive data in that API. It's very, very important. beyond that, you know, I say use the tools available to you to analyze your data. because that is key. like connecting the dots was our missing piece for many years. We were doing aimless reach like retention reach outs and it was drain on our resources. This is really honing it in and sharpening our our our approach so that you know we're we're only reaching the people that well, we're reaching everybody, but we're we're putting the strongest the strongest attention to those who need it most. Ted: Mm-hmm. I love that because I think a lot of times chambers really focus on The amount of resources and effort they're putting into member retention, member outreach is based on tiers, right? It's like, you know, I'm gonna put all my resources into the, you know, the huge enterprise members and, you know, less into the mom and pops because they're, you know, naturally they're just paying less to be part of the chamber. But I think restructuring that, like you said, and and focusing on this drop risk is so, so crucial and allows. you as a chamber to be able to just so much better allocate the limited staff resources you have to the highest risk, most important members that need to be addressed there. Dom Provenzano: Yeah. And if and if you're really purposeful with your the data that you collect, and you're really good at logging stuff within your CRM, the better that you are at that, the better the data will be. And what r what is right for my chamber might not be right for another chamber. so you can really you can really cater this tool to your your chamber. and if if you feel that you have a specific event that tends to be a driver of membership, a driver, a drive a retention driver for your chamber, you can work that into your membership this this retention tool that you can build. Like I can get super granular with some of our products that we have that other chambers don't that we see as as membership drivers. And that's the beauty of it is that you can really get like AI does not really care one way or another. It's not a template. you can customize the tool to your liking and to your membership. But it it it takes really good hygiene of your CRM, of Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: your data, and making sure that you're on top of it. And I I forget. I I forget sometimes. You know, I I was with a member just this morning and got to my office. I was here for like three hours before I was like, right, I I gotta log that in the CRM. so it takes some discipline and it takes some work, but the better your data data is. you can have the most advanced AI tool in the world, but if your data is is terrible or non-existent, it there's nothing for it to analyze. It can't get into Ted: Yeah. Dom Provenzano: your brain. It doesn't know your relationship. So you really have to get good at keeping good data and making sure that you're just logging everything. Log everything, log everything. Ted: Mm. Dom Provenzano: And just again, I'm gonna say it again, no sensitive data into that CRM. Just be careful. Be very, very careful what you're putting in there. We wouldn't we don't have a QuickBooks, for example, integration with our AI tool. We like we don't want anything that comes to financials is strictly prohibited or any, you know, personal or any of that stuff. So it's being careful of that, but again, making sure that y every data point is logged. Ted: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. A hundred percent. And I mean, obviously, we really resonate with this. I mean, one of our core tenants at Diagonal is this idea that, you know, every chamber is unique and that we can build, you know, personalized tools for them. So obviously, big fan of pretty much everything you were talking about there. I love if we could just shift a little bit over towards the engagement side afterwards, right? So we talked a lot about like the internal tools that you guys are are using in the Staten Island Chamber to publish and push out a lot of this content and information to members. I was curious if you could share a little bit more about. what some of those communications actually look like that members really resonate with and connect with. So you aren't just, you know, blasting out newsletters into the air that nobody's reading. Dom Provenzano: Sure. Yeah. So a lot of this goes back to COVID. so when I alluded to a lot of those communications that we sent out during COVID, specifically within our CRM we have a a mailing tool that allows us to to email just our members. but the kind of good thing about this tool, it's a good thing and a bad thing. it's very basic. It's just like an HTML, Mailer. It's not like a content contact. It's not like you know mail chimp or whatever. It's very, very basic. So again, that's good and bad. It's in in the case for during COVID, it was great because and the reason was is because it allowed us to send out all these emails to our members about what was happening in the in the community and within our city. and it wasn't What I found is that it wasn't get landing in like spam filters and blockers because it again, it's HTML email, very, very basic. There's very little to raise the flag, the spam flag. So we sent these emails out constantly and members became like very dependent on them. and they became accustomed to seeing them. So once COVID came was, you know, kind of petering off, I was thinking to myself, like, you know, we've become really part of the daily life of the of our member. and I'm sure there's some people that are sick of seeing my name pop up in their inbox. but there is a lot of people that became again, they relying on them and expected them. So we're thinking about what that shift would look like once we're not talking about closing and reopening and what have you. So we kind of shifted to make it more about a kind of a a what's happening with the chamber. So if you have an event, it goes in there. but also like, you know, opportunities in the community. really any kind of opportunity that a small business needs to know or a nonprofit, we really like make sure to make it clear, concise, easy to read. It's so it's not buried within headlines and you know, you know, and and it resonates even further now with AI because I'm finding that AI is kind of and this is kind of on the bad side, is it's making everything look very much the same. Everybody's emails look the s exactly the same now. So with all these boxes everywhere. So the the good thing is that the emails that come from us from the CRM, they look very basic. I'm not gonna lie. It's it's a bunch of words, black words on on a on a white background. but it works. And it's we synthesize the data very, very easily for members to digest. They're busy people. They don't want to read a newsletter. They want to, you know, they want to just okay, what are the things they need to know today? Okay, great, done. And that works really well for us. So We send those emails out to our members only. I segment them even further. So if there's something like New York City Food Food Week or you know, s something that is specific to a specific industry, I'm able to, you know, basic CRM stuff is just send it out to the restaurants, send it out to just the construction people, whatever it is. so we're very mindful of that so that we only send out we try to only send the relevant things to the relevant members so they're not being bombarded. And then we have a separate mailing list that we use with constant contact. That's where our weekly newsletter goes. any major event like invitations and things like that, anything that would go out to a wider aud audience goes through constant contact. I think people have started started to realize if the email comes from Dom, it's about their membership and it's about, you know, utilizing the chamber and and so on and so forth. If they see something coming from constant contact or com coming from this general chamber mailing list, they know, this is a mass email. Ted: Mm. Dom Provenzano: so we've really gotten smart about like what we use for each, only using the CRM based one when we need it, and Ted: Yeah. Dom Provenzano: for important things so that we're not We're not setting on like setting up for chamber fatigue I someone recently Ted: exactly. Dom Provenzano: said to me, the that had met me for the first time after like being a member for like a long time. He said, I thought you were AI because those I thought you were a bot because I saw your name and I was like, There's no way this guy is sending out all this information every day. I was like, Well, I am. Ted: Ha ha ha. Dom Provenzano: So yeah, so it's funny. It's again, a lot of people I'm I'm sure again there's people that are sick of seeing me, but you know, it works for the for most members, it works and it it works within their time and their busy schedules and they're able to get Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: what they need out of it quickly. Ted: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I I think that's you know, we hit on some important themes there. The consistency that all of these communications have going out, right? They're all structured similar similarly. Members know what to expect when they see that header, when they see that, you know, domain Dom Provenzano: Yeah. Ted: name or whatever from the email. They have a sense of what to expect. I think that to your point really helps with breaking through, especially when it comes to those open rates, with kind of mass communication. Dom Provenzano: Yeah. And I have a marketing background. I mean, I do a lot of marketing and and communications for the chamber, but my marketing background is all about branding and consistency and so that and voice. So that's very important to me. Ted: Mm. Dom Provenzano: so a lot of our stuff, you know, you'll find has the same voice. We're not using AI for, you know, to send you an email. Like it just that to me that stuff just drives me nuts. I wanna make sure that everything we have templates, don't get me wrong. We have templates that we use 'cause you need to. your only your small teams and s but I make sure that no email ever goes out without a human reviewing it and and customizing it and have it has our voice and our and so that, you know, to me, an AI email says, I don't care. and I don't have the time to write an email to you. So I never want a member to feel like we don't care about them 'cause we we care about every member. so Ted: Mm. Dom Provenzano: I want and I want them to feel that. And I think that in this age of samification with AI, I think It's important to stand out, develop your own voice and stick to it. Ted: One thousand percent, one thousand percent. last question on the show, we like to ask every guest who comes on, it's it's a tradition. What's one last piece of advice you'd give to other chamber leaders that are listening in? Dom Provenzano: I sp I spent a lot of time thinking about like my role at the chamber, and what I do on a daily basis and what chambers are meant to do. And, you know, what is the why and our mission? and the mission and and the why that we exist is really to make our business community better for everybody, for our businesses, for the people who work here, for the people who live here. so Really I like to end my work day or I really end the work week by thinking about how did I help members? How did I help somebody this week? and that's really the the guiding star, I think, that I operate by. It's how did I help a member? How did I make their business life a little easier? in a time where running a small business is incredibly difficult. and it really takes you know, so much work and so much time and dedication. And I think we're here to ease the load, a little bit. And if I can make a business's life a little bit easier and a little bit happier, and make sure that they are more profitable or they're meeting who they need to meet, if I can every time I do that successfully, I feel so good. it's so rewarding. and If I didn't do that th this week, or if there's a day where that did not happen, I feel like I did a bad job. so I think operating by who did I help this week, how did I make a difference? and 'cause that's what we do. We really chambers, we make a difference in the lives of these business owners, and these business professionals. We really do. every day, everything that we do is meant not for us as a chamber to, you know, raise funds or or dues. It's meant to serve the business owner and the member. Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: so yeah, I mean that's that's that's that's my guiding that's my guiding principle. it's just it's just do do good by people and and treat them well and remember people and and just make sure that you're connecting with people and your members and on a personal level and making sure that you understand Who they are, what they need from you, and try your absolute best to give them everything that you can through the chamber Ted: Mm-hmm. A hundred percent. And I mean that mentality is what, at least from my perspective, has made, you know, this podcast and this entire work, you know, in the chamberspace so much fun and so rewarding as well. Because, you know, exactly like you said, at the end of the day, we just wanna help small businesses and local businesses thrive. And that's Dom Provenzano: That's it. I mean that's I'm very lucky to be able to do this and to work in the community where I live and serve the pe my neighbors. you know, and and my parents are members of the chamber through their like it's just you know, it's personal. Ted: Ha ha ha ha. Dom Provenzano: and I think that when you look at it that way and you look at it beyond the beyond the numbers of I I of course you need your renewals and of course you need, you know, new people joining and and nonduce revenue and blah blah blah. You need all that stuff, of course. But Ted: Mm-hmm. Dom Provenzano: think when you look at it from the perspective of developing relationships and helping people, I think if you start from that place, you're just more successful because your heart's in the right place. And people see that and they feel it. And, you know, when they feel like they're in your corn you're in their corner, they don't want to leave. They they want to stay with you because they believe in, you know, you believe in each other. And I think that's essential. If just operate from that place, if you operate from the place of getting your numbers up all the time, or keeping your numbers at a certain Certain rate, like it's just you're setting yourself up for failure. Just Ted: Mm. Dom Provenzano: operate from from the heart, be kind, and I think that that takes you a very, very long. Ted: Some really great, really, really wise words there, Dom. Thank you again so much for coming on the show today, Dom. Really fantastic. I think, you know, we we touched on a lot of things here, but I I just really appreciated how tactical we got, especially around, you know, how you as a chamber can utilize, you know, different AI tools, resources at your at your disposal to just, you know, get more done, be more productive with the limited time you have, and you know, at the end of the day, get back to doing what really matters, which is like we st like we just talked about, you know, helping businesses in your community. and Dom Provenzano: Yeah, and I and I wanna add for my chamber friends. if you need help with your setting up what I set up, if you wanna just chat with me, just reach out. Like I'm more than happy to chat with the chamber and just I I'll I'll spend as much time with you as you need to help you see if we can get this set up at your chamber. I think it would be very, very valuable and I'm I'm happy to give you my time. Ted: I love that. I love that. And the goal of this pod is exactly that. Give chambers tools and resources that they can start copying from other chambers and use tomorrow. So if you want to reach out to Dom or learn more about the Staten Island Chamber, the link to their socials, their website, and Dom's info as well will be in the description below. Thank you so much for listening to the show today. Dom, thank you again for coming on. And to everyone listening, thanks for tuning in to Beyond the Ribbon Cut. We'll catch you on the next episode.