SLAM Open House

OPPORTUNITY: In October of 2023, longtime friend and professional colleague Ceclia Clark, President-Elect for the Servant Leadership Association for Music called Fran Kick to see if he might help kick off the 2024 year with a virtual “Open House Group Collaboration Gathering” in January. As a way to give back pro bono to Fran’s “brother from another mother,” mentor, and dear friend Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser, an agreement was made to both market and maximize an interactive 2024 New Year Zoom meeting launch to drive more participation and increase new member registrations.

RESULTS: Fran Kick created a postcard mailing and multiple social media graphics to help promote the New Year meeting. Following up the postcard promotion with email invitations to 750+ past band director clients of Fran Kick via a series of pre-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas, and post-New Year follow up emails (with a 47% open rate)—all designed and sent in advance of the program. In addition, multiple exhibitors—who were past sponsors, supporters, and fans of Fran Kick as well as SLAM—agreed to pass out postcard-size handout registration cards with QR codes during The Midwest Clinic December 19-22, 2023.

By January 21, 2024, a record-breaking 264 had pre-registered for the Zoom meeting (74% of those being nonmembers) with 186 actually showing up online for the event live and in-person. Post-program, just over 13% of those nonmembers joined SLAM by the end of the month (i.e. in 10 days). Increasing SLAM membership by over 8% in a single month. In addition to the live Zoom presentation, Fran created three 10–15-minute video segments exclusively for the members-only SLAM content vault focusing on:

• Communication
• Constructive Feedback
• Developing Better Leadership & Smarter Followership