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The Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America trusts Axios HQ to power its member communications.
Where are they now — FDRA’s 2024 update
Jump to read FDRA’s original case study further down this page. Recently, we caught up with CEO Matt Priest to hear how things have been going since that original story. A few of his thoughts are below.
“I boil down association effectiveness down to one word: relevancy. For members, it means that when it comes time for renewal, they deem us worthy of the investment. Communicating effectively helps us do that. One of our biggest selling points is my newsletter, ‘What I’m hearing.’ You are well informed on what's happening in the broader industry from a macro and microeconomic perspective — actionable intelligence that allows you to make better decisions on sourcing, design, development, marketing.”
The results he’s seeing at FDRA:
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“We have a steady stream of companies reaching out, asking more about membership. We work for every dollar, and we are very adamant we're going to spend that dollar wisely driving value to our members. That’s through relevant communication.”
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“Leaders see the value in membership. They invest in us. They invest in us over time. They're willing to continue to lean on us when the need is there. And they can then go make better decisions for their own business and for their own profitability.”
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“It takes me about an hour to crank out. If I didn’t have didn't have some of these tools, it would probably take me probably three times that. I am busy, but everywhere I go, people talk to me about ‘What I’m hearing,’ so I'm like, ‘Gosh, I gotta keep doing this.’”
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“It is a tone setting email that is kind of like my calling card, and people value it. I'm not putting myself up on his echelon, but if you know Mike Allen, he has this gravitas to him because of the way he effectively communicates. Axios HQ helps me have a voice that people now know.”
Matt uses HQ for around 20 different communications beyond his signature “What I’m hearing.” They all help him run as association members rely on and his tight team of 10 feel connected to.
“It is a pretty easy system. I send out a board email. We do shoe sustainability information. We do an executive outlook survey. I send internal updates to my team. We do strategic planning sessions. We onboard and offboard people with it. It makes your job easier.”
FDRA's story, as of 2023
The challenge: FDRA is an 80-year-old organization with a 10-person team, serving 4,000 influential business-leading members and a set of investors who believe in their work. But it needed a more effective way to capture the footwear industry’s attention, stay relevant in the ways they communicate, and reflect the value of their work. It had to be:
- Collaborative: A small and mighty team means all hands on deck. They needed a singular system to be their communication headquarters to create, collaborate, and send their updates.
- Impactful: From proven formatting to impactful imagery, FDRA’s communications needed to deliver information in a succinct and digestible way that could improve reader open rates.
The solution: FDRA uses Axios HQ to send more than 20 distinct communications. Its marquee member update — called “What I’m Hearing” — comes weekly from their president & CEO and recaps industry business analytics, marketplace intel, policy initiatives, and other important industry updates. Its engagement has doubled since FDRA adopted HQ and its Smart Brevity communication format.
The team also compiles board updates, a quarterly sustainability newsletter, monthly retail newsletters, member feedback messages, and other industry-bending insights that staff and stakeholders need.
💭 Matt Priest, President and CEO:
- “When we share open rates for certain newsletters, people are blown away because it’s double the industry standard.”
- “Axios HQ really helps me hone in and utilize tools and guides me through that process to really take data — data that can be complex — and boil it down into something that's more readable.”
How it works: Matt kicked things off with his weekly newsletter to members, but quickly trained his team on Axios HQ, pulled them in as collaborators, and now empowers them to create, sustain, and send the updates that will have the most impact on members, customers, and prospects.
🧠 Matt’s words of encouragement:
- “I would highly recommend Axios HQ if you're in the business of communicating complex topics to empower a group of people to better understand the issues and take action. I want to run an association that is creating content that's worthy of the time of our executives whom we serve. Axios HQ helps me do that.”
FDRA earned Axios HQ's 2024 Best-in-Class award for Community Engagement. See our other award winners:
