If you've ever copy-pasted a business email into a spreadsheet, manually updated a contact list, and sent a newsletter to 40 people hoping one of them is still the right contact. This one's for you.

Main Street directors and chamber staff spend more time managing communications than they should. Not because they're disorganized, but because the tools don't connect. Your member directory is in one place. Your email list is in another. Your phone contacts are somewhere else.

Proxi connects them.

Your Member List Is Your Contact List

In Proxi, when you add a business to your directory, you're also adding a contact. Name, email, phone. It's all tied to the listing. That means when you want to reach your merchants, you're not starting from scratch. You're pulling from the same place you already manage your map.

This matters more than it sounds. If a business updates their contact info, it updates in one place. No more bounced emails. No more texts going to someone who left the organization three years ago.

Sending an Email to Your Merchants

From Proxi, you can send a broadcast email to your member businesses, filtered by category, tag, or your full list. A few good reasons to use this:

• Alerting merchants about an upcoming event and what they need to do to participate
• Sharing a deadline: permit submission, passport challenge sign-up, sponsorship opportunity
• Sending a monthly update just for businesses, separate from your visitor-facing newsletter
• Announcing new foot traffic data or a media mention that features the district

Short, direct emails work best. Businesses are busy. Lead with the one thing they need to know.

Sending a Text

Email gets opened; texts get read immediately. Proxi supports SMS to your member list, which is useful when timing matters: a reminder the day before a big event, a heads-up about a street closure, a quick alert when something changes.

Most Main Street organizations haven't started collecting business phone numbers in a structured way. If that's you, the fix is simple: add a phone field to your business listing intake form and make it required going forward. Proxi's crowdsourcing form feature lets businesses submit or update their own info, so you don't have to chase it down yourself.

Keeping Merchant and Visitor Communications Separate

One thing that tends to get muddled is the difference between what you send to merchants and what you send to visitors. They're different audiences with different needs.

Your visitor email list wants to know about events, restaurant specials, and what's happening downtown. Your merchants want to know about deadlines, programs, and how to participate.

Proxi lets you manage both. Build a visitor list through signup forms and passport challenge registrations, and keep your merchant list inside your business directory. They don't have to overlap unless you want them to.

Getting Started

If you're already using Proxi to manage your business directory, you're closer than you think to using it as a full communication tool. The contact information is already there. It's just a matter of turning it on.

Log into Proxi, head to your member list, and try sending a test message to yourself. That's usually enough to see how it fits into your workflow.