The Melville Chamber of Commerce now has its own app, free on the App Store and on Google Play. Everything the Chamber does on melvillechamber.org, from the news to the events to the member directory, is now in a member’s pocket, along with a few things that only make sense on a phone.
We built it with the Chamber, native on iPhone and Android, on the same platform that already runs the Chamber’s website, directory and events.
A chamber lives in the room: the breakfast, the mixer, the handshake in the parking lot afterward. What it never had was a way to carry that room home with you. Now every event, every member and every conversation is in your pocket, and the handshake comes with a card you can actually keep.
Keith Tucci, Principal & Agency Director, Wave Agency
What members get
The Chamber, at a glance. The Chamber’s news and the next event on one screen, the moment the app opens.
Every breakfast and mixer. The events calendar months ahead, with the date, the room, directions and seats left. Members register with a tap, and add the event to their calendar with another.
The whole directory. Every member business by name, category and town, with hours, a website, directions and a call button on each one.
The member feed. Hiring, moving, launching, celebrating: news posted by the member businesses themselves, and members can post their own right from the app.
Your listing, from your phone. Members update their own business listing without waiting for anyone at a desk.
Trade cards with a code
The feature we are proudest of is the one that only works on a phone.
Connect gives every member a digital business card with its own QR code. At an event, hold up yours and scan theirs, and the details swap only when both people say yes. The card goes into Apple Wallet, the contacts stay in the app with room for notes on where you met and what to follow up on, and member businesses can be saved to your contacts from their QR code too.
Everybody has a stack of business cards from the last networking event sitting in a drawer somewhere. Connect is the end of that drawer. You meet someone, you scan, and a week later you still know who they are, where you met them and what you promised to send them. For a chamber, that is the whole point of showing up.
Keith Tucci, Principal & Agency Director, Wave Agency
Advertising and sponsorship, next
The Chamber app carries no advertising today, and that was deliberate: the first job was to make it genuinely useful to members. But the audience it gathers is one local businesses have always wanted to reach, owners and decision makers across Melville and the Route 110 corridor, and the platform underneath it already supports it.
The Chamber runs on Wave Community, which includes Wave Ads, the same first-party ad system that serves Long Island Wave and Creations Magazine. That opens the door to opportunities we are planning with the Chamber, such as:
- Event sponsorship that follows an event from the calendar listing to the reminder on a member’s phone.
- Featured placements in the member directory and the member feed, clearly labeled as sponsored.
- Chamber partner spots for the businesses that support the Chamber’s year of programming.
None of these are live yet, and when they arrive they will follow the rules we hold our publications to: clearly labeled, sold and served by the Chamber itself, with no ad networks and no tracking, and never at the expense of what members came for.
The Chamber app is a room full of the people every local business wants to meet. We want sponsors in that room, and we want them there the right way: labeled, local, and useful to the members who see them. When a sponsor shows up next to the event you were already going to, that is not an interruption, that is how a chamber is supposed to work.
Keith Tucci, Principal & Agency Director, Wave Agency
Businesses interested in sponsoring the Chamber, in the app or at its events, can get in touch and we will connect you with the Chamber.
Built on Wave Community
The app is part of Wave Community, the platform we built for chambers, associations and membership organizations, with the Melville Chamber as its first home. The website, the directory, the events, the member portal and both apps share one set of data, so a new member, a new event or a new post shows up everywhere at once.
Get it
The Melville Chamber of Commerce app is free on the App Store and on Google Play. Search for Melville Chamber, or open melvillechamber.org/app on your phone.
If your chamber or association wants the same thing, the place to start is Wave Community.
