Hello and welcome to ISSBA’s April newsletter. I hope you are all well. The ISSBA and ABE teams have been incredibly busy lately as we get closer to our big event of the year – Anglia Business Exhibition.
Thank you to Debra at Lighthouse Women’s Aid for providing a really useful training session in March, providing awareness on domestic abuse. Employers are responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of their employees and Debra shared lots of valuable information. If you’d like to book a session for your business, please contact her or visit them at https://www.lighthousewa.org.uk/.
Our April networking event takes place on 24th April at Regus Franciscan House in Ipswich. They have some fantastic facilities on offer for local businesses so why not join us to find out more as well as enjoying a morning of friendly networking over coffee or tea. Book your place now!
Anglia Business Exhibition 2024 takes place on 8th May at Trinity Park so make sure you have it in your diary. Pre-register for your free visitor place or if you’d like to try to grab one of the last few remaining spaces, you might just still be in with a chance. Visit https://www.angliabusinessexhibition.com/abeevent/floorplan/1/1 to find out more or get in touch now on contact@angliabusinessexhibition.com. Read our ABE2024 update here.
Our April Member of the Month is FSE Digital. AI has really come into its own over the last few years so read their piece titled ‘Top tips for using Chat GPT to boost your search engine rankings’.
We are aware of some spam emails being sent out offering to sell lists of ISSBA event attendees or ABE visitors. Please note that these do not come from us and are in no way connected with us. We don’t sell any lists of contacts but as these emails don’t come from our system, unfortunately we are unable to stop them. Please do not click on any links or engage with the senders.
Would you be interested in joining the ISSBA committee? If so, let us know on mail@issba.co.uk. We are a friendly bunch and usually meet once per month (via Zoom currently). As well as having a say in how the organisation is run, this is a fantastic opportunity to build your profile in the local area. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.
Don’t forget our Recommend a Friend scheme, it is great to see ISSBA members benefiting from this. Any current ISSBA member will get one month's free membership for each new member they recommend, plus the new member also gets one free month, so Win-Win! There are no limits to how many referrals each ISSBA member can make as long as you have a current, paid up membership, so if you bring in 12 new members, you'll get a whole year for free!
GoCardless is making the renewal process much easier for many of our members. If you haven’t signed up yet, either let us know on mail@issba.co.uk or keep an eye on your inbox for an authorisation request. GoCardless is a direct debit system fully protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee and means that you never need to worry about forgetting to renew again. By signing up to this you will help your committee save valuable time in chasing renewals, so please, if you aren’t already signed up, please do!
Graham Barton, ISSBA Chair