On top of the news we cover being in the community newspapers that go out every week, we also deliver them online to our website Townlively.com! One way we drive traffic to the site is by sending a weekly newsletter to our subscribers to encourage them to visit the site weekly for news and upcoming events in their communities!
There are 2 newsletters we send out. All About Townlively (AATL) goes out to our regular readers who are just trying to keep up with news in their hometowns. Townlively Tidbits (Tidbits) is targeted to our advertisers and other community partners who are more interested in new hires, achievements, and other positive news about businesses in the area.
When I first joined EPC I was looking at parts of the businesses that were customer facing, that could be updated to seem more modern and reader friendly and help drive traffic to the sites. The newsletter having been kept the same for a number of years before me, was an area that I wanted to put a fresh coat of paint on.
Project Overview
AATL Old Email
Tidbits Old Email
My main concern with the old newsletters was that since it wasn’t more of a visual piece and had more copy than images, it would deter people from either opening the email or reading the entire email and clicking on links towards the bottom of the email.
I wanted to change the style of the piece to be more visual based and to lower the actual amount of copy to encourage people to read the entire email, and to drive more traffic to the site by giving just snippets of the article rather than the entire article in the email.
Goals of Project
AATL New Email
Tidbits New Email
After the launch of the new newsletter styles, I compared the click maps of the old and new styles to see if there was more interaction throughout the emails. Click maps showed that people were venturing further into the emails now that there was less text barriers in the way, and the larger images helped grab more traffic to the site.
In the business oriented email, there was also the inclusion of upcoming advertising opportunities and their deadlines so that advertisers would be informed. These clickable images would link to the sales sheet for each publication, making the job of our sales reps easier as advertisers would already be aware of their options ahead of time before meetings.