How often do you send out a news release and actually receive thank you notes from editors in return? That's exactly what happened when the University of Dayton issued a
targeted email campaign to generate online buzz for the fifth annual Erma Bombeck Writing Competition. What's more, digital outreach doubled the number of contest entries, raking
in 698 essays in 2000, vs. only 350 in 1999.
Origins: Everybody Loves Erma
The Erma Bombeck Writing Competition, which is open to both adult and high school entrants, kicked off five years ago as a local program of the Washington-Centerville Public
Library, nestled in the eponymous writer's hometown of Centerville, Ohio. Meanwhile, University of Dayton - Bombeck's nearby alma mater - last April introduced its first biannual
writers workshop, using the humorist's namesake and featuring syndicated columnists such as Art Buchwald, Leonard Pitts Jr. and other top-liners. Shortly after staging the
first Bombeck workshop, the UD team spied a piggyback opportunity for the next one. Why not partner with the library as a means of cross-pollinating interest in both
programs?
"Everyone around here lays certain claims to Erma," says Tim Bete, eMarketing manager at UD. "One of our goals was to enhance our brand by promoting the connection between
Erma Bombeck and UD on a national and even international basis."
Meanwhile, the library had its own agenda. "In the past, we've run the writing competition as a local event," says library PR director Georgia Mergler. "We wanted to expand
the scope of the contest, but didn't have the resources."
Oops. UD had no resources (financial, at least) to offer the library as of late November - save its technological know-how. But that alone was enough to spur more prolific
participation in the 2000 writing competition.
As a complement to the library's local promo plan for the competition (which included print PSAs and media pitches to the Dayton Daily News and a handful of suburban
papers), the UD team forged a broader online outreach effort, with email as its primary tactical tool to promote a contest entry deadline of Jan. 12, 2001.
In late November, Bete posted a simple Web site (http://www.udayton.edu/~erma) highlighting both the writing competition and the
next Bombeck workshop (slated for April 2002). He then mined the Web to find small, but highly targeted niche communities that were passionate about writing (and cuckoo for Erma)
using keyword searches to pinpoint writers groups in places such as eGroups (now part of Yahoo), About.com and GeoCities. Within a day or two, Bete sent informal release notices
about the Bombeck writing competition and workshop to list moderators, e-newsletter editors and Web site content developers in more than 72 online communities. Each pitch
included a link to the Bombeck Web site.
Notably, Bete's targeting went beyond general writing groups into even more vertical niches. "I stayed away from [online] sci-fi and romance writers groups, for example, and
instead stuck with humor writers, or writers groups for stay-at-home moms - the kinds of audiences that would most likely be Erma fans," Bete says.
Target Mark-Up
Why waste your time pitching some piddley online writers group with only a handful of members, when you could be vying for glory in a major daily paper? Check out these odds:
Bete emailed his release not only to select writers' communities on the Web, but also to his standard list of 9,500 UD alumni (most of whom are not writers, per se). The alumni
email yielded only 188 click-throughs to the Erma Bombeck Web site (a response rate of 2%), while the same alert sent to a more targeted, 259-member online writers group (http://www.egroups.com/group/get-it-in-writing) received 111 click-throughs (a 43% response). Perhaps most
successful was a plug for the contest placed in the Inklings e-letter (http://www.inkspot.com/inklings), which yielded 254 click-
throughs.
Furthermore, UD was able to track the exact number of site visits resulting from its email campaign. A redirect URL invisibly routed visitors to the Bombeck page through the
university's alumni Web server, which logged the responses. The redirect software, by Liquid Matrix, was something the university had previously purchased as part of its
"ActiveAlumni" package.
In the end, 45% of the online gatekeepers who received Bete's release ended up posting the announcement in their e-letters, Web sites and message boards. The Bombeck writing
competition received 60 entries within a week of the initial online outreach effort, and ultimately doubled its total number of entries over the previous year.
The next UD Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop is slated for April 2002. Bete says the UD team will likely forego direct mail promotions entirely, opting instead to use the same
kind of email campaign that proved so effective in promoting the writing competition. "To get the word out to 28,000 writers [and the media] via direct mail at a cost of 50 cents
per mail piece, you're talking $14,000 out of pocket," Bete says. Cost of reaching the same audience via email? Elbow grease, and nothing more.
(Bete, 937/229-4960, [email protected])
Spam I Am?
Sometimes piecing together small, online groups to form a target audience is more advantageous than a rifle-shot pitch to the mainstream media," Bete says - particularly in the
case of nonprofits and associations, "which, by definition, tend to have targeted audiences, such as people with certain interests, or, say, a common health issue. If your
association serves, for example, people who collect antique cars, you can usually find that community already in existence online," he says.
But there are rules of etiquette. You can't just join a group long enough to post your propaganda in its ranks, and then unsubscribe from the list. If you're not already a
member of the group you're targeting, send your pitch to the facilitators of the site or list, and invite them to post the information if they so choose.
Poetry, Prose and Players
- Campaign Time Frame: Nov. 22, 2000 to Jan. 12, 2001
- Budget: $0 out of pocket; 20 hours staff time
- Key staff: Tim Bete, eMarketing manager, UD; Teri Rizvi, PR director, UD; Georgia Mergler, PR director, Washington-Centerville Public Library.
- Turbo tool: NorthernLight.com - Bete's search engine of choice for mining the Web for appropriate audiences. "It's like an automated clipping service, but it's free.
You can save your search criteria, and every time it finds a new update to your search, it emails you to let you know." - Bonus: Writer's Digest's list of "100 Top Web Sites for Writers," which made the online scavenger hunt less time-consuming.