2012 Digital PR Awards: E-Mail Newsletter

Winner: Toy Industry Association - Toy News Tuesday, TIA’s weekly e-newsletter

In 2009, the Toy Industry Association (TIA) introduced a free weekly e-newsletter, Toy News Tuesday (TNT), to deliver information regarding toy safety and regulations, association events and happenings, membership and news about the toy and youth entertainment marketplace to its members and industry stakeholders. TNT's distribution grew to nearly 6,500 subscribers. Through constant monitoring, TIA identified a pool of subscribers who were not actively engaged (had not opened or clicked on a story in a defined timeframe). Staff developed a strategy to improve the engagement of this group and increase member satisfaction.

The TIA communications team, which includes Stacy Leistner, Kristin Morency, Isabel Carrion-Lopez, Adrienne Appell, Jackie Retzer, Lysa Opfer, and Dale Bryant, worked with partner Informz to perform A/B testing on subject lines and implement a three-step campaign to improve deliverability rates. The steps include: Redesign the newsletter's layout, including highlighting social sharing links and enhance the mobile version of the e-mail; partner with other industry experts and organizations of interest for guest columns and articles; and incorporate essential subscriber feedback received along the way.

The results speak for themselves: In the first month of testing, the topic-based subject line had a lift of 56% in open rate and 67% in click-through rates. In 2011, deliverability increased from a low of 83% to the current average of 97.2%. Visits to the news pages of the TIA Web site were up 22.5% in 2011 over the previous year (214K compared to 175K), representing roughly 11% of the total page views for the entire site. 
 

Honorable Mentions:

  • Bhava Communications - Beyond the Lead Database: Engaging Cloudera’s Community with an Interactive e-Newsletter

  • Hunter Public Relations - Hunter PR: The 511

  • LEWIS PR US - LEWIS PR Newsletter 2011 – 2012

  • Peppercom - Trading in innovation: Peppercom’s Innovation Mill

  • UCSF - Pulse of UCSF

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