Teacher Contest Drives Recurring Revenue + 63% Opt-In

Case Study Highlights

• 300+ teachers nominated
• $7,500 in revenue over four months
• 63% opt-in rate for KIDK emails
• Created great on-air content

The Idea

At KIDK-TV in Idaho Falls, Idaho, we were looking for an opportunity to grow our database, drive revenue, and align our station with the community. We decided on a Teacher of the Month contest to strengthen our relationship with our community and provide an opportunity to spotlight local teachers.

The Execution

Beginning in February, and through the end of the school year, we asked community members to nominate teachers who go above and beyond. Our nomination form asks the submitter to share the name of the teacher, the teacher’s school and why they should win the award.

We secured a local credit union, an office equipment company that works with the school district, and Domino’s pizza to sponsor the campaign. These companies were looking to improve their ties in the community and provided prizes for the contest winners, in addition to the campaign sponsorship.

Every month, our team at KIDK selects one nominated teacher to surprise with prizes for them and their class. Each Teacher of the Month wins a pizza party for their class from Dominos and a gift basket from Connections Credit Union. They also have the chance to win our grand prize Teacher of the Year, which comes with $1,500 in funds for classroom improvement from Valley Office Systems.

To promote the contest, we sent a dedicated invitation email to our database, ran website ads, and talked about it on-air. We also partnered with our two sister stations to drive more buzz about the contest and traffic to the site.

Each time a Teacher of the Month is selected, we send a news reporter to interview the winning teacher, their students, and the school principals. The story is featured on our site and helps us build credibility and drives future participation from our viewers!

The Results

We received more than 300 nominations in the first three months and have gained over 200 new opt-ins for our newsletter. While we only started the campaign in February, we brought in $7,500 in revenue through May and our sponsors already love the results enough to verbally agreed to sponsor the full campaign next school year.

The content we’ve been able to produce from this campaign has been a big hit with the community. As a fantastic bonus, a viewer from Texas reached out to personally donate $1,000 to the Teacher of the Month after seeing her story on our site.

The sponsors loved the results and response from the community and have already agreed to sponsor the promotion next school year, so we will be representing it with more value and revenue.