Case Study Highlights
- +2,000 newsletter opt-ins
- +21,000 participants – +13,000 new to the audience
- Promotional platform for podcast
Second Street Award Winner – Audience Builder Campaign
The Idea
The question of Chicago’s best pizza restaurant is always up for debate, so the WGN Radio team decided to turn that passion into engagement. Their goal was twofold: promote Chicago’s Very Own Eats, their food-focused podcast, and grow their newsletter audience. A pizza voting bracket proved to be the perfect way to tap into this hot-button topic while driving meaningful audience participation and opt-ins.
The Execution
WGN Radio created five pizza brackets in total, strategically launching them during March Madness to take advantage of the season’s heightened competitive excitement. Four initial brackets focused on specific areas or restaurant types across Chicago: the City, the North Suburbs, the South/West Suburbs, and Local Chains.
Each bracket featured 32 pizza restaurants and unfolded over five voting rounds, encouraging participants to return time and again to cast their votes until a winner was crowned in each category. Once winners were determined from the four regional brackets, they advanced to a final championship bracket, where voters selected the overall best pizza restaurant in Chicago.
Throughout the tournament, WGN Radio promoted and discussed the brackets on air and on the Chicago’s Very Own Eats podcast, sustaining momentum and conversation. The registration form prominently featured their promotions opt-in along with an opt-in for their Insider Newsletter, helping convert engagement into long-term audience growth.
After the final votes were tallied, the winning restaurant was announced on air, driving listeners to tune in for the big reveal. They also continued to highlight participants within the bracket within their Chicago’s Very Own Eats podcast.
The Results
The Chicago Pizza Madness tournament was a huge success. Overall, the brackets allowed WGN Radio to interact with over 21,000 people within their audience, of which over 13,000 were new to their database. This engagement also lead to hundreds of thousands of pageviews, social impressions, and social engagements.
Additionally, this successful campaign delivered strong opt-in performance with over 1,500 new promotions opt-ins and over 2,000 new Insider Newsletter opt-ins.
Related Articles
Kristen is a Customer Success Manager and Content Creator. She works to create useful content with thought-leadership our partners can use to drive revenue, engagement, and audience growth with promotions.