Daily Headlines
Whether it’s covering recent local news, the latest celebrity gossip, or breaking sports stories, a daily headline newsletter is a must-have for any media company.
The FOMO – fear of missing out – is real with your audience. A daily headline newsletter ensures your readers aren’t missing out on the top stories they need to care about. And as an added benefit to you, these newsletters directly drive traffic to your site and push regular readers towards meters and walls.
The Southeast Missourian recently revamped their daily headlines newsletter and is having great results. The team at the newspaper has used this as a starting point to grow their engaged email list in preparation to kick off a birthday email and other initiatives.
WEEI-FM’s “Daily Mashup” newsletter compiles all the daily top stories related to New England sports. The station fills their newsletter with the stories generating the most impact on their site and leverages A/B subject line testing to optimize open rates. Their successful newsletter is now bringing in revenue from sponsorships as well.
Round-Ups
Similar to a daily headlines newsletter, a weekly newsletter gathers can’t-miss content from the whole week to deliver to your audience.
The timeline of a weekly newsletter allows for greater content curation. As such, you need to take your time with these and ensure you’re delivering the content that really matters to your readers and delivers value to them. Use weekly newsletters as an opportunity to experiment with niche topics and subject matters to keep your audience opening (and clicking) week after week.
“This Week in B.C.” is the weekly newsletter from Black Press. In it, they gather local stories based on the most popular content on their site and all deeply relevant to their readers. The slower newsletter schedule allows them more time to analyze and test aspects of their newsletter. And it’s definitely working – their newsletter consistently gets open rates over 30%.
WLUK-TV’s “Living with Amy” is a weekly newsletter from the station’s morning show with the same name. The team at WLUK were shocked at how quickly this newsletter list grew compared to their others showing how much a core loyal audience would benefit from this niche content. Amy’s newsletters garner open rates of 35-45%.
Announcements
Your newsletter doesn’t have to have a dedicated time slot. An announcements newsletter sending out important information around private events, first-looks, or other exclusive content can lead to a highly engaged database.
When it comes to promoting events, Beasley’s radio stations are leveraging their announcement newsletter list. WXKB-FMs email about a new store opening leveraged geographic targeting and delivered a 26% open rate, and an email about Carrie Underwood pre-sale tickets from WKLB-FM led to a 17% open rate.
For contests and promotions, email is the best way to drive conversions. Black Press is proving the power of a clean list and running good contests, consistently delivering high open rates. Their email for their Vacation Like a VIP giveaway garnered a 37% open rate.
Birthday Clubs
Birthday Club emails offer a great customer experience and plenty of sponsorship opportunities. Traditionally sent only once a year, these emails consistently drive 3x higher open rates than other emails. Think about how your brand can wish your fans a happy birthday in a unique, authentic way.
The Northwest Florida Daily News Birthday Club has leveraged sponsorships to turn their birthday email program into more than $80,000 of revenue. Offering exclusive category sponsorships as coupons within the email, the paper ensures users look forward to the email. Their Birthday Club list is growing at over 1,300+ people each month.
But you don’t need sponsors to have a successful Birthday Club email. The team at Entercom is recording happy birthday videos from their on-air personalities and using these in their emails as a way to drive opens. The Southeast Missourian is using their archival content to create birthday emails featuring fun stories from their birthday month in the past.
News Alerts
A news alerts newsletter is sent out whenever there is important breaking news that needs to be sent immediately.
WEEI-FM has a breaking news sports newsletter with a loyal audience. The station has a lot of competition in their market, so it’s important for them to be the first to make these announcements to their followers. The success of this newsletter has also led to sponsorship opportunities for the station as well.
After the most recent change in the Facebook algorithm, the Daytona Beach News Journal was looking for a new way to get out important local news to their readers. The start of their news alerts newsletter was well received and the team was pleasantly surprised by how much referral traffic is coming from their audience.
An email newsletter is one of the best ways for you to grow your engaged database. It will help drive people to your content and is one of your best tools for turning your consumers into revenue through events and other conversions. Whether you’re considering starting an email newsletter or already running one (or more!), these five ideas should definitely be part of your email strategy.
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Tim is the Director of Email Success at Second Street and has extensive background in media. Tim is dedicated to helping local media companies find success through their email programs while leveraging promotions to grow their database and achieve their company's goals.