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HomeMy WebLinkAbout8.2 E-Newsletter Marketing Campaign OF Lrn)U~~y ' 19, 49 ,82 AGENDA STATEMENT PARKS AND COMMUNITY SERVICES COMMISSION MEETING DATE: November 15, 2010 SUBJECT: e-Newsletter Marketing Campaign Prepared by Paul McCreary, Assistant Director of Parks and Communiry Services ATTACHMENTS: None RECOMMENDATION: Receive Report FINANCIAL STATEMENT: None DESCRIPTION: The City Council has a high priority objective to develop and distribute quarterly e-Newsletters for the Parks and Community Services Department. The adoption of this objective is a result of the Parks and Community Services Strategic Plan, which outlines several strategies and goals for the next ten years. Implementation of this objective will also accomplish Strategic Goal #6c to expand use of electronic promotions. Some of the reasons for developing an e-Newsletter program include: • Email newsletters are informative and keep users up-to-date. • Email newsletters are convenient and are delivered straight to the user's "information central and require no further action beyond a simple click. • Email newsletters have timely information and real-time delivery. Each quarter Staff will develop four different e-Newsletters, one for each of the Department's four market segments, which are outlined in the Parks and Community Services Strategic Plan as follows: • Families with children • Adults, 25-44 years, without children • Boomer Adults, 45-64 years • Older Adults, 65 years and better Each of these market segments has different needs, interests and motivations. Although the Department's traditional promotional techniques such as the Activity Guide are well received by the community, e- Newsletters will allow Staff to more effectively deliver key messages and promotions to the right target market. In addition the e-Newsletters will allow the City to expand promotional efforts in a cost-efficient COPIES TO: ITEM NO.: 8.2 GAPARKS COMMISSIOMAGNDSTM712010\I1-15 Item 82 eNewsletters.doc and cost-effective manner. An e-Newsletter is much more cost-efficient than a printed newsletter because of the significant savings in time, printing and mailing costs. An e-Newsletter provides a higher response rate because it is being sent to a more receptive audience. It is easier and more effective to increase revenue and gain referrals from existing customers than it is to pursue new customers. The e-Newsletter will leverage the Department's existing promotional efforts and provide results that can be easily tracked to determine the effectiveness of the overall marketing efforts. There are many benefits that the e-Newsletters will provide for customers. Studies show that more people use email regularly than search or browse the web to get specific information of interest. The e- Newsletters will go straight to the email inboxes of the target audiences and provide a short digest of news they might find interesting. With hyperlinks, the e-Newsletter will direct the audience to the City website for more detail. It promotes the opportunity for customers to easily and immediately interact with the Department. For those customers who prefer not to receive an e-Newsletter they can easily unsubscribe with the click of one link in the email. According to national research by the Nielsen Group about email newsletters, users have highly emotional reactions to them. This is in strong contrast to research on website usability, where users are usually much more oriented toward website functionality. Even a website that users visit daily seems to feel like a tool: users want to visit and leave as quickly as possible rather than "connect" with the site. Users tend to glance at websites when they need to accomplish something or to find answers to specific questions. In contrast, newsletters feel personal because they anive in users' inboxes, and users have an ongoing relationship with them. Newsletters also have a social aspect, as users often forward them to colleagues and friends. The positive aspect of this emotional relationship is that newsletters can create much more of a bond between users and a company than a website can. Sixty-nine percent of users said that they look forward to receiving at least one email newsletter, and most users said that viewing email newsletters had become part of their routine. Very few other promotional efforts can claim this degree of customer buy-in. According to the research users are getting pickier and pickier about which newsletters they will read. Some are purposefully cutting back on the number of newsletters they receive. These users view newsletters as being in direct competition with each other for a limited number of slots in the inbox. In general, users don't have time to read a lot of text. In the study, users spent an average of 51 seconds on each of the newsletters they read from their own inbox. Users spent an additional 33 seconds on information found by pursuing newsletter links to websites. Staff is working on the branding and templates for the e-Newsletters, which will be launched for the winter quarter. The name of the newsletter will be e-Play. A unique e-Play logo and tagline are being developed that will be featured at the masthead of each of the four different newsletters each quarter. Although the masthead will be the same for each newsletter, the look and feel of each newsletter will be different and targeted toward that specific market segment. Additionally the key messages and photos will be different for each newsletter to increase interest by each market segment. It will be important that the e-Play Newsletter is concise, easy to navigate and visually appealing to the target audience. The most frequent complaint in the study was about newsletters that anived too often. The most frequent advice study participants had for newsletter creators was to "keep it brief." The newsletter will also be designed to facilitate easy scanning by the reader to pick up on key messages. 2of3 1 • The following is an example of the different types of activities that would be highlighted for each market segment for the winter quarter. • Families with children • Boomer Adults, 45-64 years a. Youth Basketball League a. Holiday Events b. Super Sitters Program b. New Cooking Classes c. Glee Dance & Singing c. New Fitness Classes Performance Coaching d. Ikebana - The Art of Flower d. Holiday Events Arranging e. Fa112011 Preschool Registration e. Winter Concerts • Adults, 25-44 years, without children . Older Adults, 65 years and better a. 2011 Adult Sports League a. Holiday Dance Schedule b. Saturday Activities b. Open Gym Program c. Ping Pong c. Zumba d. Senior Sports d. Yoga and Pilates e. AARP Driving Safety Class e. Holiday Events RECOMMENDATION: Staff recommends that the Parks and Community Services Commission receive the report. 3 of 3 i