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May 14, 2010 10:49 PM Subscribe
How do I find subscribers for my town newsletter?
I recently launched a newsletter for my town and want to develop a subscription list long enough to attract ads from local businesses. Now that I've created the newsletter, though, I've run into an anticipated problem: I've never had to market something like this before.
The first thing I did was create a Facebook Fan Page for Town X, and suggest it to all of my friends from Town X. The second thing I did was move my stuff over to iContact (considering a switch to MailChimp at the moment) and put a subscription form onto a custom HTML tab on the Fan Page. Third thing was to offer a pretty awesome promotion: a $100 credit at a popular ice cream shop downtown. But now...I don't know what the fourth step in this marketing process is going to be.
I was a little bit overly optimistic about the viral nature of a $100 ice cream credit giveaway (trading a chance for that credit for a resident's e-mail address.)
I have a couple of ideas about how to proceed from here, but I'm not ready to throw money anywhere until I check everything over:
-Printing out flyers and handing them out at events/venues with foot traffic
-Doing the door-to-door salesman routine with said flyers
-Contacting people about it personally, through Twitter/Facebook/Myspace
-Getting existing fans of the Facebook page to suggest the page to their friends, and hoping those friends click through to the "Newsletter" tab.
-Mailing postcards to addresses in town
I am only willing to put something like $1000 into marketing at this stage, and I'd like to eventually be working with a list of 10,000 e-mail addresses. What's the best way to go from here?
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I recently launched a newsletter for my town and want to develop a subscription list long enough to attract ads from local businesses. Now that I've created the newsletter, though, I've run into an anticipated problem: I've never had to market something like this before.
The first thing I did was create a Facebook Fan Page for Town X, and suggest it to all of my friends from Town X. The second thing I did was move my stuff over to iContact (considering a switch to MailChimp at the moment) and put a subscription form onto a custom HTML tab on the Fan Page. Third thing was to offer a pretty awesome promotion: a $100 credit at a popular ice cream shop downtown. But now...I don't know what the fourth step in this marketing process is going to be.
I was a little bit overly optimistic about the viral nature of a $100 ice cream credit giveaway (trading a chance for that credit for a resident's e-mail address.)
I have a couple of ideas about how to proceed from here, but I'm not ready to throw money anywhere until I check everything over:
-Printing out flyers and handing them out at events/venues with foot traffic
-Doing the door-to-door salesman routine with said flyers
-Contacting people about it personally, through Twitter/Facebook/Myspace
-Getting existing fans of the Facebook page to suggest the page to their friends, and hoping those friends click through to the "Newsletter" tab.
-Mailing postcards to addresses in town
I am only willing to put something like $1000 into marketing at this stage, and I'd like to eventually be working with a list of 10,000 e-mail addresses. What's the best way to go from here?
-
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Response by poster: I'm running a newsletter for a town with a population size in the 40,000-45,000 range. I pegged my ideal figure at 10,000 subscriptions because that's how many the daily newspaper has here. Once again, I'm being overly optimistic about that.
The newsletter is free and delivered weekly. It's designed to primarily give residents an overview of what's happening over the next week in the town, but there's also some news in there, some local business deals (free soda with the purchase of *blank* at "Local Restaurant), and possibly some town announcements. The target audience is really anyone in the area.
posted by gacxllr9 at 11:09 PM on May 14, 2010
The newsletter is free and delivered weekly. It's designed to primarily give residents an overview of what's happening over the next week in the town, but there's also some news in there, some local business deals (free soda with the purchase of *blank* at "Local Restaurant), and possibly some town announcements. The target audience is really anyone in the area.
posted by gacxllr9 at 11:09 PM on May 14, 2010
This local blog from the town over from me does a lot of what you are suggesting. They were started with a grant from some journalism program at the University of Maryland. Contact them. They love to tell their story. Long winded they are though. They will have good advice. They are an email subscription service although they also publish on the web.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:12 AM on May 15, 2010
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:12 AM on May 15, 2010
I'd put off spending money on marketing for the moment and concentrate on developing an awesome product. Especially since your town has a daily newspaper, you need to figure out what kind of information, discount offers, etc. your neighbors want and need that they aren't getting from existing media. Can you provide better movie or music reviews? More detailed listings of events that are of interest to a younger, digital media demographic? Awesome photos and art? What are you giving them that they want, but aren't getting or can't get elsewhere?
Once you have an amazing product, it'll sell itself, and once you really know your audience, you'll be better able to direct your limited marketing dollars.
posted by decathecting at 12:44 AM on May 15, 2010
Once you have an amazing product, it'll sell itself, and once you really know your audience, you'll be better able to direct your limited marketing dollars.
posted by decathecting at 12:44 AM on May 15, 2010
The answer may be, slowly and organically. You're not going to get 10,000 subscribers in a day, or anything. $100 at an ice cream store? Sounds like a belly ache. Why not just a sundae? And then, maybe another sundae if they tell a friend?
Nothing's better than eating ice cream with a friend! :)
posted by alex_skazat at 12:56 AM on May 15, 2010
Nothing's better than eating ice cream with a friend! :)
posted by alex_skazat at 12:56 AM on May 15, 2010
I can tell you from experience that as rediculous as it sounds, the best way to get people to fork over their email addresses is to straight up bribe them, in person.
"Would you like to be entered into a draw to win a free bottle of champagne?" is a winner. You can stand anywhere - at your kid's school, the grocery store, the Y - and sign up several hundred people over two days with this technique.
You can also do flyers and leaflets like you said, but there are some key things you need to have in place.
1/ I really don't think a Facebook page is going to cut it. I think you need even a one page website on it's own domain name and a signup form right in the middle of it.
2/ You FOR SURE need to be using Mail Chimp or Campaign Monitor right from the start. No, really. You need to let people automatically unsubscribe, forward and stuff. The stats are also really, really, really valuable and you can automatically build a browseable list of past issues for your website.
The benefit is that when you do your flyers or whatever, you can do tear off sheets with the URL so people can find out more about it, check that they're not just giving their email address to a random spammer, and sign up online.
Having a website also means you can display ads from that week's advertisers, which gives you another selling point.
But truly, signing people up in person with bribery is the fastest possible route to reaching critical mass. You can probably start selling ads at a good rate with as few as 400 local subscribers.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:03 AM on May 15, 2010
"Would you like to be entered into a draw to win a free bottle of champagne?" is a winner. You can stand anywhere - at your kid's school, the grocery store, the Y - and sign up several hundred people over two days with this technique.
You can also do flyers and leaflets like you said, but there are some key things you need to have in place.
1/ I really don't think a Facebook page is going to cut it. I think you need even a one page website on it's own domain name and a signup form right in the middle of it.
2/ You FOR SURE need to be using Mail Chimp or Campaign Monitor right from the start. No, really. You need to let people automatically unsubscribe, forward and stuff. The stats are also really, really, really valuable and you can automatically build a browseable list of past issues for your website.
The benefit is that when you do your flyers or whatever, you can do tear off sheets with the URL so people can find out more about it, check that they're not just giving their email address to a random spammer, and sign up online.
Having a website also means you can display ads from that week's advertisers, which gives you another selling point.
But truly, signing people up in person with bribery is the fastest possible route to reaching critical mass. You can probably start selling ads at a good rate with as few as 400 local subscribers.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:03 AM on May 15, 2010
tl;dr. But in general you should market something for its value within the target group. What's the value of your newsletter? Advertise this.
posted by oxit at 2:16 AM on May 15, 2010
posted by oxit at 2:16 AM on May 15, 2010
former journalist too-lazy-to-be-an-entrepreneur here. i've had similar ideas. except the newsletter in my head would be aimed at specific neighborhoods, and the big hook would be the police report section*. in my experience, 'big' papers print 'big' stories; they tend to ignore car break-ins, where garbage cans are being tipped over, property vandalism, etc. however, as a homeowner, these are the things i want to know--what's going on where i live & what do i need to know to prevent it from happening to me. (also works for robberies, muggings, & other crimes against persons that might not make it to the larger paper.)
regarding marketing: grocery stores, and, to a lesser extent, gas stations. those are the 2 places everyone goes. hang the newsletter on the bulletin board in the grocery stores/quickie marts. include an 'about' section that explains how to subscribe & that it's free. maybe format the newsletter so that there are little removable paper tabs at the bottom that have a 'subscribe' email address, so people can take the tab home, sit down at the computer, and sign up.
also: that 10k circulation figure your hometown paper uses? good chance they do a 'free throw' once/week where they distribute sales flyers & coupons. those free throw numbers are probably included in their circulation figures, and the circulation figures are used to sell advertising. what i'm trying to say is that the circulation figures might not be the actual daily delivery figures.
regardless, you need to include info the local paper doesn't--so you have to go smaller, as it were--and you need to market where people are going to be. (maybe churches would be a good place, too, if you can work out something like that.)
good luck!
*note: cop shop reports can be time consuming and difficult. because you have to deal with cops. and cops think they know more than you do. and will sometimes 'forget' to file the shift logs or somehow filter what you can see. i'm pretty sure this isn't legal--those should be public reports--but they do it anyway. you'd need to have a REALLY good relationship with them to pull it off.
posted by msconduct at 5:06 AM on May 15, 2010
regarding marketing: grocery stores, and, to a lesser extent, gas stations. those are the 2 places everyone goes. hang the newsletter on the bulletin board in the grocery stores/quickie marts. include an 'about' section that explains how to subscribe & that it's free. maybe format the newsletter so that there are little removable paper tabs at the bottom that have a 'subscribe' email address, so people can take the tab home, sit down at the computer, and sign up.
also: that 10k circulation figure your hometown paper uses? good chance they do a 'free throw' once/week where they distribute sales flyers & coupons. those free throw numbers are probably included in their circulation figures, and the circulation figures are used to sell advertising. what i'm trying to say is that the circulation figures might not be the actual daily delivery figures.
regardless, you need to include info the local paper doesn't--so you have to go smaller, as it were--and you need to market where people are going to be. (maybe churches would be a good place, too, if you can work out something like that.)
good luck!
*note: cop shop reports can be time consuming and difficult. because you have to deal with cops. and cops think they know more than you do. and will sometimes 'forget' to file the shift logs or somehow filter what you can see. i'm pretty sure this isn't legal--those should be public reports--but they do it anyway. you'd need to have a REALLY good relationship with them to pull it off.
posted by msconduct at 5:06 AM on May 15, 2010
Projects like yours flourish when they are fuelled by opposition. Is there a real estate development in town that isn't welcome? Are people worried about downtown dying off in the presence of a huge mall? Are heritage properties at risk? Is there too much traffic going through residential streets? Grab a couple of environmental, family-friendly issues and run with them.
msconduct is right - people can get big news from all kinds of places, but they need to know the specific local news that no one else reports. So go to city council meetings and take notes and write them up. It's not glamorous but it is the bread and butter of civic life.
posted by zadcat at 7:31 AM on May 15, 2010
msconduct is right - people can get big news from all kinds of places, but they need to know the specific local news that no one else reports. So go to city council meetings and take notes and write them up. It's not glamorous but it is the bread and butter of civic life.
posted by zadcat at 7:31 AM on May 15, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by decathecting at 11:02 PM on May 14, 2010