GWADS Promotional Awards
2019 Award Winners
Print Growth
Las Vegas Review-Journal
1st Place
Email Acquisition Via Segmenting Campaigns
City: Las Vegas, NV
Daily audited circulation size: 90,865
Sunday audited circulation size: 109,657
Objective
The objective of this campaign was to increase starts from our email acquisition efforts by segmenting campaigns.
Strategy
Target non-subscriber and formers offers through email. We created various campaigns:
Day 3 Email: Email former subscribers 3 days after stop giving them the opportunity to start at their previous rate.
Day 17 Email: Follow up email for former subscribers 17 days after stop giving them the opportunity to start at their previous rate.
Day 24 Email: Email former subscribers 24 days after stop giving them the opportunity to start at their previous rate.
Limited time offers: One day sales and special offers for non-subscribers and formers stopped over 30 days.
Abandon: Follow up email that is sent one day after a user visits our checkout page, enters their email, and doesn’t finish their transaction.
Results
450 starts since January 1.
Cost per order: $9.94
10% Open Rate
1% Click Through Rate
The Modesto Bee
2nd Place
ampm Free Gas For a Year
City: Modesto, CA
Daily audited circulation size: 33,857
Sunday audited circulation size: 56,136
Objective
Win Free Gas for a Year
There are two main objectives of The Modesto Bee & ampm promotion. The primary objective of this promotion is relationship building with the ampm chain (gas and convenience category) in Northern California, which helps maintain presence and positioning for single copy in the stores, facilitating long term growth. The secondary objective is to grow single copy sales in the stores.
The promotion runs across the Northern California valley stores and is a joint promotion of The Modesto Bee, the Merced Sun-Star and The Sacramento Bee.
Strategy
The strategy is to facilitate buy-in from each of the franchisees in the market. We are invited to a meeting with all franchisees about 3 months before the promotion begins. There we present the promotion to the franchisees and ask for their participation. Participating franchisees each contribute a $100 gas card. For that, ampm corporate gives them $50 back in co-op advertising and they receive all of the promotional value from The Modesto Bee. The gas cards are pooled together for a drawing of weekly and grand prizes.
Each week for four weeks, we selected 10 winners to each receive a $50 gas card. At the end of the contest, we selected a winner for a $3,000 grand prize, $2,000 second price and $1,000 third prize.
The promotion is marketed with in-store cooler container decals, rack cards, bundle hangers, in paper, TMC ads, email campaigns, social media, and The Bee's rewards program. The Bee's rewards program is open to all, so subscribers and non subscribers can enter. So while designed as a single copy promotion, it becomes a home delivery retention promotion as well. The cooler decals gave us unique and added positioning in the stores to reach customers we may not normally reach.
Results
We had 81 locations participate this year across Modesto, Merced and Sacramento. We obtained $8,100 in gas cards from ampm, which was 100% awarded as prizes to readers. ampm fully funded the gas card prizes, while our newspaper did the promotional materials and execution. A few stores that had stopped selling The Modesto Bee came back as a result of this promotion.
Single copy increased by 3%+ with this promotion and additional positioning was secured in the stores.
We had over 3,200 people enter the contest on our rewards platform, Modesto Bee Rewards.
One of the great outcomes of this promotion is that we are invited to participate in every ampm grand opening. We bring out our mascot, prize wheel, prizes and sell subscriptions at the grand openings. It's great community presence for subscribers and non-subscribers. We sell 15+ subscriptions at each grand opening we do.
Dallas Morning News
3rd Place
Bagging Starbucks
City: Dallas, TX
Daily audited circulation size: 108,000
Sunday audited circulation size: 155,000
Objective
Reduce shrink associated with delivered vs. returned vs. scanned copies. Also, increase revenue by way of "guilting" the customer into purchasing a sealed product rather than simply picking up and consuming a product they deem "complimentary." We've also included a super low introductory home delivery offer on the back of the bag to capture a more consistent revenue stream vs. single copy sales. Also, by collaborating with the Home Delivery Acquisition department, we were able to cut expense for this 6-month trial program by 50%. We simply needed to increase scan by 1.5 papers per week / per store to cover cost. From there, incremental revenue is in the black, while at the same time contra-revenue has been reduced, raising EBITDA from both ends.
Strategy
Bag all Starbucks delivered Dallas Morning News editions with a pitch to the single copy customer of, "Bagged for your convenience. Please purchase at the register to enjoy today's Dallas Morning News." By opening a bagged product without first purchasing, we feel a huge majority of the population would consider that "theft" so, we're playing on the Starbucks customer's moral integrity to boost scanned sales at the chain's 165 locations within our core market.
Results
Starbucks Scan Sales
3/3 - 3/30 4,303
3/31- 4/27 4,356
Increased scanned copies by 56 or 1.2%
Shrink reduction of -7.46%
100% scan accounts
3/3 - 3/30 115,447
3/31- 4/27 108,911
Decrease scanned copies by -6,536 or -6%
Overall, the Starbucks bagged copies outperformed the unbagged scan accounts by selling (scanning) 7.2% versus trend during this 8-week program.
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