Let me back up that claim and bridge how we’re doing it.  

We work with Bridge Michigan – a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that provides passionate and rooted Michigan readers with honest, fact-driven journalism on the state’s diverse people, politics, and economy. They’re highly reliant on building their newsletter list – and they ask for donations from their loyal following. 

And, they’re getting results.

In the past few months, Social News Desk has helped Bridge Michigan get 26,115 leads at an average cost of $1.29 per lead.

We’re using their most popular content to make it happen.

Day to day, we don’t ask ask what stories they’d like to promote, we use data driven feeds to see which stories are over-performing already and push that content to get new readers. Conversely, if they have content they DO want to promote, they just let us know. We add it. 

They’re thrilled with that $1.29 per lead – it’s a solid number and lower than we are seeing industry wide. 
Our efforts to help them grow their audience do not involve more time or resources on their part – and Bridge Michigan’s Growth Strategist is pretty excited about that:

So, using Dynamic News Ads – we’ve sliced the cost in half, reduced their workload and increased results. 

I’ll list the downsides here: 

• …
• … …
• … … …

In other words, the win-win factor is hard to ignore. Grow audience, cut down cost per lead, save time, money & resources.

Ready to try out Dynamic News Ads for yourself? Social News Desk is ready to manage it for you. In fact, we encourage you to try it out for a month without longterm commitment. Hit us up – info@socialnewsdesk.com. 

The post Lead Gen Strategy: Bridging Your Best Content to Find New Audience first appeared on Social News Desk.

Philadelphia Inquirer is laser-focused on growing their top-performing newsletters. They consistently and successfully run newsletter campaigns – collect email addresses – and then immediately start sending out content-rich newsletters – all with an eye on potentially converting these readers into a paid subscription down the road.

Social News Desk is handling their lead gen campaigns using our proprietary Dynamic News Ads technology. Our goal is to make sure we’re acquiring new audiences at the lowest possible cost-per-lead.

Let’s throw out some impressive stats:

• Year-to-date, SND has driven 15,617 leads for the Philadelphia Inquirer. 
• Focus remains on their top performing e-mail newsletters which include: 
  • News Alerts Newsletter  
    • 6,552 leads at an average CPL of $0.70
    • This is their breaking news alert newsletter. 
  • Let’s Eat, Philly! Newsletter
    •  3,206 leads at an average CPL of $1.06
    • This is a local food and dining newsletter for the Philadelphia area. 
  • Sports Daily Newsletter
    •  4,278 leads at an average CPL of $0.60
    • A daily sports e-mail covering Philadelphia sports teams. 

We use corresponding, relevant content to drive sign-ups for specific newsletters.

Using top-performing content to build your newsletter WORKS. Philadelphia Inquirer is currently focused on growing its top-performing newsletters versus all of their newsletters.

“Social News Desk has been a tremendous addition to our digital transformation strategy. We’ve seen rapid growth with our audience. Not only in list size, but also attracting an array of diverse readers while continuing to maintain a significantly low cost per lead.” Terrance Young, Audience Development Marketing Manager of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Aside from SND’s Dynamic News Ads audience growth strategy, the Philadelphia Inquirer has a hub for all its newsletters on the website.

Some key takeaways:

-Focus on your top-performing newsletters – as opposed to all your newsletters.

-Consistency is key. Spend marketing dollars evenly over time.

-You can grow your audience quickly. It is possible.

Want to apply the same strategy to grow your audience? Social News Desk can help – reach out to us at info@socialnewsdesk.com.  

The post Philadelphia Inquirer’s Newsletters: Strategy Worth Picking Up first appeared on Social News Desk.

Our Meta-certified Promotions team quickly launched a large-scale campaign that promoted local tune-in down to the ZIP code in each market, customized for the individual times that each region airs the show. In addition, we built a strategy to drive traffic through Social News Desk’s unique Dynamic News Ads technology, showcasing the best content at the best time for each person who views an ad in the campaign.

SND’s Dynamic News Ads uses a proprietary algorithm to determine which content to use, how long it should be available, and when content is no longer eligible to appear in an ad. When breaking news happens, content can appear in an ad right away – no editing and uploading necessary. In addition, our team’s Superhuman Optimization uses up-to-the-minute data and in-house custom technology to ensure campaigns are performing as expected (or better).

Overall, SND Promotions drove millions of impressions to build awareness of The National Desk’s expanded broadcast, and Sinclair Broadcasting Group was thrilled with the results.

“We were really impressed with how SND was able to push social media traffic. Our website user count more than doubled during the campaign.”

Ed Sautter, Sr. Director of Promotion & Marketing – Digital, Sinclair Broadcast Group

The National Desk website also saw more than double the amount of social referrals, sessions, and new users month over month.

If you’re interested in learning how SND Promotions can help your newsroom reach your goals, get in touch with us at info@socialnewsdesk.com.

The post SND Promotions drives huge results for Sinclair’s The National Desk first appeared on Social News Desk.

Why Newsletters?

Newsletters are one of the best ways to build a long-lasting relationship with your audience – and it comes straight to their inbox. The format also gives your writers an opportunity to show their personality in a way they can’t on your website or on TV. Niche newsletters also offer a platform to showcase your expertise and depth of coverage.

Although the online channel is still an important means to publish and deliver the news, a website is an endless stream of information, while newsletters have a beginning and an end and summarize the day.

Jason Hegna, vice president of sales at Shaw Media

Content Matters

Both general and niche newsletters have a place in your strategy. Morning and afternoon headline newsletters tend to have a larger audience, and there is enough content to support delivery every day. However, niche newsletters tend to have a much more engaged audience. When choosing topics, be sure that there is already a proven level of interest, the ability to expand your coverage, and the ability to add your voice to the conversation around the topic.

Hearst Newspapers’ Marketing Specialist, Sierra Smith says the company has seen success with niche topics like food and recipes, crime and courts, cannabis coverage, travel, local history and sports. While WDIV-TV’s Digital Special Projects Manager, Ken Haddad says his station offers several sports-focused newsletters to subscribers in the Detroit market, each with its own dedicated fanbase built in.

Growing Your Audience

Haddad and Smith go on to suggest that newsrooms take a multi-pronged approach to promoting newsletters, including paid acquisition campaigns, targeted on-site units, specific sign-up pages on your website, and for TV stations – using the megaphone of on-air promotion. Cross-promote your newsletters between one another, and in other media such as podcasts and livestreams. Don’t forget about referrals! The better your audience knows you, the more likely they will be to share your newsletter with their families and friends.

Make Sign-ups Simple

Using SND’s Dynamic News Ads technology in partnership with the SND Promotions team, newsrooms can leverage their highest-performing social content into targeted ads that reach the right person, with the right content, at the right time. While Dynamic News Ads can be used for almost any newsroom objective (including SMS signups and Tune In), we’ve seen huge success and low costs in gathering newsletter leads for publishers.

The sign-up flow for Dynamic News Ads is so simple that users only have to click a button. Facebook pre-fills information in the form, so your users will be signed up and on your site in no time. SND can even help automate leads to your CRM, so you don’t have to manually add users to your subscriber lists.

Decide What Success Looks Like

How will you know when your strategy is working? Be sure to measure your progress as you go. Decide what KPIs are most important to your organization – is it the lifetime value of a subscriber, or increasing unique email addresses acquired?

Once you’ve defined your goals, check in with your campaign’s performance. If you’re running ads in support of growing subscriptions, take note of which newsletters are gaining the most sign-ups at the most competitive cost, or driving the most paid subscriptions. Don’t be afraid to shift budget as you learn more about your users’ habits.

Pro tip: TV stations are seeing lower costs per lead right now because broadcasters are somewhat new to the newsletter game when compared to print publishers. So if you’re not running newsletter promotions, now is the time!

Want to talk? Email us to set up a call anytime.

The post Top 5 Newsletter Audience Acquisition Strategies That REALLY Work first appeared on Social News Desk.

WDIV’s Digital Special Projects Editor, Ken Haddad says creating an email newsletter is all about that one on one experience… “The better you build that relationship with those users…you continue to build that credibility and that trust and they continue to come back to you. And eventually you’ll be able to drive revenue through this platform because those users are continually using your products.”

For many TV Newsrooms, creating an email newsletter is uncharted territory. But there are resources available including this TVNewsCheck How To video series featuring Haddad. Once you have the basics set up, the big question is … how do you get people to subscribe to your newsletter?

Self-Promote

Leverage your existing resources by promoting your newsletter in the newscast, on your website and via station promos. The best part about this approach is that it’s low/no cost to the station. But it’s also not always the most effective.

Acquisition Ads

By far, the most effective way to increase subscribers for an email newsletter is through acquisition ads on Facebook. This approach minimizes friction by offering the Facebook user an instant opportunity to sign up for your newsletter without even leaving their Facebook News Feed.

While effective, acquisition ads are anything but simple – and can be expensive if you’re not running them correctly. So when WDIV wanted to increase its email subscribers, the station turned to Social News Desk to manage its Acquisition Ads investment on Facebook.

Case Study

Dynamic News Ads is Social News Desk’s proprietary ad tech – you could call it the secret sauce. It’s why more than 1000 newsrooms around the world rely on SND to manage acquisition ads for their email newsletter campaigns – including WDIV.

Over the course of a single month campaign, SND was able to generate nearly 7500 new email subscribers at an average cost of just $0.34 per lead (or per email acquired). For comparison, the industry standard is to keep this cost under $1.00 per lead and when WDIV ran it’s own campaigns, it was averaging about $0.90 per lead.

“Newsletters are a huge part of our digital revenue strategy going forward. Sponsorships, branded content and partnerships are all possible when you build up a large, engaged audience – and Social News Desk’s technology has proven to be the absolute best way to quickly and cost-effectively grow our list of subscribers.”

Bob Ellis, VP/GM WDIV-TV (Detroit, MI)

So why are SND’s email newsletter sign-up campaigns so much more effective? It’s that secret sauce – our Dynamic News Ads (DNA). This complex algorithm automatically identifies your newsroom’s best content and uses it to build the best ad in real time.

WDIV ran three campaigns for three separate newsletters. Each campaign was tailored by SND to include only applicable content. So for example, ads promoting signups for the station’s “Help Me Hank” newsletter exclusively featured related consumer-advice content. This approach is critical to the success of the campaign, as it shows the user exactly what they can expect to receive when they sign up for the newsletter.

Notably, SND’s DNA technology can also eliminate content you don’t want to see in an ad such as politics or promotional content. And we do it all in real time and automatically rotate in the best stories while rotating out the ones that aren’t performing. The result is a quickly growing list of subscribers at a cost well below the value those subscribers will represent for your brand in the future.

Want to find out how to increase your email newsletter subscribers? Reach out to our team anytime!

The post WDIV-TV rolls out forward-thinking newsletter strategy to acquire new digital audience. first appeared on Social News Desk.

We’ve been highly successful on our newsletter campaign and podcast traffic builders.

Kym Blanchard, Marketing Director | The New Republic

Newsletter Strategy

The New Republic’s flagship newsletter is the TNR Daily. This upper funnel tool is important for the publisher to bring in new readership that might be unfamiliar with the magazine. And the ultimate goal is to turn those newsletter signups into digital subscribers.

The company set a goal at $1.00 per newsletter signup or less. And SND’s Superhuman Optimization team went to work. By leveraging its proprietary Dynamic News Ads technology, Social News Desk was able to automatically select the best content and dynamically turn it into lead-gen ads which the optimization team then managed throughout the campaign.

The results are impactful. In just eight months, TNR Daily saw 30,000 newsletter sign-ups as a direct result of the Social News Desk content marketing campaigns at an average cost of just $0.67 per lead – well under the publisher’s goal.

Podcast Strategy

The New Republic’s podcast, The Politics of Everything, launched in January of 2020. SND’s Dynamic News Ad tech offered the perfect solution to introduce the podcast to more potential listeners through social media. In 2021, SND’s ads drove more than 71,000 clicks to TNR’s podcast. And what’s even more impressive, the ads saw a 4.36% click-thru rate which is 4X higher than the average click-thru rate on Facebook.

Interested in learning more about how SND’s Dynamic News Ad tech can help your publication acquire more audience? Let’s talk.

The post How a national magazine brand grew its newsletter footprint using SND’s Ad Tech first appeared on Social News Desk.

There are a few reasons for it:

• It’s the holiday season, which means advertisers are introducing an influx of spend on social which we saw begin happening at the end of October and continue to increase throughout November.
• More advertising dollars means that there’s now more competition for social media users’ attention. It comes down to that classic tenet of economics: supply and demand.

If misery loves company … you’ve got plenty of it (and not just the in-laws). For example, when looking at the cost per lead for media organizations during the first half of the year, we saw that the average CPL was 86 cents. In the second half of the year, that cost has jumped to 93 cents. That increase has been mostly driven by the increased competition of dollars in the paid social space.

If we look at it a little closer, in Q3, the average cost per lead for publishers was 88 cents; in Q4, the average cost is $1.01.

Facebook representatives recently told us that they’ve seen costs rise sharply and that for leads, this is the highest they’ve seen them.

Leads, of course, aren’t the only campaign being affected by the onslaught of dollars vying for attention. We’ve seen similar increases in conversion campaigns and have seen an increase in CPM costs as well.

While you can expect costs to go up every Q4 , SND’s ad tech does help advertisers weather this wintry storm with better optimized spends and a more strategic approach to ROI. Ask us how!

The post My Ad Cost-Per-Result got run over by Q4, a cautionary tale first appeared on Social News Desk.

The paper has been trying to connect with the Latinx community in Meriden, CT with their Latino News Now initiative. There’s a newsletter tied with that project, but there is also an SMS effort – and they want to grow their contact list. So, the Record-Journal turned to the same technology they’re using for email sign ups: SND’s Dynamic News Ads (DNA).

Using SND’s DNA ads technology, the Record-Journal was able to automatically curate content that is resonating with its target audience, and then turn that content into ads that convert in real time.

It’s simple and easy for the end user to understand. They just click to read a story – Facebook autofills their cell number and they agree to the terms. Then, the user is automatically redirected to read the story.

The Connecticut newspaper has been able to get new SMS subscribers for its text initiative at an average of just $1.80 per lead.

There weren’t any specific goals for this campaign because it was the first of its kind for the Record-Journal, but the initial results were exciting, nonetheless. There’s a big difference between getting an email sent to your inbox and getting a text alert on your phone, and it was exciting to see how willing the audience is to receive those messages.

SMS is having something of a revival as well. Last year, during the freeze in Texas, the Austin American-Statesman launched an SMS campaign to be able to reach more readers, and more recently, following Hurricane Ida, the Category 4 storm that slammed into the Gulf Coast, NOLA.com also launched an SMS effort to be able to reach readers who might have trouble getting strong cell service or an internet connection.

Interested in finding out how your team could use SND’s Dynamic News Ads technology to get more leads? Send us a note.

The post How one local newspaper is using social media ads to get more SMS subscribers first appeared on Social News Desk.

But how do you measure success? And how can you be sure you’re getting the most signups at the lowest possible price?

Social News Desk’s proprietary Dynamic News Ads technology not only showcases your best performing content to a ready audience, it also brings down ad-costs because you’re able to automatically offer up the most interesting content you have as a publisher.

Below are three case studies showing what SND has been able to accomplish for three publishers in the past 12 months:

Village Media

Canadian publisher Village Media’s 30-plus brands and partner brands have seen incredible growth utilizing SND’s Dynamic News Ads technology.

The Village Media brands all came to the SND Promotions team with a specific goal in mind for their campaigns: keep leads at less than $2 CAD a lead. Like many publishers, Village is able to track the “value” of an email newsletter subscriber over time, so the brands know for sure what they can afford to pay per new sign-up. By keeping the Cost Per Lead (CPL) under that cost-cap, SND is able to ensure the ads deliver long-term value to the publishers in the form of return on investment per email sign-up.

Notably, SND’s technology is delivering some of the lowest CPL rates in the industry. In fact, Facebook average is $6.64 per lead. But SND has been able to capture 172,000 leads for the Village Media brands at an $0.88 CPL, far below the company’s $2 cost per lead goal.

NOLA.com/Advocate

Louisana’s NOLA.com and Advocate brands had the goal of acquiring leads at less than a $1 USD for their various newsletters, which included general news, New Orleans Saints, sports betting, and LSU sports newsletters, to name a few.

So far, NOLA.com and The Advocate have captured almost 48,000 newsletter sign-ups at 72 cents per sign-up. What’s equally as impressive is that SND’s approach has significantly cut down on the time required by NOLA’s staff to manage the campaigns. Content for the ads updates dynamically and is automatically chosen using SND’s proprietary Dynamic News Ads technology. The SND Promotions team then optimizes the budget, targeting and delivery for the best possible results. Meantime, the team at NOLA can just sit back and watch the leads roll in.

Bridge Michigan

Bridge Michigan is a nonprofit news publisher covering government, education, business, and more in the Great Lakes State.

The goal identified by Bridge Michigan was to keep their CPL under $1.50 USD. Since the SND Promotions team began managing Bridge Michigan’s acquisition ads, we’ve been able to capture more than 6,000 newsletter sign-ups at just $1.11 per sign-up. This CPL is a tad higher than we would expect with some more traditional news publishers – but is incredibly impressive given the niche audience.

Want to learn more about how SND’s Dynamic News Ad tech can help you achieve your email acquisition goals – saving you time and money? Reach out – we’d love to talk with you.

The post Building a Better Lead Gen Ad for Newsrooms first appeared on Social News Desk.

Promote your best content, automatically

It’s pretty impossible to predict exactly what will resonate with your audience on Facebook – and even harder during breaking news when things are changing rapidly. So why put all your eggs in one basket with a Boosted Post? Wouldn’t it be better if you could always promote the best stories you have – even as that list changes in real time? Now you can!

SND’s proprietary Dynamic News Ads (DNA) technology identifies your best content in real time, and automatically turns it into an ad. Think of the ad as an empty – always on – container. SND’s DNA technology is working 24/7 to create a list of your very best content and updating that list in real time as you produce more content. We’re then filling that empty ad container with stories from the list – matching them up to the users most likely to care about each story. Each ad is unique, and populated with the best content you have to offer at any given moment. We call it an “Auto-Boost.”

Because the Auto-Boost ad is always on (and always filled with fresh content) … you are reaching a much wider group of people than you would with a Boost. As Facebook users engage with your content in the ad, they see more of your content and become more aware of your brand page. This leads to increases in Clicks, Reach, Engagement and often a 6-8% increase in Page Followers to boot!

Get two (or more) KPIs for the price of one

Auto-Boost ads are optimized by the team at SND to fit your exact ROI goals. So in addition to extra Reach, you’ll also get additional website traffic (clicks), email newsletter sign ups (lead gen), subscription purchases (conversions) or app downloads. Depending on the objective, SND will set up the ad to get the best possible ROI for you in that category. This helps you get the most out of your budget and work toward success in multiple performance metrics at the same time.

Reach beyond your fanbase

The SND Promotions team of Blue Print Certified ad specialists can help you set up ad targeting that will reach the best possible audience for your brand. For example, you can specifically target ads to people who don’t yet follow you on Facebook, ensuring your advertising dollars are helping you reach the right people at the right time. Or you can reach out to both existing fans and new followers. You can even target people who like your competitors. We’ll show you all the tricks.

Ready to give it a try? Check your newsroom credit card to see how much you spent on Boosted Posts last month, and let us show you how to reroute that money this month to produce a real return on your investment instead. Email us.

The post The better way to boost posts on Facebook. first appeared on Social News Desk.