Best Travel Online Newsletter Campaign

The online newsletter campaign for the Grand Junction Visitor and Convention Bureau is distributed from April through October each year (corresponding with the destination’s peak travel season). The audience comprises 20,000 subscribers — the majority of whom live in key drive markets along Colorado’s Front Range and Western Slope. They are mountain biking enthusiasts, oenophiles, foodies and adventurers who are interested in receiving travel tips, recommended itineraries, destination news and timely event information. The goal of the monthly newsletter is to engage these diverse audiences with rich, multimedia content, keep the destination front of mind during peak travel season and drive additional traffic to the VCB’s website. In 2014, Miles introduced a new responsive design template for the email in order to provide a better user experience for the growing number of subscribers who opened the email on mobile devices, and increased the amount of content units in each email. These factors contributed to increased user satisfaction and improved social sharing, and year-over-year there was a 16.8% increase in total subscribers. After analyzing two years of campaign data on subject lines and engagement, a tighter content strategy delivered a 28.7% increase in opens and a 49% increase in clicks. In total, the newsletter campaign drove a larger and more engaged audience to the website, including more than 30% increase in traffic over 2013 and nearly a 50% increase in page views.

Contributors:

Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator, GJVCB:	Mistalynn Meyeraan
Marketing and Public Relations Assistant, GJVCB:	Holly Prickett
Vice President, Miles:	Karin Mast
Account Director, Miles:	Carrie Barker
Content Director, Miles:	Patrick Rodgers
Art Director, Miles:	Carey Seaborg
ePublications Project Coordinator, Miles:	Amanda Steward
ePublications Developer, Miles:	Mitch Viex

MILES

Website: www.milespartnership.com

Location: USA

About the Agency:

Miles Partnership markets destinations and hospitality businesses by working with state tourism offices, convention & visitors bureaus, hotels and other organizations in the tourism industry to create forward-thinking digital and print content marketing solutions.