nealawards

Have You Entered the Neal Awards? It Can Be Very Rewarding. And There’s Still Time.

by COVID 19Media

Over the last few years, I have had the privilege of working on both the SIPAwards and the Neal Awards. Both have been essential in honoring and promoting the amazing work done by B2B (and some B2C) publishers. This year—with SIPA being integrated into our new Associations, Media and Publishing Network—the SIPAwards have been absorbed by the Neal Awards, now in their 67th year.  The regular deadline is this Sunday, Feb. 21

NEAL AWARDS FAQ:

Are the Neal Awards for me?
Absolutely. Most of the categories that you’ve become familiar with in the SIPAwards—Best Blog/Commentary, Best Profile, Best Podcast, Best Series, Best Use of Video, Best Instructional Content, and Best Editorial Use of Data, to name just a few—are there in the Neal Awards. Check out all of the 2021 Neal Awards categories.

Where do I enter and when did the work I submit have to be published?
Here is the link to the nomination page. It’s the same platform as the SIPAwards were. The 2021 Neal Awards will honor work published from Jan. 1 – Dec. 31, 2020. Up to two entries can be submitted in each category. In the Best Series category, 50% of the series had to be published during those dates for the entirety of the series to be entered.

Will smaller publishers have a chance to win? And do I have to be a member?
Smaller publishers will have a great chance to win. Most categories have three revenue classes, so you will be competing against those in similar places. With all the changes we have been going through, we decided that no, you do not have to be a member this year. That may change in the future.

Was SIPA’s voice heard in their integration into the Neal Awards?
Yes. There is a new Neals category, Best New Product, recognizing innovation in new product development, including pivots to virtual events. In addition, there are two more new categories that I know SIPA members have the work to nominate for because I’ve seen it close up: Best COVID-19 Coverage and Best COVID-19 Package.

Is there an upcoming deadline?
Yes. Sunday is what we call the Regular Deadline for submitting. So you will save $50 per entry by getting nominations in by end-of-day Sunday. Then Feb. 22- March 7 is the Extended Nomination Period where entries are still permitted but it’s a bit more expensive.

Can I sign up to judge?
Please do! We need judges! Award entries will be assessed by your peers in three rounds of judging. Judging will be all virtual, of course, and will not require a huge time commitment. As in the past, it is a great way to see the best work of your industry, learn new ideas and observe how others are approaching work and revenue strategies during the pandemic. All the details about judging—including a detailed FAQ—can be read here. Judging will begin on March 7.

Be assured that your voice is still clearly heard and will resonate loudly throughout the industry with your entries in the Neal Awards. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me. We are excited to expand these awards and reward and amplify even more great work by people in this industry.

News update. Vector digital news, online newspaper concept. Site editing, content updating illustration. Newsletter and newspaper, communication and news online

‘How Do You Achieve the Right Kind of Growth?’ Lessin Talks Newsletter Keys.

by Media

During a recent interview with NiemanLab, Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information—an ad-free tech and business publication where subscriptions cost $399/year—spoke about the exact themes that will define our new Associations, Media, and Publishing Network: talent, revenue strategies and technology. And coursing through all that: good content.

“Everybody wants to grow fast,” she said. “That’s expected, but how do you achieve the right kind of growth? Everyone knows you could slash your price and get a boost that day, but what’s the long-term path? Any startup is going to be very focused on the team and getting hiring right. That’s a big focus, as well. How to leverage—or not—the tech platforms is another recurring theme. When do you partner with Google and Facebook and Apple? When do you not? That calculus is very different if you’re a smaller company or a larger company. For me, what’s most exciting is to see the excellence everyone has when it comes to their domain in terms of reporting.”

Lessin spoke at a time when the proliferation of newsletters is one of the biggest stories in publishing. Substack continues to add well-known writers with big followings to their ever-growing newsletter stacks. Twitter just recently purchased Revue, a newsletter platform for writers and publishers. “Facebook is working on newsletter tools for journalists and writers,” the New York Times just wrote, “a move toward offering more services to independent writers as the social network jumps into the fast-growing newsletter space.”

“It’s the calmness of the model that’s the real killer feature,” wrote Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie on his blog recently. “Perhaps this is giving away too much, but I often find myself telling people: ‘Our real product is our business model.’ There are now more than 500,000 paid subscriptions across Substack, and the top ten writers collectively make more than $15 million a year.”

Whoa. I interviewed McKenzie back in September of 2018. At that time, Shan’t We Tell the Vicar?, The Shatner Chatner, Sinocism and Off the Chain were his biggest titles. And there were a mere 11,000 subscribers. “We strongly believe that in five years there will be a very obvious critical mass of people who will pay for content from writers who they trust,” McKenzie told me, slightly too conservative on his estimate. “And it will be a mainstream, accepted part of the ecosystem… People are learning how good an experience it is to be subscribed to an independent writer you love. We’re really focused on building that relationship—to get people interested in that model.”

Lessin lauds Punchbowl News, a new “membership-based news community” that has—of course—a “flagship morning newsletter” and a daily podcast. While she believes that the journalism still has to be top-notch—“Everything else can be learned and shared,” she says—she is excited about the ways that media companies are exploring monetization.

– Subscriptions.
– Paid memberships—she mentions The 19th, a nonprofit with a booming membership program.
– B2B subscription products—Axios has just launched AxiosHQ, a communications platform that will enable businesses to update their employees—including through internal newsletters—in Axios’s just-the-facts, bullet-point style. It will cost at least $10,000 a year, they say.
– Events, in-person and virtual—Informa Markets has just partnered with the Virtual Events Institute to learn how to do them better.
– Sponsored online communities.

But Lessin does bring it back to content. “Every organization I’ve seen produce really differentiated content is successful. I think it’s really that simple,” she said. “…there’s a huge market for content creators that are doing something original and important. I’ve seen so many businesses that double down on that succeed.”

For his part, McKenzie welcomes Twitter and Facebook to the newsletter party. “I genuinely believe that Twitter and Facebook getting into paid newsletters is good for writers and a positive development for the media ecosystem,” he wrote, before getting more contemplative. “We at Substack have never thought that the solution lies in simply shouting about how engagement-based business models lead to media products that are superficially compelling but underneath are eroding the foundation of society. Instead, we have set out to show that platforms that put writers and readers in charge are just better.

I would stress the reader part there. The idea is to give readers more information, tips and strategies for your arsenal to make beneficial decisions.

bobcoleman

‘It’s Comforting for People’; Airing Live Shows or Blogs Can Attract a Crowd

by COVID 19Media

A common denominator began to form as I started checking on live shows that publishers I know started doing last year. They’re still going strong. And that’s smart. A new article reports that live blogs/reports are converting at a much better rate than standard articles. We like when people are live, especially now—even when things go slightly awry. It makes us feel better for our own Zoom showings.

The article by Max Willens on Digiday calls these live blogs, shows, briefings and informational chats “conversion monsters” for publishers. I’ve always been a big fan of doing things live when possible—just seems to add a positive spontaneity—and the pandemic has even built in a small cushion for minor tech slip-ups and such.

As the trend of live shows and interactive content gains momentum, the emergence of live video chat top10 becomes a pivotal element in fostering audience engagement and conversion rates, since it not only adds a refreshing dimension but also provides a small cushion for navigating any minor tech slip-ups. The acknowledgment of live blogs, shows, and briefings as “conversion monsters” underscores the effectiveness of real-time communication in capturing audience attention and driving engagement.

During most of last year, the Coleman Report was doing a live midday show and garnering huge crowds. “For the most part, people are so thirsty for any spot of normalcy,” Joseph Coleman told me, speaking about his audience of small business bankers and lenders. “We start at 1 pm Eastern time every day, no matter what. I think it’s comforting for people to log in for 30 minutes. It’s a ritual now.”

Hundreds of small-business lenders—and perhaps, Coleman had heard, the #2 at SBA—and more were tuning in every day to hear the latest news about the trillions of dollars that the government earmarked for loans. I was curious if these were still taking place, so after a short search, there they are, Coleman Report Live, still daily and around 20 minutes long! It was good to see Bob in his usual ebullient self.

“Welcome to Coleman Report Live. I’m Bob Coleman.” The show quickly hits home not only with where his guests are but with the first guest saying they had a “spat of the virus” in the office so everyone is home now.

“Our show is still the place for our audience to go,” Joseph Coleman told me last year. “There’s so much misinformation out there. Bob and I have been doing this for the last 10 years. We’ll try to keep the show going as long as possible. All of the new connections we make become staples of the daily show.” (On this show, Bob calls it “Tuesdays with Chris.”) These shows continue to lead to lots of goodwill and revenue for Coleman Report.

Then I turned over to Facebook to see if Chesapeake Family’s excellent Live Friday discussion show is still running, and happily it is. Friday’s topic: What benefits does nature play provide and how does it go beyond what a typical playground or play structure or yard can provide? Find out what you can do in your yard.

“I really like to do those virtual interviews as long as we can give 2-3 day notice,” Donna Jefferson told me last summer, adding it’s a good platform to talk about timely topics. Previous interviews focused on Virtual School From Home Tips and Navy Football Takes on Racism with an assistant coach and running back. (That interview received more than 700 views. “By doing virtual [and live] interviews, we get things out there quickly.”

The New York Times actually has an assistant managing editor of live, a new division charged with driving adoption of the Times’ live briefings, live blog and live chat formats across the newsroom, writes Willens. The Times would actually prefer more of their writers go live on Times’ formats rather than just tweeting. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s live blog has a subscriber conversion rate twice as high as their standard articles, he adds.

Publishers are also using these live talks to build their membership programs. Last April, TechCrunch introduced Extra Crunch Live, a virtual speaker series with live Q&A exclusive for Extra Crunch members. I just took a look and saw this headline: “Extra Crunch Live is back in 2021, connecting founders with tech giants and each other.”

Inc. launched a weekly interview called “Real Talk.” “It’s people who have had success and are willing to give back to entrepreneurs and the small business community and answer questions for an hour.” It’s hard to tell how recent they are, but there are a quite a few of them up there now including this one: Should You Release a New Product During a Pandemic? Here’s How to Know.

Data protection vector illustration. Cartoon flat database protecting concept with tiny character holding key from lock for bank account password, email, electronic wallet, document files background

Friday Sends, Segmentation and More Testing Can Boost Your Email Rates

by COVID 19Media

In the space of about an hour yesterday, I read a 2020 email report that said that Fridays are now getting the best engagement of the week—and then our director of marketing said how well our noon Friday emails are doing. The reasons? Less competition and people are not traveling so they’re working, but if they are like me, they may be doing a little lighter lifts. So opening emails may feel just right.

Campaign Monitor has put out a report titled Media and Publisher Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2021 (download here), looking at the email trends from the year 2020. Here are some takeaways:

Friday is the best day for email marketing.
In one of the biggest surprises, Friday, not Wednesday or Thursday, was the best day for engagement. It had the best open rate (22.1%), the best click-through rate and the best click-to-open rate. “This is just one example of the ways the pandemic changed the way people engage with the world around them.” In open rates, Monday was second and Sunday third. But in click-through and click-to-open rates, Wednesday was second and Saturday third.

Mobile opens decreased this year for the first time ever.
Those dropped from 63% to 54% in 2020. “With fewer people commuting and more people going from their morning coffee directly to their desks—guilty—people spent more time at their desks.”

Click-through rates decreased steadily over the course of 2020.
The thinking is that Zoom fatigue and the ongoing crisis led people to disconnect for the benefit of their mental state. So while opens still soared, that didn’t translate to click-through or click-to-open rates. They suggest that “publishers will need to re-engage with their audience and combat fatigue through increased personalization. Publishers can analyze the engagement they saw early in 2020 to discover new segments that will help you deliver hypertargeted emails you know your audience will care about. For example, you can segment people based on the type of content subscribers engaged with” or even the format of that content. Did they click on images as opposed to in-text links?

Publishers experienced 29% growth in open rates from 2018 to 2020.
From 2019 to 2020 alone publishers saw 19.7% growth in their open rates. “That means more and more people are turning to email as a trusted source of information, as a way to connect directly with the publishers they care about most.” It also goes to the ascending popularity of newsletters. In general, the publishing industry outperformed the average email benchmarks for every industry across the board in 2020.

Ways to improve your email open rate:

– Create a welcome series to foster loyalty and strong relationships.
Welcome emails perform very well. A report from last year said that 30% of onsite digital subscriptions originate from “welcome” messages, that provide an introduction to new readers, and “warn” messages that serve as reminders as the reader approaches the meter limit.

– Test send day, send time, cadence, subject line length, tone, content and even sender name.
Perhaps you will do better with a person’s name that people know. At Dell, every new landing page is a multi-faceted project that requires several handoffs taking 6-8 weeks to customize and globalize for testing.

– Don’t forget—and give thought to—the preheader text.
I’ve noticed an uptick since we started doing those.

– Focus on sending only highly-relevant content through personalization and segmentation.
This came from another email report last year: “Personalization is quickly being overtaken by hyper-personalization, not only in email messaging but in touch points far beyond the inbox. Brands that have resisted the personalization wave will find their reliance on one-size-fits-all email might shut them out of the inbox as customers grow more apathetic to their messages—and ISPs use that apathy to give preferential treatment to brands more in tune with their customers.”

How to improve the click-through rate:
Ensure that your emails align with subscriber expectations. Know your audience and why they are there. Also make sure that your subject line reflects the content of your email. You can fool people once or twice with tricky subject lines, but it’s not worth it in the long run.

How to lower your unsubscribe rate:
“Routinely schedule re-engagement campaigns to maintain list hygiene. Segment your audience to send the most relevant emails. Focus on quality of subscribers above quantity.

You can get the full report here.

Teeba-Gosain

2020 EXCEL Winners Exhibit Ways That Associations Can Amplify Value and Showcase Members

by Media

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons won a 2020 EXCEL Award for an incredibly moving feature article by Kendra Mims titled The PSF Past President Helps Young Author Find ‘A Brave Face,’ about an Iraqi girl brought to the United States to be treated for severe burns. “After a year-long process of hurdles, prayers, phone calls and media outreach, Teeba finally arrived in Cleveland with her grandmother, and the Marlowes offered them a home. She received treatment under the care of the Plastic Surgery Foundation immediate-past President Arun Gosain, MD…” In March of 2019, 17 year-old Teeba released a book, “A Brave Face,” that discusses her journey through reconstructive surgery. She credits Dr. Gosain (pictured here with Teeba Furat Marlowe) for helping her improve her confidence through the years by reducing scarring and restoring facial function.

What a wonderful story! And a great way to spotlight a member of the ASPS and the special work that he’s doing. And we wouldn’t have known about it without the EXCEL Awards. Hollywood may have their Oscars and they’re up to year 93 for the presentation in April, but the EXCEL Awards has an amazing history of its own—these are the 41st EXCELs this year. And we want to know your stories so we can add to the great lore.

Today, Friday, Feb. 12, is the final day to get the early-bird rate for your 2021 EXCEL Awards entries. Check out all the categories here. But by no means is this the final day to enter. The regular nominations go to Feb. 28 and the extended deadline is March 7. We hope you let us in on the great work that you did in 2020, when we all worked so hard to bring some normalcy, excitement and value to a most abnormal year. It’s time for some recognition!

The above story conveys just one way how an association or society can showcase its members. Here are four more ways that 2020 EXCEL Award winners accomplished a task that amplifies the value of the association:

Convey information.
The Southern California Golf Association won a 2020 Gold EXCEL Award for their SCGA Rules Crew videos. These are two-minute, slickly done videos that portray a rule on the golf course. The one I’m watching now is called Time’s Up! ”The SCGA Rules Crew explains the new Rules regarding time for search outlined in Rule 18.2a.” A woman hits a ball into the trees, and her playing partner says, “Remember, we only have three minutes to find your ball.” “Three minutes?” the woman who hit it says. “I thought it was five.” No, it’s definitely three.” “That doesn’t make any sense—what can you possibly do in three minutes?” “I’ll show you.” And she goes about picnicking, reading the local paper, talking to her mom, and go on the SCGA site to find a new partner. Then their slogan comes, “Your passion. Our purpose.” There are 10 of these now on the site.

Show the power of an infographic.
The Casualty Actuarial Society won a 2020 EXCEL Award for their CAS Student Central Infographic. In a recent report, infographics scored incredibly high for click-to-open rates when included in an email. People respond to them. In this particular one, CAS is able to convey a wealth of information in a very palatable way. It shows what CAS does, the difference it makes in a career and in salary and gives advice what to focus on now. “In the U.S., college graduates on the casualty actuarial track start out earning significantly more than the average college graduate.” This was a great way to reach students who probably pay more attention to this than to, say, a regular article or photo.

Promote your association in a fun way.
One look at the homepage for the 2020 Gold EXCEL Award-winning I Spy Physiology Blog: Spotting Physiology in Everyday Life from the American Physiological Society suggests this is a very cool place. A woman hiker is ascending a mountain with a gorgeous green backdrop behind her. The blog has several sections—Diet & Nutrition, Exercise & Fitness, Most Popular, Contributors, COVID-19. One blog that jumps out is headlined Horror-ibly Wrong Physiology in Scary Movies. “Unrealistic Blood: On the screen, blood is a bright red liquid that squirts out of wounds when a character is killed. Blood gets its red color from red blood cells that are filled with oxygen. But without oxygen—such as when someone dies—it changes to a dark reddish-purple hue. Also, when exposed to air, blood will also start to thicken into a gel-like substance, unlike the watery blood seen in movies.”

Give voices to members.
The Rotarian Magazine won a 2020 EXCEL Award for a column titled, How I Met My Sister. “One morning, I got a text message from my brother, asking me to call him before work,” Sarah Long’s story begins. “I asked if he was OK. Fine, he assured me. ‘So, I have this Ancestry account,’ he said.” At times, we can do well by writing member spotlights, but there are other times when it’s better to let our members tell their own stories. We can also look to add more diversity in this way. “Being found by a sibling highlighted what I didn’t know about my family, but it also reminded me of what I had always been lucky to have,” Long writes. “Stories. Photo albums. Letters from my grandfather…” This column really humanizes the magazine for its readers.