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Keys to Starting and Running a Top Awards Program

by Media

A SIPA member emailed me last week to tell about their success with the awards program they run. (He/she wanted to remain anonymous.) No less than a U.S. senator from Nebraska called the awards program “prestigious” and sent out a special press release congratulating the Nebraska company on its award.

After talking about the many benefits of their awards program—good publicity, building customer loyalty, greater visibility, and even some personal feel-good vignettes—the SIPA member wrote, “I guess the bottom line for publishers to remember is we have a platform to get to acknowledge excellence and make people feel good about their daily lives for them and their families, and their legacy.”

Many SIPA members run excellent awards programs: Ragan Communications, Columbia Books, Access Intelligence and Chartwell, to name just a few. And, of course, SIPA has our own SIPAwards, now in their 41st year.

The SIPAwards remain the industry’s top program for honoring specialized publishers. We’ve given them a refresh this year to increase their gravitas, keep up with the times and spotlight the winners more. So you’ll see new categories like Best Team on a Project or Event, and Best Infographic, categories honoring trends like video, podcasts, social media and data use, and then, of course, the standards for newsletters, articles, marketing and investigative reporting. Others that got fewer entries have been consolidated.

Here are some other keys to running a successful awards program:

Choose a good foundation. Use an awards system and process that saves you time, makes you look good, and, most importantly, is easy for every participant in your program.

Take time to plan an accurate and appropriate program calendar. Timing is critical for all awards programs. If your call for entry is too short, you may lose out on potential applicants. If you plan your gala near a holiday, no one will show up. Don’t approximate timelines; take the time to plan things out carefully.

Create a great awards website. Your awards website is one of the most important parts of your program and should be a big focus in the preparation of your call for entry. Ours is here. In creating an informative and easily navigable site you can guarantee that any visitor’s questions will be answered, and that they can become familiar with your program’s legacy and credibility within the industry.

Link your program to the core values of the organization. Whether you’re just getting started or are a seasoned veteran, step back and ask yourself: Is your program aligning with the goals and values your organization is trying to promote? A successful awards program will be focused on what the organization is all about and create an opportunity for others in the industry to showcase their similar interests.

Attract and promote a high-caliber panel of judges. Cynopsis did this for their Short Form Video Festival awards, and we do this as well for the SIPAwards. It makes winning much more special. Jurors for Cynopsis included film executives from Vox Media, IFC, People/Entertainment Weekly and Meredith. For SIPA we get many presidents of member companies and experts in their niches.

Price reasonably and incentivize early entries. If you can get your entry to us by Friday Feb. 28, the cost per entry is the lowest price. Getting early entries also helps you relax; there’s that tendency in so many of us to do the things at the last minute.

Create varied categories. What are the latest trends in the industry? What would you like to see examples of? More categories will get more entries, if you’ve done your homework and know what people are doing.

Put on an awards gala. An awards gala is a great way to celebrate all the finalists and winners in your program. It’s also the perfect way to recognize every participant in the program, from the entrants to the judges to the program managers. Splash your brand around the gala and include your sponsors, too, if you have them. It’s a win-win-win! The SIPAward Luncheon Gala will be June 2.

Analyze the program each year. When your program is over it’s tempting to sit back, feel good and chill, but it’s important not to just take a break from things until the next awards season comes. Every program should analyze their data in order to understand what worked and what didn’t and how they can use that information to make next years’ awards even better.

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8 Ways to Generate More Webinar Revenue

by Media

According to GoToWebinar’s benchmark report last year, 36% of registrations occur between 8-10 am. So if you’re sending out a marketing email, early might be best. They also note that 59% of registrations occur less than a week before the webinar. The problem is that we get nervous when not that many people are signed up.

“Start your webinar promotion at least four weeks prior to your webinar,” wrote GoToWebinar’s Amber Tiffany. “Then increase promotion the week before your webinar—post more on social and send one more email blast the day of the webinar. (17% of registrants sign up the same day.) For recipients who haven’t registered yet, send out a “last chance” email to encourage last-minute registrations.”

On Associations Now, Philip Forte, founder and CEO of Blue Sky eLearn, shared a few ways companies can generate new revenue from their webinars.

1. Make webinars a prerequisite to an in-person meeting. Take your traditional lecture-type sessions of a conference and package them as webinars instead. Then ask attendees to participate (and potentially purchase) these before the actual face-to-face meeting. We talked a couple weeks ago about attaching CE credits to surveys to get people to fill them out. Attaching webinars to CE credits—which some already do—or some other greater goal could work.

2. Take advantage of sponsorships. There are so many ways to appeal to potential sponsors, whether by acknowledging them briefly on the webinar or giving them a minute to deliver their message. And it’s important to mention that there’s branding associated not only with the actual live event, but also the promotion of the event, Forte said. Modern Distribution Management (MDM) transitioned to sponsored-only “webcasts” around 2009. On Feb. 27, they have one scheduled titled Upgrade Your Customer-Specific Pricing to Win More Orders and Improve Profits. “Join us at 1p.m. Eastern for this MDM Webcast, sponsored by Zilliant.” Sponsors co-brand the event and get all the leads. Attendance is free.

3. Market to non-subscribers and non-members. You can never tell what people will pay more for. Sometimes it’s just in their budget to take webinars and not subscribe to a publication (where the webinars are included). Don’t argue. Hopefully you can convince the attendees that membership/subscription is better for them in the long run.

4. Don’t give up on those who didn’t watch. About a third of all webinar attendees are only watching your webinars on-demand. So just because the webinar has taken place, you still need to be clear to your audience how they can view it. Maybe update an intro to it after the event. MDM writes on their registration: “Even if you can’t make it, sign up anyway! We’ll send you the recording.”

5. Sell in other forms. “We’ve learned this,” advised Adam Goldstein, publisher of Business Management Daily. “We still do a healthy business with CDs. New laptops [often don’t even have ports], but people buy CDs.” He believes that in the HR space you can get certification credits for just buying a CD, so it may be like that in other areas as well.

6. Save money on the speaker and cross-promote anywhere you can—it’s good for the speaker and good for you. “If you must pay a speaker, don’t use your own money,” Goldstein said. (He called it the OPM model—other people’s money.) “Give them in-kind promotions, post their articles on your site and use them in social media. Promote their own webinar to your people on a royalty basis. Trade ad space. We’ll put their products in our store. Monetize their participation.”

7. Promote after. Business Management Daily also knows that a webinar still has value after its airing. They transcribe every webinar—as a journalist, I love when places transcribe interviews—and then put it into a $49 executive summary that includes the Powerpoint. “We’ll take out the ‘urs’ and ‘ums,'” said Goldstein, “but still try to leave it a little raw… Content is a fixed cost so any time you can reuse, it benefits you and the speaker.”

8. Stay with 60-minute webinars. “Contrary to popular belief, shorter webinars aren’t better,” Tiffany wrote. “This was one of the most surprising insights we discovered. Webinars scheduled for 60 minutes attract 67% of registrations, while 30-minute webinars only attract 8% of registrations. Longer webinars are viewed as more valuable, so you’ll get more high-quality registrants. But don’t be afraid to experiment and see what works best for your audience. You might want to set aside 30 minutes for your presentation and leave 30 minutes at the end for Q&A or a live demonstration.”

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More Advanced Personalization and Visuals Can Give Your Emails a Jolt

by Media

Yesterday, in another newsletter I curate, we led with a story about the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) being updated, and it received a lot of clicks. As Litmus’s hot-off-the-digital-presses 2020 State of Email Report says: “The conversation about email data and privacy legislation has moved from the European Union to the United States, where state level regulations could lead to a single federal privacy law.”

They call the CCPA “the most sweeping set of regulations affecting consumer rights on data and privacy, including email data. Read about why this state-level law concerns marketers who live beyond the Golden State’s borders.”

It’s certainly telling that a state of email report would focus on privacy. Because out-of-state marketers with California residents in their databases have to comply with the law’s provisions, it’s a serious issue for all of us. I read that there’s a similar bill being debated in Washington State now, and a federal privacy law has been discussed as well.

Here are more takeaways from the Litmus report:

Dark Mode. Coming to a mobile phone near you. Dark Mode reverses the typical online color and brightness scheme. Instead of darker type on lighter backgrounds, it uses light-colored typography, UI elements, and iconography on dark backgrounds. Could be a new wave.

This could AMP up your emails. “At its most fundamental level, AMP for email is a new markup specification that can be added on top of traditional HTML emails to provide extra functionality in the inbox… AMP allows you to add interactivity in the inbox, from basic image carousels to ratings, dynamically

updated content, and even advanced calls back to your own server.”

Time to get even more personalized… “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.”

…And more visual and interactive. Over 90% of consumers prefer interactive and visual content over traditional, text-based, or static media. Email has not quite caught up to the rest of our video-crazy world but that will probably change. The majority of brands now regularly use animated GIFs to add movement to their campaigns. “The design of emails will depend on the new interactive features that email clients and browsers will allow us to create,” said one design company CEO.

Email will only become more valuable. “The C-suite is beginning to understand that investing in profitable email programs makes them even more profitable, rather than just settling for the returns they are getting from the channel,” said frequent SIPA speaker Jeanne Jennings, now founder & lead strategist, Email Optimization Shop. “Organizations are realizing that the people they hire to drive the marketing automation tool (email marketing specialists or managers) aren’t the same people they need to truly leverage the technology to increase ROI.”

And a couple from last year that remain highly relevant:

Establish a better email review and approval process. Marketers who say their email programs are successful spend more time on every stage of email creation except for the email review and approval stage than marketers who describe their programs as average or unsuccessful. “A lax review process can result in more email errors, but an onerous process has its costs, too.” Marketers spend an average 3.9 hours getting emails reviewed and approved before launch, and they work with an average 2.4 other departments to get emails reviewed. Litmus also recommends to avoid sending emails on the same day you get the approval. “Let the email rest a day or so. Sending an email campaign after a hurried approval is a recipe for disaster.”

Improve measurement of email results to monitor success and justify resource and staffing requests. Only 30% of brands say they can measure their ROI well. “The consequence for brands that are less adept at measuring ROI is that not only are they leaving more money on the table, they also can’t see that they’re doing it. The solution is to have better processes that account for email’s impact on the bottom line, whether through higher revenue or reduced costs.”

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How Two Top Future plc Editors Are Taking Their Verticals to New Heights

by Media

“…what really makes an outlet stand out, especially now in 2020, is being able to establish all your writers as distinct voices—people that readers will want to come back to read whatever they write. That’s kind of one of my big focuses and goals—to make sure that our writers become [that] voice, and folks will want to read their latest stuff.”
—Mike Andronico, editor in chief of Tom’s Guide for Future plc

How much personality and “voice” should writers for niche publishers put in their articles? The answers are certainly going to vary by the type of article and the writer, but in a discussion yesterday, we did flesh out a few guiding perspectives.

I asked Sherri L. Smith, editor in chief for Future’s Laptop Magazine, how she handles that.

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“I’ve always written that way [inserting her personality]. I just need to put a little bit of me into it. What I’m writing, especially for Laptop Mag, I like to think that I’m writing for my mother and my grandmother. And the easier it is to read, the easier it is to understand and the less tech support that I have to do. It hasn’t worked yet. I still have to do tech support every time I go home. But that is the overarching goal of the copy.

“But putting a little bit of personality into your copy helps in the long run. Who wants to read a boring review? You can do that on Amazon—oh, here are the specs, this is what it’s supposed to do. People want to know how the lived-in experience is. Tech, in a lot of ways as in tech reviewing, is an aspirational thing. Like Laptop and Tom’s Guide [another tech website there], we definitely do a lot of testing.

“[While] a lot of people don’t understand what [some techy terms] mean, what they do understand is, ‘I did all this multi-tasking, and the machine was still chugging along and I didn’t experience any slowdown. [But] it did get hot when I put it on my lap.’ Or in a game it didn’t stutter. Those are things that people understand, rather than okay, it transcoded this in two minutes. What does that mean to anyone but people who are well-versed in the industry?”

Greg Friese, editorial director for Lexipol, said that he often has to “remove some of the personality” of his writers because many are cops, firefighters and paramedics, and not actual writers. “Depending on the topic, a conversational tone may or may not work,” he said. “Some of their regionalisms and things that might be appropriate for the fire station might not work in an article for the world to see.

“We’re trying to show our writers that we’re giving them a pretty big platform and as such they might have to be a bit more formal than they think.”

Allowing writers to inject more personality could also help them become more of a personality for your audience—and that could lead to valuable speaking or moderating assignments at events and webinars.

The tone of an article is a difficult decision sometimes. I often inject one of my theater, film or sports references to play off of. But then sometimes I’ll go back after I finish writing a piece and cross out that “personality” lead because I’d just rather get straight to the point. Or put in what I think is a great quote as I did today. So it is definitely a balancing act.

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“I actively encourage writers to, not only write in their own voice, but write about the things they’re passionate about, as long as it’s in our wheelhouse and has potential,” said Andronico. “In fact, I kind of have a reputation if I overhear someone talking about, like something that happened with tech in their personal life, I’ll say, ‘Oh sounds like a story, you should write that up. Sounds like you just volunteered yourself.’ If you actively encourage your writers to write about their personal lives, write in their own style, their own voice…

“Our editor just did a great piece about getting the Apple Watch for the first time, his first few months with it, how it kind of changed his life, his fitness routine and all that. There are so many other great examples of that where we’re writing about the products and the topics that we normally cover but from a much more personal angle which I think people connect with.

I really like when we’re able to just write like everyday people,” Andronico continued. “As Sherri said, write things that your mom can relate to, your grandmother can relate to. So I always actively encourage that type of content. I actually make sure that we have a steady flow of it in fact because I think it’s one of those things that makes us stand out.”

LunchByte | Universal Design for Learning with Guest James Basham

by Uncategorized

This episode of LunchByte features host – Jill Abbott, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of ETIN as she speaks with James Basham.

Host

Jill Abbott is currently the Senior Vice President and Managing Director of ETIN. Her passion centers on education and helping people reach their maximum potential. With this inspiration and insights gained from a comprehensive background in education reform, personalized learning, assessment, curriculum design, and policy and program development. She is a seasoned executive in education holding local, regional, state, national, and international roles in improving education through transformative practices.

 

Special Guest

Dr. James D. Basham is the Senior Director of Learning & Innovation at CAST and founder of the Universal Design for Learning – Implementation and Research Network (UDL-IRN). He is also an Associate Professor at the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas. His overall work is focused on developing future-ready learning environments that are equitable, beneficial, and meaningful for all learners. Across his various funded projects, he is noted for his work in UDL school/systems implementation, STEM education, learner-centered design, online education, gaming, technology development, and personalized learning. Some of his most recent work has focused on the relationship between UDL and learning space design. Dr. Basham is an internationally recognized speaker and serves on various national and international boards for journals, companies, and education organizations.

 

The LunchByte is the podcast for the Education Division, ETIN, of SIIA This series provides you with access to leaders in the education industry and private enterprise.

Learn from leaders what:

·        The new topics in education are,

·        They are thinking about for the next wave of technology,

·        The greatest trends in sales and marketing involve, and Much more.