I promise this is the last time that we use #12...er...#13DaysOfGiveaways as a weekly winner, but now that the stats are all in, it seemed appropriate to give the full rundown. So without further ado...

• The Network: You've top content block'd and social media'd the living bejeezus out of festival tickets, so what was the payoff? Across the network we saw:
  
  --321,840 site sessions to contest pages
  --201,512 total campaign entrants
  --34,333 entrants driven by 16 local partners
  --22,566 entrants driven by user referrals
  --25,889 new subscribers
  
  We'll be pulling together a recap deck + case study in the next couple of days to share with partners and use as proof of concept for campaigns in the future. We're excited to do even larger runs of this in the future, so thanks for making the first #12days such a huge success!
   
• DTB + doNYC: We've got a couple of growth tests with exciting results thanks to the testing exploits of two metros. We found that, when presenting multiple giveaways in a single content block, hyperlinking each giveaway within the body text led to a 10% increase in clicks compared to a bulleted list. We'll be sending a full breakdown of this test to your inboxes later today. Also, DTB has started experimenting with video content to highlight their top picks. This post achieved more than 10X FB organic reach when compared to every other time they posted about top picks this year (like this or this). Part of a larger trend of successful video content, especially if you factor in the power of the almighty Drankgon. 

Got questions about how your metro performed during #12days? Ideas about social video content? Email tests you want to run? We love chattin.

And of course, last week's stats - 

It's the most metal KPI update in DoStuff history! There are at least 6 good reasons to check out the wins below:

• The 6s: If your metro started with a six, you had a good week. Case in point...Do604 had the highest YoY traffic last week (up 461%!) thanks to the convergence of their #12days campaign promoted w/ local partners and the culmination of their Leafly Comedy Tour event (and the closing of the network campaign as a whole). Do615 managed to reap their own rewards to the tune of 260% YoY traffic due to #12days + Forecastle announce via their email. And finally, Clay has been upping his email-building game for Do617 with some help from Coach Zachman, and the results are undeniable. CTR has climbed to an average of 8.58% over the past three weeks vs. 6.52% in the three months prior since they switched to dailies. Hands down the biggest contributing factor to them doubling YoY traffic this week. Nice work!

• The Network: After last week's full 5 days of daily giveaways, how we lookin'? Through yesterday's ACL contest, we've notched over 140K entries AND our network-wide traffic is double what it was last year. Oh and last week had the highest open rate and CTR over the last 4 months across the network. And in the spirit of winners of the week, you can of course scope the updated list of ticket winners (and stalk their insta accounts) anytime you want here. 

Thanks to everyone's continued strong execution of #12days. We're excited for one more week of it to finish strong through the holidays (plus the special baker's dozen giveaway on Monday).

Questions? Growth ideas? Lonely? Just hit that reply button. Otherwise, dig in on some freshly baked stats:

It's a special week for The DoStuff Network, as we even more dominant in the Midwest AND we had one hell of a network-wide campaign go live. Some choice stats below:

• Do816: Kansas City had their first official week as a sho 'nuff live site last week. Not only that, but they became the first metro to launch on daily emails. No surprise that email accounted for a solid 48% of their total sessions, with subscribers gravitating to everything from beer fests, to Tove Lo's holiday party, to the one and only Ginuwine. We can't wait for even greater things to come, and shoot some Slack love over to the KC team for their launch if you haven't already. 

• The Network: Guys...it's working. With 3 full days of #12DaysOfGiveaways in the can, we've managed to drive over 73,000 entries! Even cooler? More than 15,000 those were from users referring their friends, and 82% of those referred entrants were new users. In total, this campaign has driven 37,000+ new users. Another sign that users are loving it - network-wide open rate is the highest it's been in 8 weeks and total unique opens are up 431% from last year. In fact, #12DaysOfGiveaways has been such a success, we've added two more massive days of fest giveaways to finish strong. As the first network-wide campaign to involve all 21 cities, it ain't too shabby of a precedent. 

One note before you go diving into your stats - it looks like most of our sites got hit with some bot traffic from November 30th - December 2nd. The good news is it stopped showing up after those 3 days, and we have filters in place to exclude that data from analytics if it happens again. We'll also work to retroactively remove that data. There's info on the source of the spam here.

Hit us with any questions you might have, and get excited for next week's update that'll feature an entire week of #12days numbers (and any other wins of course).

All the stats to scan, per usual:

Winners of the week travels south for a flurry of activity in Mexico City:

• For a while now, HazDF has been notching strong year-over-year returns thanks to organic search traffic from people searching for venues and events around town. However, last week was especially high traffic for them, as they hit site traffic more than 3X what they recorded last year. 

• Their most popular page for the week was their anniversary party, an event that drew 380 RSVPs for people to attend a special drunk Pictionary party. HazDF partnered with the locally popular Drink & Draw DF, which helped spread the love on Facebook and host the event to the tune of a few hundred attendees. HazDF promoted from their end and handled securing the prizing of vinyl, tickets, free dinners, etc.
   
• On top of all the anniversary hubbub, HazDF ran a social campaign earlier in the week for Dia #Hazgratis, in which they partnered with several venues to give tickets away hourly from 9am to 9pm. 

Nice work HazDF on an all-around great week! Also, for those of you that are wondering what to do during holiday slow weeks, a quick hit digest of what metros that had the highest YoY traffic (besides HazDF) capitalized on last week:

1. Do617 - 214% growth. Early announce on Kenny Chesney giveaway via social. Users that enter and then refer their friends account for the majority of site traffic for the week, as well as 85% of their new users from giveaways. Much the same as last week's success. 
2. DoLA - 208% growth. Email traffic was 4X what it was last year this time. Most popular content was their 30 days in LA prize pack giveaway including a custom bike.
3. Do615 - 112% growth. Nashville took advantage of some holiday giveaways with a Thanksgiving weekend giveaways round up, their most popular email content. Also they got a nice bump of organic search traffic to their restaurants open on thanksgiving page, which they built last year, but received 3X more traffic this year.  
4. Do214 - 109% growth. Continue doubling down on big show announces in their email, with this newsletter being their most successful for the week. Subject line of "Huge Announcements Willie Nelson, Bruno Mars, Sting, Juicy J, and More." Believe it or not, Bruno Mars was the most clicked content of the week.

After you're done scanning through the above to see what you can implement in your market, check out your stats from the week prior and hit us with any questions:

It wouldn't be a holiday week without a heaping portion of winners, and we've got two piping hot ones to share with ya:

• Do615: Nashville became the 13th metro to fully switch to daily emails last week (they had been sending 3X per week previously), and, much like Ciara, the bump was immediately apparent. Last week marked their highest week of traffic in 9 months, and their 2nd highest week of traffic of all time. All thanks to a cool 451% YoY increase in email traffic.
  
  Of course, it takes more than just increasing frequency to hit numbers that high. In this case, Do615 timed it perfectly with the unveiling of their Golden Ticket campaign, which drove nearly half of all email traffic last week. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it involved promoting a chance to win tickets to every show at a given venue for the remainder of 2016. Pretty slick way to offer an engaging and novel giveaway during the slower time of the year. 

• Do617: Not to be outdone, Boston had their all-time highest week of traffic last week thanks to some giveaway virality. Specifically a giveaway for the aptly named "Total Package Tour" of NKOTB/Paula Abdul/Boyz II Men, an event that accounted for more than half of their total traffic for the week. 
  
  And while Do617 started the traffic avalanche by being the first to announce the show on social (check the 242 shares), you might be surprised that neither that post nor their newsletter that day were the largest traffic drivers to that event. Instead, a whopping 3.8K sessions were driven by individual users sharing the giveaway with their friends via our referral platform. And even better, those sessions converted into 1,575 new users! Kudos to Boston for showing the power of the giveaway referral platform.

We're here to answer questions on the best way to harness the power of giveaways, be they golden ticket, stadium show, or network-wide festival campaign. In the meantime, check your stats from last week below, and have a great time tryp(tophan)ing balls this week,

We've got a couple of wins worth highlighting as we head into the holiday season, from shows that just got announced, to shows happening right this very second. All the info:

• Do512: Over the last 3 months, Do512 has had 6 posts that have reached over 100K people organically. Two of them were content produced by media outlets other than Do512 (like this). The other 4? All of them were live streams of events they produced. In order of organic reach they were:

1. Sound and Cinema - 452K reach
2. Do512 Lounge - Taking Back Sunday - 203K reach
3. Do512 10 Year Anniversary - Post 1 - 140K reach
4. Do512 10 Year Anniversary - Post 2 - 104K reach
   
   Do512 has teamed up with a local streaming company to produce all of their live coverage of events, with their success continuing through last week's 10th anniversary party. We've mentioned this recently before, but lots of engagement to be had on FB for those that can successfully live stream shows or produce video content. Want to get this started in your metro? Hit us up and we'd be happy to advise. 

• Do416: Toronto had their highest week of traffic in 3 months thanks to also notching their highest clicks and opens in over 3 months. The difference maker?  The "Just Announced Shows" section of this email. A whopping 73% of the email's clicks came from that section, with Amy Schumer, Stars, and Run the Jewels leading the way.
  
  Interestingly, the CTA button only accounted for 7% of the emails total clicks, further proving that users especially prefer specificity when looking for Just Announced/Big On Sales. We're running several tests on how to best present lists of multiple shows in your daily emails, but we can always run more! Reach out if you'd like to test in your market, and we'll be communicating the results of the winning tests with you as they happen. 

We've got lots of big things planned on the audience front for the remainder of the year, but in the meantime, dig into your stats from last week:

Welcome back from summit! It was great seeing the whole posse in town, but now time to return to our various corners of North America on our quest of DoDomination.

And if you took one thing away from the audience panels in summit this year, hopefully it was the importance of nailing your daily emails, as it's the largest piece of the growth pie yet in 2016. We'll be doubling down on testing efforts to continue surfacing best practices, but in the meantime, check out some metros that are already doing great things:

• DTB: More and more we're seeing that not only including the right content matters, but choosing the correct format is just as important for driving sustained engagement. Case in point - this Lauryn Hill giveaway anchored a content block that collectively received 803 total clicks on October 28th. The content block accounted for more than a third of that email's clicks, in an email that was their highest click rate of the past two weeks. So good content in an overall good email. However, that doesn't mean that DoTheBay was done with Ms. Lauryn Hill.
  
  A mere 5 days later, DTB ran a "Last Chance" giveaway content block calling out the last day to win tickets to the same show, and wuddyaknow - another 979 total clicks. That's right, more clicks than the previous week's content block that included it with several other giveaways. That combined with an Anderson.Paak giveaway and Weeknd show announce to propel them to a solid 2X traffic of last year on 360% YoY email traffic growth last week.
  
  Lessons? 1) Use lists of giveaways to see which ones users are interacting with the most, then run the most popular ones again as "last chance giveaways" and 2) Users love specificity; and you can often get more engagement from a clear content block with one CTA rather than a jumble of things.
   
• Do214/DoLA: A quick hit on another two metros seeing 125 to 200% YoY traffic growth on the strength of email. Dallas had their single highest day of email traffic dating all the way back to June 30th thanks to the launch of their "Beer Sleepover" giveaway in partnership with Untapped Fest. DoLA kept things topical with the impending vote on marijuana legalization by pushing out their 10 best dispensaries list. It received 25% of their email traffic for the entire week and was the main reason they had triple the email traffic of last year. 

Lots more email learnings and trends that we'll be pulling out through the rest of the year, so get ready! Have something you want to test on your email...or any kind of growth test idea at all kicking around your head after summit? Send 'em to us!

And as always, weekly stats await:

With just one week (?!) before summit, we'll dive in for a couple of winners before we see all of you in Austin for a veritable share-a-palooza of audience wins + best practices.

In the meantime, this week's standout metros...

• doNYC: Yesterday marked the 100th daily email doNYC has sent out since making the switch. Last week also saw them send out a campaign in the top 10 of CTR and with the 9th most clicked link of any daily email they've sent so far. That particular email was this one, and the link was of course this last chance to win Amy Schumer tickets. What were the other 8 content pieces that received more clicks? In order (with links to each email):

1. Gov Ball Giveaway - 4,760 clicks
2. Panorama VIP Giveaway - 4,473 clicks
3. Panorama GA Giveaway - 4,132 clicks
4. Lolla Flyaway - 4,087 clicks
5. JD General Store RSVP - 3,795 clicks
6. Coffee Fest Giveaway - 3,561 clicks
7. Roots Picnic Giveaway - 3,539 clicks
8. Roots Picnic Lineup Announce - 3,212 clicks
9. Amy Schumer Giveaway - 3,108 clicks
   
   A few things that stand out immediately - 6 of the top 8 are festival giveaways, with an RSVP and fest announce as the other two (sound familiar?). Amy Schumer takes the top spot as highest non-fest giveaway. But really, all of this points to the importance of keeping tabs on what content is driving engagement.
   
   Easiest way to do that? 1) Take <5 minutes every morning to look at the link click report of the daily email you sent 2 days prior 2) Check in periodically with the various tabs of the Email Content Leaderboard to see what content is performing best across the network and 3) reach out to us! Do604 sends over their daily emails for review often times a day in advance for feedback, and we're happy to give it. These are that important. Do it right and you'll unlock the 87% YoY growth that doNYC saw last week.

• Do503: Continuing with today's theme of the importance of knowing which content performs on which channel - Do503 had their highest week of traffic of all time last week thanks to their chronicling of the Portland dating scene pinballing around Facebook. This led to 14K sessions over the course of 3 days, 81% of which came through Facebook. If you're wondering, you can post the same content in your newsletter and get only ~200 sessions, or 1% of that total traffic, beaten out by the 300 sessions that came from Reddit. Once again, it's all about knowing which content is suited best for which channel. 

We've got lots of time slated for email strategy + successful content examples for the summit, so we'll leave it there for now.

Want to submit any ideas for product features or tests you think could drive audience? Drop it in the project and I'll give you a special shout out at Summit. And as always, freshly updated stats await:

We're back! Thanks to everyone's patience for the past few weeks sans KPI updates, but the last 3 weeks of data are all updated, and you can look forward to the usual Winner of the Week programming delivered to your inbox from here on out.

Which leads us to the highlights for this week's winner...

• Despite a weekend of nasty festival weather, DoTheBay was still able to reap the benefits of their partnership with Treasure Island for their highest week of traffic in over 2 months and 153% YoY traffic growth. As is the case with the upper echelon of festival partnerships, DTB benefited primarily from referral traffic from the Treasure Island official site pointing to their Night Shows page. In the week leading up to the fest, TIMF sent over 10K sessions (more than a third of DTB's total weekly traffic), compared to sending only 4K last year.
   
• However, at the risk of burying the lede, what made this year's partnership with TIMF extra impressive was that DTB was able to integrate them into the app, allowing the festival to promote the DoStuff app as the official festival app. The result? Over 2.5K new downloads in the week prior to the fest! 9K people clicked on the dedicated link to download the app, with a little over 400 of those coming from this email DTB sent out. The vast majority though came from the direct link on Treasure Island's homepage. And those stats don't even count the huge uptick of people going to the app store and searching for the DoStuff app during TIMF. 

Major kudos to DTB for landing the largest fest in the app partner to date, building upon similar previous successes of festivals in the app.

Got more ideas for product features that would help grow our audience? We've got a place for that. In the meantime, check out your last several weeks of updated stats to see how you fared:

One of the most effective ways that we've found to convert existing users over to app users is by running app-only giveaways. For example, DoLA's Beach Goth giveaway earned their team 841 new installs in just its first week live.

To set up an app-only giveaway:

• Begin setting up the giveaway in Radmin as normal
• Within the 'Offer', you'll want to indicate that users need to download the app to enter the giveaway. 
• e.g. - "Enter to win on the DoXYZ App!" 
• Check the 'App Only' box.
• Save your giveaway to make it live.

• On the event page, you'll notice that a 'Win In App' button will automatically populate in place of the normal 'Win' button.

To pick winners for your app-only giveaway, follow the same process as on-site giveaway and use Radmin's Pick Winners tool to email and confirm with the winner(s) over email.

Message Non-Winners: A New Giveaway Feature (Coming Soon)

One of the biggest pieces of feedback we've heard from users is that we don't do an effective enough job closing the loop on giveaways. So, we're building a new feature to:

• Better close the loop on giveaways
• Educate users on other upcoming giveaways
• Drive traffic to our sites
• Give metros another valuable feature to sell into advertising packages

Last week the network as a whole had 77% more site traffic than the previous year. That's a larger YoY increase than any other week in the past year. What's driving the uptick? Lots of things, but primarily growth on Social and Email channels. Let's break it down!

Some social highlights:

• Do250: Always the largest contributors to spikes in audience, festivals have long been the most engaging type of social content for Do250 (see: this live video that received 129K organic reach). Victoria harnessed this trend by leaning on some local tastemakers to contribute to their festival guide. Of course, the success was dependent on the shares from those contributors (here, here, and here). After all was said and one, it was the main contributor to their highest week of traffic in 4 months.
   
• Do206: Seattle continued their success in posting sports-themed content on Facebook, as now their two most highly engaged with posts of the last 60 days were about Kevin Griffey Jr. and Marshawn Lynch respectively. The latter was shared 50 times and helped them hit their highest week of traffic in 23 weeks.  
   
• Do512: After switching to dailies, Do512 hit a new high point in YoY gains by augmenting with some social success. In this case, their WoW FB traffic was up 55% thanks to this post about ACL's plan to improve the festival, which was shared by ACL itself, garnering a ton of engagement and over 5K sessions to Do512. 

While Facebook used to be the domain of increasing dwindling results, recent months seem to see a general reversing of that trend across metros. If you check out the data in this Rasta-themed table showing weekly organic FB reach by market, you'll see that over the past 6 months, 14 of 20 metros saw marked increase in organic reach. For comparison, only 4 metros saw a seasonal increase last year. Hope springs eternal, and shout out to Do502's Amelia for bringing her market's increased reach to my attention.

On to email! Last week had the usual suspects hitting high YoY email traffic (like Do214), but what worked especially well last week?

• Do210: San Antonio really hit their stride in their second full week of sending dailies, with Sound on Sound fest VIP giveaway leading them to nearly 150% more unique clicks than their best ever weekly email and their highest traffic in 5 months.
   
• Do312: Got a great timely giveaway? Do as Chicago did with this super simple content block for Hannibal Burress. By far their highest performing content for the week, and helped them hit their best CTR since Lolla ended.
   
• Do314: St. Louis had their highest traffic of the year thanks to Patios List, LouFest, andOktoberfest list, in that order. Combined, Do314 hit their highest CTR in over 2 years.
   
• Do615: A well timed big show announce content block drove Nashville to 131% YoY traffic growth. We've increasingly seen that these bulleted lists perform best for show announces and top picks, since in this case, it was Kings of Leon that received the vast majority of the clicks, even though they weren't the photo featured in the content block. More data on recommended formats for specific types of content blocks soon.
   
• DoLA: If you've got Kanye tickets, you lead your email with Kanye tickets. DoLA did exactly that, and it was the largest contributor to their whopping 226% YoY growth. Important note: They used subject line of "Win Tickets to Kanye..." rather than just name of the fest he was performing at. Always use specific headliner names in your subject lines when applicable. 
   
• DoTheBay: Right up there with Kanye in the realm of "Email content that's a guaranteed hit," DTB announced the lineup of Treasure Island night shows, helping them notch yet another week of 2X YoY traffic.   

Hopefully you're noticing some patterns about what you should be including in your emails: Festival lineup announcements, big ticket giveaways (Fests/Hannibal/Kanye), big show announcements, relevant seasonal lists, etc. Still have questions about what to include in your daily emails? We've got the subject line hierarchy, a constantly updating list of all the best performing email content in the network, and our undying pledge to dig in with you to help refine your email content selection to a well-oiled, audience-driving machine.

Long update today! But hopefully helpful. A note that we're aware of the recent dip in app sessions with our most recent build release, and we're digging in our end.

Toss in growth ideas if you got 'em, and check out the rest of your stats below:

It was Christmas time all over the network this week, as Do617 celebrated another year of Allston Christmas, and Do512 + DoSD received the audience gifts of Festival Fest. All the details below:

• Do617: Boston built on last year's popular Allston Christmas Block Party with their 2nd annual Allston Christmas event. This year featured the reunion of Boston college radio favorites the Blake Babies. Do617 milked nostalgia for the band with some engaging throwback social promotion, a post that garnered 500+ engagements and 2K+ post clicks, making it their most engaged with post over the past 3 months. The second most was also for the announce of Allston Awesome Christmas fest. When the above combined with the announce of their upcoming Leafly comedy tour show (and some nice referral traffic from the venue), Do617 had their highest week of traffic in all of 2016.
   
• Do512: Austin's average weekly YoY site traffic growth for the first 35 weeks of 2016 was 1%. Last week? It topped 20%. It's no surprise then that last week marked the inaugural week of daily emails for Do512 and simultaneously, Festival Fest. Last week alone, their email traffic jumped 135% from the week prior, with more than half of those clicks headed towards Festival Fest content. Do512 now joins the other major markets (LA/NYC/Chicago) in the group of metros successfully sending daily emails, and we're excited to see the momentum continue as they hone their email strategy over time. 
   
• DoSD: Oh hey another surprise. DoSD kicked off Festival Fest. They received 235% more email traffic than the week previous (on a whopping 30% CTR of those that opened their newsletter), and had their 2nd most giveaway entrants and 5th highest week of traffic of all time.

The clock is ticking on making sure you see the dividends of a Festival Fest or other daily giveaway campaign in your market. We're here to make sure it happens, so reach out with any questions.

Everyone's updated stats await below, and don’t forget to toss some growth ideas our way if you got ‘em:

• Do250: If you look at Victoria’s FB post data over the past month, it doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate a trend. Four of the top five posts in terms of organic reach are plugging various stages of voting contests to play a festival. Do250 already hit pay dirt when promoting the chance to play Legends Valley fest in early August, and the magic continued with their announce of the top 10 nominees for Rifflandia. Once again, reach/engagement was helped along by the various bands sharing the post in the hopes of corralling more votes. All told, Do250 had 135% more social traffic than the week prior, helping to propel them to their third highest traffic week of all time. Oh and the voting page looks pretty too.
• Do314: Not to be outdone, St. Louis had their 2nd highest week of traffic for the year thanks to some email dominance. On Friday, Do314 sent out this email - which link would you bet got the most clicks? Dog bars? Kurt Vile’s goofy mug? Nope and nope. The announce of Grove Fest lineup received the vast majority of clicks, helping that newsletter hit their 4th highest CTR of all time. For the entire week, Do314 received double the email traffic of the week prior, thanks to a weekly combined CTR that was the highest in 2 years.
  
  We’ve recently spent some time doing a deep dive into the types of daily email content that are driving engagement (more to come soon…), but one of the things that stood out was that 60% of the top 15 non-giveaway events were festival lineup announcements. Need more evidence? A whopping 100% of the top 5 highest clicked non-giveaway links were festival lineup announcements (stuff like The Meadows and West Fest). Moral of the story - if you have a festival lineup announce, put it in your email. Giveaway or no giveaway (though giveaways always help).

Check out how your metro stacks up, and don’t forget to toss some growth ideas our way if you got ‘em: