While they straddle opposite coasts of North America, DoLA and doNYC share a lot in their success this week - both metros are reaping the dividends of YoY growth from large email lists engaging with solid content. Details on what that looked like for each market:

• DoLA: If you're a market that averages 65K unique opens per week, nailing the content that users see when they open those emails means big results. DoLA did exactly that on Friday of last week when they featured the announce of The Hollywood Bowl's 2017 schedule. Their subject line starting with - "Hollywood Bowl Announces Summer Lineup With Phoenix, Spoon and More" teased the specific artists, a tactic that always works best with lineup announces. While we've noted time and again the importance of promptly featuring fest lineup announces in your email, it's important to remember that extends to large outdoor event series just as much (if not more). In DoLA's case, this enabled them to hit their highest single day of email traffic in 9 months, and was the main contributor to them notching another week of 2X YoY traffic growth.
   
• doNYC: Another market with 2X YoY traffic growth, New York saw email success thanks in part to them surfacing this secretive subway tour (which unfortunately was later cancelled). Staunchly in the "not-cancelled" events bucket was their 3rd most popular email content - a list of all Grammy-nominated artists' upcoming performances in the city. We're interested in testing more of these "in your town" lists beyond just the large festival variations that we regularly make, so if you've got ideas for others, send 'em our way!

Curious about what email content is performing the best across the network at any given time? We've got a doc for that. You'll find that and more on the Audience Hub.

Your weekly dose of stats awaits:

Happy Valentine's! Lots of stuff to love about last week, as total network site traffic was up 65% YoY. For comparison, average YoY site traffic was up 40% for the network over the past year, so things are headed in the right direction. A choice few of the juiciest wins from the network:

• Do250: Victoria continues to produce content with their fest partners and participating artists. Most recently this applied to Song & Surf fest, which already got the Play the Fest treatment, but was now bolstered by Do250's collaboration with a performing artist to produce the official guide (shared by several of the contributors on FB). It was 250's most popular page last week, and helped them hit 4X the traffic of last year.
   
• Do314: Sweet Saint Louee had their second highest week of traffic of all time thanks to their Mardi Gras list and associated ticket giveaways to various related parties, all of which were a hit for their email list. That alone deserves a set of beads.
   
• Do617: Good lawd is Boston on the upswing. Their YoY traffic so far this year is sitting at 127%, and last week was no exception with 260% YoY growth and their highest week of all time. Though the story isn't novel, the results are indisputable. Get big giveaway --> execute effectively in email --> users go on a sharing bonanza. Just wait until they launch their Lowell Folk Fest partnership (often referred to as the "Gaga of Massachusetts folk festivals").
   
• DoLA: A stellar week of email engagement for Los Angeles. Nearly 200K unique opens (20K more than any previous week) and 18K clicks (second most of all time).  In addition to the aforementioned popularity of Gaga, DoLA had 5 other pages w/ more than 1K sessions from their newsletter. Check out the direct links below and you'll notice some cool stuff, like the fact that their most popular content was just a show announce w/ no giveaway or otherwise exclusive access. Just DoLA doin' what they do best - passing along killer events to their audience. The top 5 (in order of engagement):

1. Daft Punk Pop Up Shop Announce
2. Grammy Awards Party Guide
3. Best Pizza in LA
4. Wu Tang Clan
5. ACLU Fundraising Concert

Thanks again to everyone who showed up to the audience growth brainstorm/chat today. We'll be passing around the highlights later this week, but as always, we're here to help in any way to make you guys even better at doing the great things you do.

Love and stats to get your night started right ;)

We've got new festivals, old soul stars, and the first rumblings of SXSW. Check out the many shades of winner below:

• Do512: Austin had their highest week of email traffic since switching to dailies, with a whopping 4X+ increase in YoY email traffic. The biggest chunk of that went to the early SX announcements (showcase announcements, new bands, etc.). Close behind were the ever-popular "dog-friendly list" (if you haven't built it for your market, you should), hiking spots, and new places to drink. Check out their most popular email from the week for inspiration.
   
• Do615: Nashville ain't no dummies. Festivals + email = sure thing. Do615 is shaking up their offerings by keeping a running list of festivals with winnable tickets (featured in the top block of their email) and doubling down on lineup announces for new regional fests. Both were runaway successes and propelled Do615 to 3X+ YoY site traffic.
   
• Do816: Here we are only a week after their launch, and KC was already able to notch 10K site sessions in a week. Was it a big giveaway? Festival lineup announce? Nope, instead it was this event. Don't believe me? Check out the post that started it all. After getting posted to an FB group that has 10K members that then shared the event 50+ times, more than 5K people visited that page. And while sadly, Keith Sweat and Doug E Fresh probably won't announce a show in your market every week, it does demonstrate the value of 1) finding and joining the large active FB groups that focus on things to do 2) identifying their most active members and 3) doing some outreach to those members so you can seed content to the group that aligns with its niche. 

Stay tuned for some more tools coming this week to help you discover other metros' audience wins. In the meantime, stats on stats -