Tuesday, June 27, 2017

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 6/20/2017

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Winner of the WeekDo617


Last week, our Boston constituents saw a 243% increase in site traffic vs. the same week last year, as well as 1,213 new email subscribers and a flurry of Facebook engagement.

First, Do617 squeezed tons of cultural nectar out of last weekend's Dead & Company shows throughout the spring by giving away: ... to account for 3,641 total entries and 1,025 new users from these contests (breakdown here).

But Do617's highest-impact initiative for the week was their annual Do617 day promotion, for which their team stayed up for 24 hours straight on June 17th to give away a pair of tickets to a different show every hour for each hour of the day. The Do617 day page saw 5,457 pageviews over the weekend, which, for context, is more traffic than their entire site received two weekends prior.

These two promotions speak to the importance of being creative with giveaways and hustling to create new opportunities whenever you have extra tickets available.

And Do617 wasn't the only metro with a stellar last week; check out the updated KPI report to view your city's latest stats and achievements - and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Also - we're excited to announce that we're starting the first of what should be many "weekend getaways" with small groups of folks across the network. The goal is pretty simple. We want to learn from all of you (and you learn from each other), drink a lot with you, get to know you better, figure out how we all can be the strongest team possible, and thus make all of your markets and DoStuff as great as we possibly can be. If you aren't a part of this first one, please stay tuned, as we're planning to do many more.
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Wednesday, June 14, 2017

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 6/14/17

No comments:

Winner of the Week: Me!

Dearest network - it's been nearly 3 years since the very first KPI update went out. We've had 120+ KPI updates since then, full of hundreds of badass things metros have done. In just a few weeks, the network will cross 1M social followers; for comparison, we were well below 300K followers in our first weeks of reporting. Our weekly traffic is roughly 4X what it was in that first week, 1.3M more people get our emails, and the number of times our emails are opened each week is 12X what it was at the start of weekly reporting.

And as is the routine with these updates, all of these numbers point to a theme - that all of you have built something damn impressive, where literally millions of people have found some cool shit to do in the past several years. And because of that, I'm completely confident Do will continue to grow and flourish when I move on from DoStuff this Friday. As much as I'd like to give myself Winner of the Week awards for weeks and months to come, I'll be leaving to pursue new opportunities up in Spokane, Washington next week.

It's been a hell of a ride the past 3+ years working with all of you, which is why I can proudly say all of you have made me feel like a Winner of the Week every time you did something fantastic in your metro. So with that, enough shmaltzy crap, and let's get to the reason you i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶c̶h̶i̶v̶e̶ attentively read these emails...some SPICY metro wins:
  • Do206: Seattle had by far their best week of traffic of all time, mostly due to sending their 3rd and 4th most clicked emails of the year in the same week. Both were Capitol Hill Block party themed, with the lineup dropping on June 6th and a VIP giveaway pushed on the following day. For those tempted to roll up both lineup and VIP giveaway into a single email, Seattle proves it's worth spreading out into two sends given that you can dedicate the start of the subject line to the lineup and giveaway respectively, thus getting two days of incredibly solid email engagement. Combined with the social traffic to their Goose Island secret show, Do206 had more than 4X the traffic they had during the same week last year.
     
  • Do312: Yes, Chicago is in the height of Lolla announce, but another fest flying under the radar actually got more traffic than their Lolla aftershows page last week - the Chicago Vegan Food and Drink Fest. Nearly 6K people came to that page last week after searching things like "vegan festival chicago" and "chicago vegan fest" and finding Do312 in the top couple of spots. That helped bolster them to 150% increase in YoY organic traffic, and an overall YoY traffic that's solidly back in the green.
     
  • Do314: Coming hot on the heels of Do312's title as Midwest Organic Traffic King (a title that's admittedly not that contested), over the last month Do314 had 5X the organic traffic of the year prior. See if you can spot the pattern in the pages that are driving the increase - wine festsSchwagfestAfrican Arts FestFestival of MilesCraft Beer FestRib Fest, and - I kid you not - Horseradish Fest. We've gone over this in a few of the more recent KPI updates, but there is real value in building out all of your mid- to small-tier festival event content, since the search competition and relative volume of people Googling things like "horseradish festival 2017" ain't nothing to sneeze at. Even if you are allergic to spicy roots.
     
  • Do317: Two weeks ago, Indy broke 30K sessions in a week for only the second time since weekly reporting began. Then last week, they broke 40K weekly sessions like it ain't no thing. A similar main culprit as the rest of the Midwest success, Do317 saw their organic search trafic climb more than 5X compared to the two weeks prior. Primary drivers were Pride Fest (7K+ sessions alone), Food and Wine Fest, and Italian Street Fest. Add to that their particularly popular email content of all the growler specials in Indy, and you've got the makings of 3X YoY traffic.
     
  • Do416: Over the past couple of weeks, tons of people have been visiting this pretty slick Wayhome VIP Experience giveaway that was sold as part of an overall promo package for the fest. It's been a hit in email and is a nice testament to the design capabilities of our splash pages (and the fine people at DoStuff who build them).
     
  • D512: Austin has seen their YoY growth steadily tick up to as high as 43% this previous week, due mostly to the fact that they're still getting close to double the email traffic that they were last year at this time. Winners span the ever popular buzzy food editorial (best new restaurants in Austin), summer-themed content (swimming holes), and the surefire hit of a festival giveaway...with another snazzy looking splash page.
     
  • DTB: The Bay The Bay The Bay is on fire, thanks to another week of record-breaking traffic. OSL single day lineup dropped and their feature roundup of popular free events (including free sammies) helped their email traffic jump 43% from the week prior. And that's before you toss in the 4X+ YoY organic traffic anchored by things like their list of NBA finals watch parties and the Haight Ashbury Street Fair. Another month on the board where DTB doubled their traffic from last year. 
Of course, just because we didn't dive in deep on your metro doesn't mean you didn't have a great week. Organic and email success continue to drive Do615 and Do617 to 150%+ YoY growth, Do816 had a fantastic run of email traffic thanks to U2 and Bob Seger, DoLA continued to rake in Twilight Concert Series traffic (50K people visited this event page alone), and DoSD has 12X the organic traffic they had last year.

So with that, the stats will march on, the metros will continue to do killer things, and I bid you adieu with one more week of updated stats: 
Read More

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 6/20/2017

Winner of the WeekDo617


Last week, our Boston constituents saw a 243% increase in site traffic vs. the same week last year, as well as 1,213 new email subscribers and a flurry of Facebook engagement.

First, Do617 squeezed tons of cultural nectar out of last weekend's Dead & Company shows throughout the spring by giving away: ... to account for 3,641 total entries and 1,025 new users from these contests (breakdown here).

But Do617's highest-impact initiative for the week was their annual Do617 day promotion, for which their team stayed up for 24 hours straight on June 17th to give away a pair of tickets to a different show every hour for each hour of the day. The Do617 day page saw 5,457 pageviews over the weekend, which, for context, is more traffic than their entire site received two weekends prior.

These two promotions speak to the importance of being creative with giveaways and hustling to create new opportunities whenever you have extra tickets available.

And Do617 wasn't the only metro with a stellar last week; check out the updated KPI report to view your city's latest stats and achievements - and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Also - we're excited to announce that we're starting the first of what should be many "weekend getaways" with small groups of folks across the network. The goal is pretty simple. We want to learn from all of you (and you learn from each other), drink a lot with you, get to know you better, figure out how we all can be the strongest team possible, and thus make all of your markets and DoStuff as great as we possibly can be. If you aren't a part of this first one, please stay tuned, as we're planning to do many more.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 6/14/17

Winner of the Week: Me!

Dearest network - it's been nearly 3 years since the very first KPI update went out. We've had 120+ KPI updates since then, full of hundreds of badass things metros have done. In just a few weeks, the network will cross 1M social followers; for comparison, we were well below 300K followers in our first weeks of reporting. Our weekly traffic is roughly 4X what it was in that first week, 1.3M more people get our emails, and the number of times our emails are opened each week is 12X what it was at the start of weekly reporting.

And as is the routine with these updates, all of these numbers point to a theme - that all of you have built something damn impressive, where literally millions of people have found some cool shit to do in the past several years. And because of that, I'm completely confident Do will continue to grow and flourish when I move on from DoStuff this Friday. As much as I'd like to give myself Winner of the Week awards for weeks and months to come, I'll be leaving to pursue new opportunities up in Spokane, Washington next week.

It's been a hell of a ride the past 3+ years working with all of you, which is why I can proudly say all of you have made me feel like a Winner of the Week every time you did something fantastic in your metro. So with that, enough shmaltzy crap, and let's get to the reason you i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶c̶h̶i̶v̶e̶ attentively read these emails...some SPICY metro wins:
  • Do206: Seattle had by far their best week of traffic of all time, mostly due to sending their 3rd and 4th most clicked emails of the year in the same week. Both were Capitol Hill Block party themed, with the lineup dropping on June 6th and a VIP giveaway pushed on the following day. For those tempted to roll up both lineup and VIP giveaway into a single email, Seattle proves it's worth spreading out into two sends given that you can dedicate the start of the subject line to the lineup and giveaway respectively, thus getting two days of incredibly solid email engagement. Combined with the social traffic to their Goose Island secret show, Do206 had more than 4X the traffic they had during the same week last year.
     
  • Do312: Yes, Chicago is in the height of Lolla announce, but another fest flying under the radar actually got more traffic than their Lolla aftershows page last week - the Chicago Vegan Food and Drink Fest. Nearly 6K people came to that page last week after searching things like "vegan festival chicago" and "chicago vegan fest" and finding Do312 in the top couple of spots. That helped bolster them to 150% increase in YoY organic traffic, and an overall YoY traffic that's solidly back in the green.
     
  • Do314: Coming hot on the heels of Do312's title as Midwest Organic Traffic King (a title that's admittedly not that contested), over the last month Do314 had 5X the organic traffic of the year prior. See if you can spot the pattern in the pages that are driving the increase - wine festsSchwagfestAfrican Arts FestFestival of MilesCraft Beer FestRib Fest, and - I kid you not - Horseradish Fest. We've gone over this in a few of the more recent KPI updates, but there is real value in building out all of your mid- to small-tier festival event content, since the search competition and relative volume of people Googling things like "horseradish festival 2017" ain't nothing to sneeze at. Even if you are allergic to spicy roots.
     
  • Do317: Two weeks ago, Indy broke 30K sessions in a week for only the second time since weekly reporting began. Then last week, they broke 40K weekly sessions like it ain't no thing. A similar main culprit as the rest of the Midwest success, Do317 saw their organic search trafic climb more than 5X compared to the two weeks prior. Primary drivers were Pride Fest (7K+ sessions alone), Food and Wine Fest, and Italian Street Fest. Add to that their particularly popular email content of all the growler specials in Indy, and you've got the makings of 3X YoY traffic.
     
  • Do416: Over the past couple of weeks, tons of people have been visiting this pretty slick Wayhome VIP Experience giveaway that was sold as part of an overall promo package for the fest. It's been a hit in email and is a nice testament to the design capabilities of our splash pages (and the fine people at DoStuff who build them).
     
  • D512: Austin has seen their YoY growth steadily tick up to as high as 43% this previous week, due mostly to the fact that they're still getting close to double the email traffic that they were last year at this time. Winners span the ever popular buzzy food editorial (best new restaurants in Austin), summer-themed content (swimming holes), and the surefire hit of a festival giveaway...with another snazzy looking splash page.
     
  • DTB: The Bay The Bay The Bay is on fire, thanks to another week of record-breaking traffic. OSL single day lineup dropped and their feature roundup of popular free events (including free sammies) helped their email traffic jump 43% from the week prior. And that's before you toss in the 4X+ YoY organic traffic anchored by things like their list of NBA finals watch parties and the Haight Ashbury Street Fair. Another month on the board where DTB doubled their traffic from last year. 
Of course, just because we didn't dive in deep on your metro doesn't mean you didn't have a great week. Organic and email success continue to drive Do615 and Do617 to 150%+ YoY growth, Do816 had a fantastic run of email traffic thanks to U2 and Bob Seger, DoLA continued to rake in Twilight Concert Series traffic (50K people visited this event page alone), and DoSD has 12X the organic traffic they had last year.

So with that, the stats will march on, the metros will continue to do killer things, and I bid you adieu with one more week of updated stats: