E-COMMUNICATIONS

It's been a busy month for E-Communications. In addition to our usual activities, we sent out several emails in support of the Uke New Jersey! festival. This included two emails specifically for the festival, a Minstrel-Gram showcasing it, and several e-mails to the Minstrel volunteer list asking for help with staffing.

In one of the Uke Fest emails and in the Minstrel-Gram I tried something new -- links to videos on YouTube. I had never used these in emails before and to my knowledge, no one else in our group has used them yet, either. In the Uke Fest email I included four links -- to the Mighty Uke trailer, and performances of Victoria Vox, James Hill and Celtic Spirit. In the Minstrel-Gram, I included the Mighty Uke trailer and a performance by James Hill.

This proved wildly successful. For the Uke Fest video, the click rate was 12.9%, compared to our 9.9% click rate for the past three months. For the Minstrel-Gram, we had a click rate of 14.4%. And there's no doubt that about what people were clicking on:

Uke Fest email:

2011 sent

101 total clicks

88 total video clicks (87%) !!!

40 clicks on Mighty Uke trailer

17 James Hill video

18 Celtic Spirit

13 Victoria Vox

Minstrel-Gram email:

1494 sent

86 total clicks

45 total video clicks (52%)

24 Mighty Uke trailer

21 James Hill

Given those numbers, I am planning to make greater use of video links going forward. I encourage other folks who are sending email blasts to also start making use of them. If you send out email blasts and have any questions about how to add video links, please let me know.

Yours in folk,

Lori