How they did it: Building the Best of the Best of Contests at Omaha Magazine
At Omaha Magazine, the number one driver of email subscribers – currently 200,000 in a DMA of just over a million – is the Best of Contest, which gets 60,000 to 70,000 votes a year.
Todd Lemke, founder and publisher, shared his best practices developed over 42 years of running the contest. During that time, the magazine evolved from paper ballots to using the Best of to curate audience data – and dominated the franchise despite numerous competitors, including the daily newspaper.
The key differentiator is trust
The critical factor in a small market with multiple Best of Contests, Lemke said, is to build legitimacy – trust that the contest is fair and not rigged by false votes. That was the first “pivot” for the Best Of contest when the daily came out with its own version.
Before voting, readers read a summary of the policies that create legitimacy: One-vote-per-person established by email verification; voting in five categories which bring the overall count large enough that the biggest business doesn’t always win; no ads on the ballot; and no pull-down menus, which tend to steer the vote.
“Write in” digital ballots are harder to count due to spelling errors, but the result is worth it, Lemke said.
The Secret Sauce is Helping Business Campaign Managers
The secret sauce to a successful contest – and the massive email list that results – is helping businesses to get out the vote. Most people don’t vote because they like the magazine, but rather, to support specific businesses that have asked them to.
Omaha Magazine considers businesses as campaign managers. So supply businesses with campaign emails to use, Lemke said, such as QR codes and links to the online ballot, along with free promotional materials such as banners and decals to the winners. There are also three winners per category, rather then first, second and third, so with 320 categories there are 960 winners.
Revenues, too
In addition to building a sensational email list, the Best Of franchise pulls in about $1.2 million per year, a large chunk of its $6.5 million revenue base. About half of Best of advertising is sold into the issue itself, while the rest is from paid campaigns to “get out the vote” and campaigns by the winners to promote their status all year.
The 960 businesses create a huge selling opportunity.
“Don’t be afraid to have too many categories, ” Lenke says.
To avoid overwhelming voters – most of whom vote on their phones – merchants use the qr code and quick link that pulls up their business first. Voters still need to select five more businesses, but can easily find the category of the business that sent them the request.
Using Best of Contests to Curate the Audience
A recent innovation is using the contest to help curate the audience.
MediaOS built the Best of Contest software into its CMS software, which, Lemke says, is a game changer.
Data from the contests – such as an interest in restaurants – can be married with other audience data to define, for example, which newsletters to send to which segments, an increasingly important best practice for niche media.
St Louis Magazine, for example, as more than a dozen types of newsletter readers can opt-in for, which provide targeted ad inventory without burning out the list with too many ads on any one email, or too much send frequency.
Using the Best of Contest to drive paid subscriptions
People who took the time to vote want to see the results issue. So Omaha Magazine offers them a free six month subscription. During that period, the magazine sends the Best of issue, and afterwards, the reader receives a prompt to buy a subscription. All those sign-ups also count for second class postage.
The B2B contest
Omaha also now runs a business magazine with its own contest.
A neat hack for building a B2B list for its business magazine, was to obtain business owner name, address and email from the Secretary of State, using a FOIA request from the editor. All that information public, so the FOIA request just “smooths the process.” The B2B contest is smaller, since businesses are using hand-written ballots inside the magazine to control who is voting and avoid overlap with the larger contest. Advertising revenues are about $70,000 Lemke said.
Get this one thing right
At the end of the day, Best of Contests succeeds because readers feel they can use the issue as a credible, local buyers guide. For newcomers – about 20 to 30% of the city on any given year – it is a life saver for helping them to plug into a new community. Residents may argue with choices, but also try new places to see “whose right.”
“Make it so they want to use it,” Lemke advises.
Many thanks to Todd Lemke for sharing these best practices with us. Publishers interested in additional consultation can reach him at Todd@Omahapublications.com.
