Tag: email marketing

Email Marketing with The Post and Courier

Posted on | by Thom Leaman | Leave a Comment on Email Marketing with The Post and Courier
The Big Idea

Land in 145,000 Local Inboxes That Already Said “Yes”
How The Post and Courier’s email marketing reaches opted-in Charleston and South Carolina audiences

Reaching local customers keeps getting harder and more expensive. Social feeds are crowded and pay-to-play, third-party cookies are disappearing, and programmatic display often spends your budget on out-of-market impressions instead of real neighbors. Email bucks the trend — it’s a direct line to a person who chose to hear from a brand they trust.

145,012
Deduplicated opt-in subscribers across the SC footprint

79,865
Opt-ins on the flagship Charleston O&O Sales list

22.28%
Average open rate across all lists in April

8
Charleston-metro interest segments to target

That’s the advantage of an owned-and-operated email audience. The Post and Courier has built its database from real residents who opted in — so when your email goes out through P&C, it arrives with the credibility of a local news brand readers already invited into their inbox. Here’s how to put it to work.

✉ How Post and Courier Email Marketing Works

🎯Play 1: Choose your reach — database, segment, or market

▾
P&C email marketing flexes to the size of your goal. Full Database Email Marketing sends your message to the entire O&O Sales list — 79,865 Charleston-area inboxes — best for broad awareness, grand openings, and wide-appeal offers. Segmented Emails narrow the send to a defined interest audience so your spend goes only to the people most likely to act. And because P&C operates across the state, you can also target a specific market: Columbia, Myrtle Beach/Georgetown, Aiken, Greenville, Summerville, Berkeley, Beaufort, the Pee Dee and more. Match the format to the offer, not the other way around.

🎬Play 2: Target the segment that actually buys

▾
Segmented sends reach a defined Charleston-metro interest audience instead of paying to reach everyone. A landscaping company reaches Home & Garden; a boutique reaches Shopping; a CPA firm reaches Business.

Segment Subscribers
Food 6,008
Family 3,873
Events & Entertainment 3,048
Sports 1,881
Shopping 1,523
Home & Garden 1,065
Beauty & Health 741
Business 720

Seasonal options like Events and Holiday Events are also available for time-sensitive promotions.


✏Play 3: Send custom-designed creative worth opening

▾
Every P&C email is a custom-coded, professionally designed send — not a drag-and-drop template (see an example here). The email is sent from The Post and Courier, with your branding and messaging featured within the body — so it carries P&C’s deliverability and trust while still being unmistakably yours. The emails readers actually engage with share a pattern: a clear update, a real offer, and a reason to act now — latest sales, operational updates, milestones. Lead with the benefit, keep it scannable, and give one obvious call to action that points to your website or your front door.

📊Play 4: Read the signal and refine

▾
Every open and click is data. P&C tracks engagement on every send, so you can see which subject lines land, which offers convert, and which segment responds best — then tune the next send around it. Email marketing is a test-and-learn loop, not a one-shot.
⭐ Limited-Time Offer: BOGO Half-Off Email

We’re running a buy-one-get-one half-off promotion on our O&O Sales & Special Offer email list — currently 79,865 opt-ins, with open rates ranging from 18–22%. Emails are sent from The Post and Courier while featuring your branding and messaging within the body.

First email $1,750
Second email (BOGO half off) $875
Three-email bundle — $1,000 per email $3,000 total

Contact the Advertising team to lock in the promotional rate.

💡 See It In Action: A Mount Pleasant Restaurant Fills Its Slow Nights

A family-owned restaurant on Coleman Boulevard wants more covers on weeknights. Instead of boosting a social post to a broad, unverified audience, they run a Segmented Email to P&C’s Food audience — 6,008 opted-in local readers who have signaled interest in dining. The custom-designed email features a Tuesday-through-Thursday prix-fixe offer and a reservation link. Because it lands in inboxes that already trust the P&C brand and chose to receive it, the open and click numbers give the restaurant a clear read on demand — and momentum for the next send.

Answer Box

Short answer: The Post and Courier’s email marketing lets local businesses send a custom-designed message to 145,000+ opted-in South Carolina subscribers — as a full-database send, a targeted interest segment, or a specific market.

  • Total reach: 145,012 deduplicated opt-in subscribers across the SC footprint
  • Charleston flagship: the O&O Sales list reaches 79,865 inboxes
  • Engagement: 22.28% average open rate in April
  • Full Database: your message to the entire O&O Sales list — best for broad awareness
  • Segmented: target a Charleston interest audience — Food, Family, Events & Entertainment, Sports, Shopping, Home & Garden, Beauty & Health, Business
  • By market: Columbia, Myrtle Beach/Georgetown, Aiken, Greenville, Summerville and more
  • Creative: every send is custom-coded and professionally designed
  • Current offer: BOGO half-off on the O&O Sales list — first email $1,750, second $875, or a 3-email bundle at $1,000 each ($3,000 total)

Do this next: decide whether your offer is broad, segment-specific, or market-specific, then contact the P&C Advertising team to plan the send.

☑ Implementation Checklist
  • ☐  Define your goal — website traffic, foot traffic, sales, or awareness
  • ☐  Decide: full database, a specific interest segment, or a specific market
  • ☐  If segmenting, pick your audience from the eight interest categories
  • ☐  Build one clear offer with a single, obvious call to action
  • ☐  Write a benefit-first subject line and scannable body copy
  • ☐  Provide brand assets so the team can build your custom creative
  • ☐  Include links to both your website and your location and hours
  • ☐  Schedule the send with the P&C Advertising team
  • ☐  Review open and click results and plan the next send
Ready to land in local inboxes?

If you want help putting this to work for your business locally, contact The Post and Courier Advertising team. They’ll help you choose the right format, pick the segment or market that fits your customer, and plan a campaign around your goals and budget.

advertising@postandcourier.com

Sources: P&C email list data, April performance report, 2024 rate cards • May 2026
thebigidea — Post and Courier Advertising

5 Reasons why people unsubscribe from your email marketing

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Why Are You Leaving Me?

5 Reasons why people unsubscribe from your email marketing

As you begin or continue an automated email marketing strategy, the fear of unsubscribe rates can be intimidating. Here’s the good news; when it comes to unsubscribes, it's inevitable. At some point in time, some people will ultimately unsubscribe from your emails and IT IS OKAY.  At least for now.

It is painful as an email marketer to see that someone reading your email scrolled through your content and decided it wasn’t for them. UNSUBSCRIBE. It seems so harsh, doesn’t it? This shouldn’t be taken personally - at least not yet. However, this doesn't mean that your unsubscribe rate doesn't matter. 

The overall goal of most email marketing strategies is to generate leads and identify qualified leads. If the recipient of your email is uninterested in your content, they most likely weren’t going to convert. At least, not via email. 

On average, the unsubscribe rate for emails across a variety of industries is 0.26% according to this Mailchimp article. In my previous article discussing important email marketing statistics from 2020, the importance of the unsubscribe rate is to determine how relevant the email is to your customer. Analyzing your unsubscribe rate can also tell you most directly that something in your strategy isn't working and changes need to be made, but should be used in conjunction with other important email statistics.

Let’s discuss today the main reasons why recipients unsubscribe from your emails, and methods in which you can measure & analyze your email performance to curb this number.

 

1. Sending too many emails

Although marketing email sends and open rates have steadily increased since Covid began, there’s still such a thing as too much. When determining your strategy, think about how you can consolidate your information into a newsletter to cut back on your marketing efforts. No one wants to be the spam in your clients’ inbox. Ensure that what you’re sending to the recipient is relevant and helpful.

 

2. The email looks like spam

Make sure that you take the time to format an email that helps you achieve a goal as a company. How do you want to funnel your clients? This goal should be top-of-mind when designing your content and user experience. 

 

3. Irrelevancy

To echo a common sentiment across this blog, content should be relevant and helpful to the recipient. This isn't always fool-proof. Data is complex, and you can only segment your lists depending on what type of information you currently have on each client. Do you have the data to segment an email list based off of interest, location, or industry?

What is segmentation? According to Campaign Monitor, segmentation is the division of an email list into smaller segments based on set criteria. Segmentation is a tactic used to ensure relevancy to your audience based on location, interests, purchase history, client activity, and more.

Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (HubSpot.com).

 

4. Privacy concerns

Doesn’t include when you’ve done business with someone and they have your email address. We’re talking about obviously purchased lists. This is unethical marketing. For the customer’s perspective: this is different from receiving emails from a company you’ve done business with that you’ve given your email address at some point - this is referencing the spam-like emails that make zero sense with a company you’ve never heard of.

Having an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of your emails is a legal requirement of all marketers. Learn more about GDPR here. 

 

5. Didn’t recall signing up

This is a likely occurrence if the recipient has zero idea how they’ve ended up on your email list. Make sure you’re funneling your customers logically. This, again, means ensuring relevance + resourcefulness of your content.

To avoid your recipients feeling like this, provide a statement at the bottom of your email that makes it easy for your recipients to manage their preferences + also explains why they’re receiving the email. 

 

To curb your unsubscribe rate:

Create an exit survey to gather more information on why a recipient unsubscribed from your emails. Clear communication is key - make sure that your readers understand what they’re unsubscribing from. 

Lastly, always expect a certain amount of people to unsubscribe from your emails. Similar to social media trends, where you see a fluctuation in followers daily. This is ok! The whole purpose of email marketing is to generate and nurture your leads, with the goal to funnel + convert them.

Important Email Stats You Should Know

Important Email Marketing Stats You Should Know

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Email Marketing Stats You Should Know

Covid marketing trends that are here to stay

 
  

What is the current state of Email Marketing?

Let's start unpacking this question. Before the Covid-19 pandemic began, many marketers suspected that email marketing would be “dead” within a matter of a few years. However, recent trends suggest just the opposite. HubSpot research shows that 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months. In fact, the latest research from Litmus found that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the ROI is $42.

 

So, what helpful statistics can help your business navigate email marketing practices to increase your email performance, and thus your company’s ROI?

 

Since April 1, 2020, marketing email open rates have been climbing.

Additionally, companies are utilizing email marketing at a higher rate than before. These two metrics have increased in tandem. Here are some useful insights related to open rates:

 
 

Additional best practices to increase your open rates involve your subject line.

Before your customer can even read the beautiful and helpful email you’ve created, they need to feel inclined to open.  Your subject line needs to grab the attention of your audience within just a few words. 

The best part about subject lines is that they can be A/B tested. It never hurts to switch up your language, be mindful of your audience, and test different methods to see what your audience reacts to. 

  • Keep it short. Recipients are often mobile users. Keep your subject no  more than 9 words / 60 characters. (Mailchimp.com)
  • Personalization is key. Use tags to personalize your subject lines with each recipient’s name, company name, or location. Personalization is known to increase open rates for most users. (Mailchimp.com)
  • Try using emojis. 56% of brands using an emoji in their email had a higher open rate than those that did not (HubSpot.com). Try to limit your emoji use to one, and use them to supplement words rather than replace them to make sure your message is clear. (mailchimp.com)

 
 

Implement email segmentation.

Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (HubSpot.com).  

What is segmentation? According to Campaign Monitor, segmentation is the division of an email list into smaller segments based on set criteria. Segmentation is a tactic used to ensure relevancy to your audience based on location, interests, purchase history, client activity, and more. 

 

Additionally, measure & analyze your list performance.

Continually monitor email performance metrics like bounce rate & unsubscribe rate.

Your bounce rate is a direct measure of your contact database and how enriched your data is. A high bounce rate would suggest that your contacts are recently active, or perhaps just aren’t updated.

A high unsubscribe rate speaks to your list and the relevancy of your email to your customer. If you’re just beginning an email campaign strategy and your clients aren’t used to receiving emails from you, make your purpose and value of the email clear to your audience. Continue to segment your lists based on the list performance results and nurture the clients who want to be included in the information you have to share.

 

Create honest, helpful content. This includes educational or resourceful content.

This is more important during this “new normal” as we’ve adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic. If you are a part of an industry that has been slow to adapt to digital marketing, this presents a large window of opportunity.

Conductor.com reports that according to their new research, consumers are 131% more likely to buy from a brand immediately after they read a piece of educational content.  

HubSpot Marketing Manager Henni Roini echoes this sentiment, “Only the companies and brands that create human connection are going to succeed. This is extremely true with email. You might get short term benefits from very promotional content, but honest, human, and personalized content creates a following for the long term.”

In our previous blog discussing client Relationship Management, we elaborate on how to use empathy as a tool. Your goal is to design a communication strategy that leads with empathy from an honest place.
 
 

Stay consistent and measure your success.

If you don’t have one already, implement a review process to check for broken links, grammar mistakes, etc. Make sure that you have an approval process that works efficiently. Stay consistent with send dates and times to build trust with your audience.

 

Analyze email performance across all marketing channels.

Did your team write a blog that resonated well with your audience? Perhaps you decide to extend the reach of this article by supporting it with a social media paid campaign. Assess your click through rates - perhaps the topic isn’t as relevant to your customers as you originally thought, or the segmentation wasn’t in the right direction.

The beauty of marketing is the ability to create, test, and analyze to improve your results going forward. Measure results and evolve your strategies.

 
 
 
 

Relationship Management Blog

Relationship Management: How to Keep Leads Warm Without Selling

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Relationship Management: How to Keep Leads Warm Without Selling

As businesses begin to re-open, it is more important than ever to prioritize relationship management and be mindful of how each business approaches potential buyers. Your business’s ability to adapt to an empathetic marketing strategy will have an impact on customer conversions. 

Trends suggest that how a business communicates with clients during a time of crisis will directly impact the brand’s reputation for the foreseeable future. The goal is to design a communication strategy that leads with empathy from an honest place. 

Using empathy as a tool and not a recovery plan

Understanding your client’s perspective is essential to your success. By listening to your customers needs, you can better provide them with whatever services or products could help them. You want to be their problem solver for the immediate, and need to present longer-term the value in your proposal. 

By now, you should have your post-pandemic marketing strategy in place. However, there’s a high possibility that clients may still be uncomfortable with spending. Although sales are down for a majority of businesses, web traffic has increased significantly since March. Marketing Gong's Head of Content, Devin Reed believes customers aren’t making purchases, but they’re gathering information about who/how they want to spend when the time comes.   

Positive and creative communication

HubSpot Marketing trends reveal email open rates are increasing and holding steady, but sales are down. Now what? Nurture these leads with a kind voice & helping hand so that when they reach financial recovery (individuals or businesses), they choose to purchase with you. Listen to your clients’ needs and only beneficial information. Deliver value first.

Remove words from your messaging that carry a negative connotation. However, don’t ignore the elephant in the room. Try new + creative email campaigns geared towards providing your clients with helpful resources. Response rates are 25-50% lower and sales open rates have tanked. The idea is to pull, NOT push your clients to you. Lead with relatable and positive messaging and don’t be afraid to add a little (tasteful) humor. 

Utilize some of our Post and Courier Marketing Blogs and incorporate them as selling tools. We’ve written dozens of articles in an effort to help small businesses with tons of useful information pertaining to crisis marketing + other free tools we’ve created to help local businesses at this time. 

 

 

 

The Benefits of Newsletter Sponsorship

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Newsletter sponsorship is an advertising opportunity not all businesses consider, and can come with some unique advantages. This branch of email marketing allows you to get in front of dedicated audiences that trust the source. You can use that trust and brand loyalty to your advantage to grow your own audience.

A prime spot to advertise

So why do users subscribe to newsletters in the first place? The most common reason is that the user doesn’t want to miss anything from the company. Between news updates, sales, or events, a newsletter offers valuable information delivered to an inbox. Users don’t need to dig through the clutter of the internet.

It’s this very idea of avoiding the clutter that makes advertisements in email newsletters so valuable. People get bombarded with ads on many sites that they visit today. It can certainly be cheap and affordable to purchase a small ad spot on a website. That space is unlimited and always available.

But newsletter sponsorship provides premium brand placement that locks in the reader’s attention. This ensures you aren’t competing with a dozen other ads on the same page of content.

Readers have a positive perception of sponsors

As with any sponsorship opportunity, the perception audiences take away from your ad is typically more positive than a traditionally placed advertisement. 

Depending on how highly the reader thinks of the company delivering the newsletter (being subscribed to a newsletter in the first place means they probably like the company), they are likely to see your sponsorship as a sort of endorsement.

Consumers are becoming more aware of these types of B2B relationships thanks to things like social influencers and podcasts. But the effect trusted endorsements have on audiences is still powerful. 

When the reader trusts the source, like New York Times newsletter readers do, they are much more likely to spend time and money invested in what they’re reading in their inbox.

Block the ad blockers

With more than 615 million devices out there using some form of ad blocking software, strategies need to be built around this. While technologies are being applied to detect and work around ad blockers, email sponsorship is a strong way to ensure you’re appearing in front of the audience you pay to reach.

Of course, a popular approach to avoiding being blocked is to create native content pieces to market yourself online. This remains effective, and resonates well with younger audiences, but it does take up either more time or money from a marketing campaign.

If you already have a digital advertising campaign created, including artwork and trackable links, you can simply take that content and adapt it to a newsletter sponsor spot. Sometimes the work might even be as easy as providing your logo to be placed under the newsletter’s logo with a “sponsored by” tag.

Find the right audience

Some organizations offer a variety of newsletter topics to their audience, allowing you additional targeting tools. 

A company with a large, dedicated audience will likely have a few different newsletters to sponsor. This means that the user respects the organization and trusts it as their go-to source for information on a certain topic. They chose that company over another dedicated entirely to that topic.

At The Post and Courier, we are launching a newsletter focused on South Carolina military updates. This Military Digest newsletter opens up new targeted opportunities to reach an audience that craves military news and content. 

The benefits of being a sponsor for content like this are unique to broad appeal newsletters. The open rates will likely be higher percentages than general newsletters since the readers are specifically seeking out that content. This means they will also have higher trust in the content of the email. This makes your brand stand out even more.

Build your database with contests

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Contests and giveaways apply to every business differently, but they are always an excellent way to build your customer database.

A common way to get involved in contest marketing is to sponsor a giveaway being run by a company that already has a large audience. But some brands take a more traditional approach and simply run a contest themselves. Lets run through some things you need to know about using contests to grow your audience and making use of the entries.

Only ask for the info you need

The main advantage of running a contest is to research current and potential customers. There are a few ways to gain insight into your customers using contest entry forms. Aside from gathering basic personal information like names and addresses, you can also look at user habits. 

You want to use your contest to learn as much as you can about your audience. But remember that the purpose of providing free goods via a giveaway is to encourage the customer to be open to giving you their info.

Most companies use contests to grow their email list for future communications. If that is all the information you feel you need, then just ask for a name and email address. Keep it as simple as possible in order to maintain the trust of the user. 

Luckily, the person entering has the assumption that you will need their email address in order to contact them if they win. So it’s not always obvious that you are just adding them to another marketing list. 

If you are looking to learn more about your audience, you can include a brief survey in your giveaway.

Driving new leads and learning from them

The winner of your contest will be a valuable lead for future sales opportunities. Hopefully they enjoy your free product or service enough to eventually come back for more. But you should be more focused on the rest of your entries and how you can turn their interest into transactions. 

There’s also a great deal of information that can be taken from the contact info that you gather. You can get a deeper look into how certain types of customers engage with your business. Customers that enter into a contest might be leads that are interested in your business, but will need more nurturing before they purchase. 

You can take a look at where the customers live and if you operate a B2B operation, you can better understand what types of businesses to market to. Use this information to analyze what products or services are more desired.

Contests are a great way to use value to persuade audiences to hand over their precious contact information. It can be challenging to get this info from users when they’ve already seen all of the tactics before. Whether its a popup to download an ebook or a media kit that can only be accessed by filling out a contact form, people don’t always give in to those offers anymore.

Claire Linney – Emerging Media Manager

We have seen great success through giveaways involving VIP festival tickets. The Post and Courier’s contesting expert Claire Linney helped a client reach a wide audience interested in a local festival.

“Who doesn’t love going to a fun concert?  We gave away tickets, which engaged 2,000 Post and Courier followers who entered to win!  The client received opt-ins from the giveaway of people who would like to be contacted by the festival directly, which led to increased ticket sales for the festival.”

Reach a local audience

Contests tend to bring strong growth to local businesses who sponsor or run them. On the local level, you have the ability to build the promotion around the target audience.

Promotional advertising is a multibillion dollar industry. Borrell research shows that local promotions and marketing are generating 2.5 times more revenue than traditional local advertising.

With the holiday season approaching, local contests are a good way to reach shoppers. Stores can give away discounts or promotional products, as well as sponsoring holiday-themed giveaways that connect buyers with any kind of local business.

“We run holiday giveaways in December, engaging thousands of readers entering to win our giveaways with holiday gift ideas from our clients,” Claire explains.  “This promotion directly connected our clients with local shoppers ‘bottom of the funnel advertising’ around the holiday season, helping bring holiday shopping business to the local stores who participated.”

Getting more eyes on your contest

The greater the value proposition of what you’re giving away is, the more likely you are to get entries. So you need to find a balance between what you’re willing to provide in exchange for user information. 

If you take the approach of sponsoring a contest, you’re likely already reaching a large audience through the company running the contest. But if you need to promote a contest you’re running yourself, here are ways to drive entries.

Social media can be your best friend when it comes to explaining the value of your giveaway. It’s one of the leading ways to grow your business and connect with customers. Engaging in conversations with users gives you the chance to talk up your contest in a personal way. It shows that you are currently invested in giving customers the chance to win something cool. 

Static advertisements, while useful, can feel lifeless compared to an actual social media interaction. You can make a post on your Twitter that mentions the giveaway. If you get comments on that post, the door will be open for you to have a conversation with your audience about what makes the prize so great. Put the focus on your customers and what you’re doing for them.

You can also pose the contest as an exclusive offer for those that have already shown interest in your business. Even if you’re just starting with a list of emails that determines who can enter, you’re still going to be able to gather more info for your database. Similarly, you can offer extra entries to customers that have already spent money with you or that just start following you on social media. 

In the end, steps like these will reinforce that your identity is a customer-focused one. In the age of consumer privacy concerns, the relationship between businesses and customers is a delicate one. Contests help to break down that barrier by making consumers more willing to share their personal information.

Get your contest rolling

Claire has a team of contest and promotion specialists who are here to help!  The team will meet with you and come up with a custom promotion that meets your individual business needs.  We design the creative and create the promotion plan to reach the audience you desire.  Contact us and we’ll walk you through the process step by step.