Band of Liberty e-newsletter

In June of 2006 I launched an HTML-based e-newsletter for the United States Air Force Band of Liberty, the first of its kind for the Air Force's Bands and Music program. I distributed it every other month to concert and venue sponsors, music industry merchants and artists, and concertgoers who signed up via the band's web site. For each issue, I wrote the stories and inserted concert calendars, member profiles and testimonials from concertgoers and sponsors.

The newsletter, with its brief teaser format and abundant follow-up linking to the band's web site, proved to be a potent enhancement to the organization’s Internet marketing. Before the end of 2006 the subscriber list grew to over 800, and the newsletter achieved a remarkable 55% open rate. 42% clicked through to the web site, producing a substantial increase in online visitors as well. The opt-out rate was a mere 1%.

I selected Constant Contact, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, as the band’s email service provider to ensure the newsletters utilized the industry’s best practices, in full compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. I created the newsletters via a combination of extensive hand-coded source editing and utilization of Constant Contact’s Web-based layout tools. Adobe Photoshop CS2 was used to optimize all graphics.