Flying High in Enews after Taking Process In House

The staff of Flying is proving that consistent communication to readers via enewsletters boosts Web traffic — the brand has doubled its page views over the past year. In April, Flying’s weekly enewsletter saw its highest open and click-through rates for 2011, which directly contributed to the more than 640,000 flyingmag.com page views, double those of April 2010.

The marked increase is the result of the editorial team, led by editor-in-chief Robert Goyer and enewsletter editor Stephen Pope, taking the communication tool in house as of April, producing timely, original content using an innovative Internet-based white-board content-creation system that Goyer created for the purpose.

Each week the editorial team brings industry-related news and product and service announcements, as well as insightful opinions, pilot technique advice, and video and photo gallery links, to more than 70,000 users of general- and business-aviation products and services who have opted in to receive the communication.

Part of that original content included on-scene event coverage of the 2011 Sun ’n Fun Flying and Airshow in Lakeland, Florida.

“Thanks to our on-site event coverage at Sun ’n Fun, Flying was the first news outlet to report on the tornado that ripped through the event,” Goyer said. “Plus, we posted original photo galleries and video on flyingmag.com within six hours of the storm, and successfully promoted the links through both a Flying enews flash and the weekly enewsletter.”

Check out coverage of the destruction from the E1 tornado that hit the nation’s second largest airshow event:

Video: After the Tornado, Sun ’n Fun 2011

Photo Gallery: After the Sun ’n Fun Storm

The potential of Flying’s weekly digital newsletter doesn’t stop there. It’s also on track to become a major source for aviation industry news.

“Our goal is to go toe-to-toe with the top digital aviation industry news outlets — all of which have larger staffs and some of which are digital-only operations,” Goyer said. “Going from afterthought to industry leader is a lot to bite off, but in just a few months’ time we’ve made tremendous progress in doing just that.”