Background

Industry: Destination Marketing Organization (DMO), Tourism

Visit Tacoma-Pierce County creates content to drive tourism and spread awareness of the hidden gems, stunning mountain towns, beautiful nature, and awesome culture in Pierce County.

Pain Points: With a scrappy but small in-house marketing team, Visit Tacoma-Pierce County sought help with creating more consistent content.

Goals: After a hiatus through COVID, the marketing team wanted to bring back the monthly consumer newsletters featuring new content. The quarterly itineraries also needed an updated format to make them easier to read. Finally, because the organization is funded by hotels, we needed to encourage readers to book hotels wherever possible.

Approach

We began working with Visit Tacoma–Pierce County in the summer of 2023 and shortly thereafter relaunched their newsletter using a consistent template that allowed readers to anticipate a mix of fresh content—spotlights on a small town and hotel to explore, along with up-and-coming events from community partners. For itineraries, we increased the number of photos and incorporated a clearer visual hierarchy to enhance appeal. We also redesigned the structure of their two quarterly travel itineraries to support three-day activity guides highlighting hotels, restaurants, breweries, wineries, distilleries, farms, shopping, and attractions across Pierce County and Mount Rainier. Additionally, we created more visually compelling assets like “31 Days of Holiday Magic” and a three-month “Summer Magic Calendar.” Our team manages all website content, including monthly blog posts, listings, event updates, and ongoing revisions to ensure accuracy and relevance.

Services

Content strategy
Content development
Blogs
Event Calendars
Travel Itineraries
Monthly newsletter redesign, development, and execution
Website content maintenance

Results

Our newsletters have an average open rate of 35.2%—that’s almost a 15% increase from the previous average.
Itineraries and event calendars have been some of the biggest traffic drivers over the past two years since we began working with VTPC. Organic traffic, views, users, and event counts have also increased, thanks in part to our SEO-rich content.
Traffic from organic search increased by 24.93% and sessions increased by 37.31% since we began working with VTPC.

Inside the Newsletter Relaunch and Redesign

Before

The bold colors and fun voice of Visit Tacoma-Pierce County’s branding was missing from their newsletters. Click the image below to view the entire email!

After

With an injection of Visit Tacoma-Pierce County’s colorful branding and engaging visuals, our newsletters catch the eye and see more engagement. Click the image below to view the entire email!