Overview
Communications efforts in the month of May continued to focus on about COVID-19 volunteer opportunities, promoting and helping users of Maine Ready, keeping National Service programs and members abreast of the rapid and on-going changes caused by the pandemic, recruiting skilled volunteers to fill specialized roles within the formal response effort, and producing/sharing stories that focus on the people and programs behind the formal emergency response effort. One story of note was Penquis Foster Grandparent Senior Corps member Carol Christopoulos. Carol's story, shared with Volunteer Maine thanks to Commissioner Maria Staples, was shared widely on social media and caught the attention of America's Service Commission, the Senior Corps office in Washington D.C., and Senior Corps Director Deborah Cox-Roush. Cox-Roush personally reached out to Christopoulos to commend her for her commitment to service. View the video interview here.
AmeriCorps recruitment: Promotional efforts continued in the month of May with the fair now scheduled for June 4. In an effort to get the word out, a social media campaign has been developed and is being executed until the day of the fair. Information was also directly sent to community partners and government agencies, such as the Maine Department of Labor, the Department of Education, FedCap, and local colleges and universities, to name a few.
In an effort to constantly improve reporting, please see the following attachment which visualizes the data utilized below. This page serves as an accessible version of the same information presented visually. Access the visual report here.
Please note: All metrics are compared to the previous month.
Media Coverage
Governor's Service Awards nomination press release:
Release statistics (via Constant Contact)
- Open rate: 31%
- Clicks: 4
- Click-through rate: 36%
Press placements:
- Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel -- view coverage here
- The Cryer (print only)
- The Courier-Gazette -- view coverage here
- The Republican Journal -- view coverage here
- Bangor Daily News -- online coverage not available due to BDN website relaunch. Coverage was available at this link.
Roll of Honor nomination extention release
Release statistics (via Constant Contact)
- Open rate: 27%
- Clicks: 0
- Click-through rate: 0%
Press placements:
- WABI-TV -- view coverage here
- Bangor Daily News -- online coverage not available due to BDN website relaunch. Coverage was available at this link.
- Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel -- view coverage here
- Portland Press Herald -- view coverage here
Maine Volunteer Generation Fund award release
Release statistics (via Constant Contact)
- Open rate: 36%
- Clicks: 2
- Click-through rate: 15%
Press placements:
- Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel -- view coverage here
- The Courier-Gazette -- view coverage here
- Bangor Daily News -- online coverage not available due to BDN website relaunch. Coverage was available at this link.
MaineServiceCommission.Gov Website
Traffic
- Views: 4,534 (+8%)
- Unique views: 3,927% (+8.3%)
- Bounce rate: 64.7% (6.4% decrease) (please note: for bounce rate, decrease is positive and increase is negative)
Search results
- Clicks to site: 343 (-5%)
- Impressions: 21.2k (-14.7%)
Frequent search terms (by impressions)
- "americorps" 830 (+8.6%)
- "senior companion" 659 (-54.6%)
- "community service" 324 (-7.4%)
- "southern maine agency on aging" 320 (125.4%)
- "volunteer maine" 293 (0.0%)
Device breakdown
- Desktop: 78.93% (-3.24%)
- Mobile: 18.73% (+14.56%)
- Tablet: 2.34% (12.5%)
VolunteerMaine.Org Website
Traffic
- Views: 2,558 (-7.1%)
- Unique views: 2,075 (-5.5%)
- Bounce rate: 68.18% (2.0% decrease)
Search results
- Clicks to site: 65 (-45.4%)
- Impressions: 3.8k (-27.7%)
Frequent search terms (by impressions)
- “Event email“ 118 (-21.3%)
- “Volunteer screening process“ 56 (-13.8%)
- “Volunteer email template“ 55 (+22.2%)
- “competencies for managers “ 54 (-18.2%)
- "how to start an internship program" 54 (+14.9%)
Device breakdown
- Desktop: 58.37% (-13.5%)
- Mobile: 38.68% (+30.37%)
- Tablet: 2.95% (+3.51%)
Social media engagement
Facebook (Volunteer Maine)
- New fans: 4 (-85.7%)
- Post likes: 108 (-59.4%)
- Post comments: 34 (+385.7%)
- Post shares: 58 (-53.2%)
- Video views: 2.6K (+136%)
- Engagement rate: 6% (+11.3%)
- Total page reach: 9,681 (-40.9%)
- New followers: -2 (-4)
- Retweets: 42 (-21)
- Likes: 66 (-51)
- Replies: 5 (-14)
- Link clicks: 38 (-43)
- Engagement rate: 1.0% (-37.5%)
- New followers: 3 (+2)
- Likes: 76 (+70)
- Comments: 0 (+/-0)
- Shares: 44 (+38)
- Total followers: 151 (+20)
- Impressions: 691 (-86.6%%)
- Reach: 494 (-86.3%)
- Post likes: 60 (-9.1%)
- Video views: 28 (+8)
- Comments: 0
YouTube
- Views: 300 (+341.2%)
- Minutes watched: 599 (+210.4%)
- Average viewer duration: 119 seconds (-30%)
Email marketing
Overall
- Open rate: 25% (+25%)
- Click-through: 50 (+20.63%)
- Click-through rate: 7% (+40%)
Campaign: Recruitment Fair Email: Request for Info
- Open rate: 63%
- Click-through: 1
- Click-through rate: 8%
Campaign: May 2020 AmeriCorps RFP
- Open rate: 25%
- Click-through: 43
- Click-through rate: 7%
Glossary of terms
- Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. This helps us determine how many engaged/interested visitors visit the site in a given period.
- Clicks to site/link clicks: The physical action of clicking a link. This helps us measure the effectiveness of our messaging and ability to create calls to action.
- Click-through number: The number of unique individuals who clicked a link inside of an email. This helps us measure the effectiveness of our calls to action.
- Click-through rate: This is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. This helps us measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns. For 2020, the average open rate is 2.6%, according to digital marketing platform Campaign Monitor.
- Cost-per-click (CPC): CPC refers to the actual price you pay for each click in your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns. This helps us measure ROI on advertising, gain a better understanding of our target audiences, and the effectiveness of our messaging.
- Engagement rate: A metric that measures the level of engagement that a piece of created content is receiving from an audience. This helps us determine how many individuals interact with the content, and gain a better understanding of our target audiences. Industry standards state the following: (courtesy of Scrunch.com)
- Less than 1% = low engagement rate
- Between 1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
- Between 3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
- Above 6% = very high engagement rate
- Frequent search terms: The most utilized search terms that individuals use on Google to access the website. This gives us a better idea of how people get to our website and what topics matter most to them.
- Impressions: When an advertisement or any other form of digital media appears on a user's screen. This is not an action-based statistic, but gives us an idea of how many users potentially saw the piece of content. This metric helps us track brand awareness efforts.
- New fans/followers: The number of new individuals that choose to follow a social media profile, such as Facebook and Twitter. This helps us measure brand awareness and the effectiveness of our messaging.
- Open rate: This is an indication of how many people "view" or "open" the email. This helps us measure the effectiveness of our messaging and email content. For 2020, the average open rate is 17.8%, according to Campaign Monitor.
- Reach: The total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a given piece of content or webpage during a given period. Much like impression, this is a number that informs us how many people have been exposed to the piece of content. This metric helps us track brand awareness efforts and the effectiveness of our content.
- Post comments/replies: The number of individuals who take action by commenting or replying on a piece of content. This helps us measure the strength of our content and get a better idea of the number of followers who are engaged/interested in our message.
- Post likes: The number of individuals who take action by liking or reacting to a post. This helps us measure the strength of our content and the effectiveness of our messaging.
- Post shares/retweets: The number of individuals who take action by sharing a post with their personal network. This helps us measure the strength of our content and get a better idea of the number of followers who are engaged/interested in our message.
- Unique views: How many different people visited a given webpage. Slightly different than views, this helps us track the number of individual users (or sessions) that visited the website/webpage in a given period.
- Video views: The number of individuals who viewed one of our videos. When talking about Facebook, the statistic is based on three-second views, which gives us an idea of how successful we are at capturing a user's attention. This stat also helps us measure the strength of the video both from a production and messaging standpoint.
- Views: How many times a given webpage has been visited. This helps us track the effectiveness of our search visibility and the impact of our content.