The RAB team collaborates together to ensure our suite of products and services utilize the latest technology and provide the most updated content. We are proud of the team approach powered by digital services, data & insights, business development and marketing teams. We've highlighted our latest updates and efforts for you here.
Whether for research, inspiration or sales strategy and tactics, AE's rely on RAB.com to help drive revenue. In 2019, we added a new section covering the common misperceptions about Radio. Designed in collaboration with the RAB Sales Advisory Committee, this powerful set of one-sheets addresses frequent objections to Radio and offers AE's clear, concise research and bright, easy-to-present graphics to help ease client concerns. We've also redesigned the automotive section with the new Auto Toolkit, enhanced the section covering co-op, and redesigned The Pitch archive to make it more searchable and easier to navigate.
Radio Sales Today, RAB's daily publication delivered Monday through Friday to thousands of Radio professionals before they start their day, provides readers with articles and research reports helping their prospecting and sales efforts.
This important newsletter continues to have some of RAB's highest engagement and enables us to share much of what we're seeing at conferences, hearing in meetings, and most importantly, provides sellers with an opportunity to share marketing insights and ideas directly with their clients.
Going into its eighth year, The Pitch remains an important source for local, regional and national sellers to hit the street armed with facts and ideas for at least three business categories each month. Most categories published in 2016 or earlier were updated in 2019 and new categories of business have been added, bringing the total to nearly 130 categories now available on The Pitch drop-down menu on RAB.com. The Pitch remains one of RAB's most consumed products with 4,027 unique visitors in 2019, an average of 600-page views per month and over 3,250 individual category presentations downloaded throughout the year.
RAB Business Development is continuously looking to our members to help populate and update the case study area on RAB.com. We are grateful to our members and research partners that continue to share their stories and allow us to shine a spotlight on their successes and invite you to share your success stories with us throughout 2020.
RAB Account Manager is the only CRM written by Radio for Radio and this year's programming roadmap took us to some new and exciting locations! In 2019, RAB released a new dashboard that offers account executives clarity into the numbers and sales metrics driving their business. We also upgraded our integration with Outlook and Gmail, automatically capturing and filing directly with an account important emails and calendar notes. Account Manager users can now easily forward articles from Radio Sales Today to any contact on their account list, access over 9,000 co-op plans and know at a glance who booked business in the same period last year. With 5,000 subscribers, over 2,000 Radio managers and account executives use RAB Account Manager every single day to drive revenue and get results.
The best written proposals identify and focus on client needs, set objectives for an advertising campaign and support the client's decision to buy with insights-based decision-making. This is the foundation of RAB's PROposal Assistant. Fully updated in 2019, this cloud-based proposal writing tool guides sellers through the process of creating a best-in-class proposal. Interactive screens allow AE's to choose select RAB research, present on and off-air solutions and open their newly created proposal in MS PowerPoint with greater flexibility.
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GoCart is RAB's mobile-first, e-Commerce platform to help drive digital revenue and turn trade into cash. GoCart intuitively responds to any device, from desktop computers to tablets and mobile phones and includes state-of- the-art features like instantly-redeemable mobile certificates, social media support and the option to untether items and post them anywhere. If your stations offer a certificate program, shopping show or auction, GoCart is an affordable, state-of-art solution designed to easily scale to any size program.
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As a kick-off to this past year, RAB released data and insight-based infographics to help sellers dispute and debunk some of the myths that they encounter from current and potential advertisers. Misperceptions of Radio is an initiative created through a collaboration with the Sales Advisory Committee (SAC), led by Julie Koehn, president and general manager of Lenawee Broadcasting Company, and David Bevins, chief operating officer for Connoisseur Media. We've heard from many that these infographics have been successful in opening doors, creating conversations and closing sales.
2019 marked the seventh year that RAB worked with Borrell Associates and released "Radio's Digital Sales Inch Closer to $1 Billion" - a digital revenue benchmarking report. This report highlighted the local digital advertising landscape and attitudes towards digital services as well as the positive shifts by Radio stations and groups that have incorporated digital as part of their advertising and marketing offerings.
Despite challenges the automotive industry experienced in 2019, it remains one of Radio's top ad spending categories. Radio sellers need to have the information to understand, not only the auto industry, but the specific characteristics of auto buying intenders. Earlier this year, we released the Automotive Toolkit - another initiative based on our work with SAC. Along with the new Automotive page, the Toolkit populates charts and graphs on auto owners' characteristics such as employment, marital status or age group and allows sellers to create fully-customizable PowerPoint slides that graphically demonstrate how Radio station listeners' demographics compare to any auto brand - even by model.
Throughout the year, Cannabis and many derivatives grew to become one of the fastest growing consumer products. However, despite the legalization of some forms and growing popularity on store shelves, advertising rules for Radio are clear and specific. The Cannabis/Marijuana page on RAB.com was created to provide information and insights and also includes advertising FAQs created by the law firm Foster Garvey, P.C.
RAB's Why Radio site continues as a touchpoint for members of the advertising and Radio community. Filled with the latest RADAR, Nielsen, MRI-Simmons and Scarborough data, this site contains all the data, insights, studies and downloadable presentations anyone needs to answer the question of Why Radio?
and tools such as Instant Backgrounds, Prospecting Report, Top Business Trends and Ad-to-Sales Ratios deliver information sellers need to do what they do best. These tools are continually updated to provide the latest information to understand specific industries, how to prospect and how to increase revenue. We know it's difficult to keep up with everything that is new and that's why we promote both updates and new products across all of RAB's member touchpoints.