New Motorcycling Webpage

We've added a new motorcycling page to the Winthrop Washington Website.

Motorcyclists are such a large visitor base in Winthrop that it is important that we have information about it our website to improve Internet search. If you are a business that caters to motorcycles you might also consider adding motorcycling text and information about your motorcycle-friendly amenities. If you have questions about how to do this please don't hesitate to contact Kristen. 

Chamber Board Agenda

Agenda:

Winthrop Chamber BOD Meeting 1/31/12

Hen House, 8:00- 9:30am

Agenda

8:00 am                Agenda Review                                                                                  Joe

8:05 am                Consent Agenda                                                                                 Joe                                                                                          

Financial Statements                                                                                  

8:10 am                Marketing Report                                                                               Kristen

Old Business:

8:15 am                2012 goals and activities: discuss and approve                             Joe and Julie

8:30 am                2012 budget review: discuss and approve                                           Julie

8:45 am                Open director process                                                                           Joe

8:50 am                County Tourism Board (TAB) liaison                                                      Joe

Old Business:

8:55 am                Brew Fest Event               Idea                                                              Laura

Announcements:

9:00 am                General Membership Meeting: February 9                                            Joe

Site Visit:

9:05                        Depart for VIC:  Overview by Georgia                                               Georgia

9:30                        Meeting Adjourn                                                                                   All

Have you completed the town Parks Plan Survey???

Park Plan Update
Winthrop is engaging in a whirlwind update of our Parks and Recreation Plan to maintain our eligibility to apply for grants through the Washington Recreation Conservation Office (RCO). In an effort to gauge public sentiment on our local parks and recreation scene, we’re asking folks to give us feedback. We’ve put together a brief and easy survey, available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/winthropparks. Deadline to complete the survey is January 31st. It only takes a few moments of your time. Thank you.

Backyard Ski Day---FREE SKIING,RENTALS, LESSONS

This Friday, January 27th is Backyard Ski Day! 

MVSTA along with other local businesses are hosting an opportunity for anyone and everyone to ski for free on all the MVSTA trails.  This is an incredible opportunity for you and your staff to enjoy the ski trails.  Free skiing, free rentals and free lessons are included. Find out all the details here and please help spread the word.

Groundhog Day Feburary 2nd

The next big Winthrop Washington event is February 2nd with Groundhog Day.  This event was started last year by locals Suzy and Fritz Zuch in conjunction with the Winthrop Chamber and MVSTA.  It was a huge success for us getting a lot of media exposure including TV coverage on KOMO News 4.  You can see the video of the event here and learn more about the morning event here.  We really hope to make this an annual tradition and can use your support by coming out to the ski and/or proclamation on Thursday, February 2nd. 

Winthrop Washington Facebook Page

Did you know that Winthrop has it's own Facebook page?  You can check it out here.
All current 2012 Winthrop Chamber businesses that have a Facebook page are also listed on the Winthrop Facebook page.  If your business has a Facebook page and you are not listed on the Winthrop page please let Kristen know. This is yet another incredible benefit of being a Winthrop Chamber Member.

Spring Marketing Ad

The Winthrop print ad for Spring is the image at the head of this Blog highlighting the Balloon Round-up, '49er Days and the Memorial weekend Rodeo.

Click here for your own copy of this ad.  Please feel free to use this ad in your own business advertising.  Such as on your Facebook page,  in your upcoming email newsletter, or displayed at your business. 

2011 Year End Results

Happy New Year!

Before we move into 2012, here is a year end report on 2011 which looks like it was a good year!

Year end 3% hotel/motel tax revenues are in and Winthrop ended the year with $103,925.  Last month I challenged you all to guess the best year in our history and that was 2009 although we are not far from that this year. 

2011  $103,925
2010  $105,770
2009  $110,366

If you are interested in how the County did in 2011 with 3% revenue:

Okanogan County  $192.615
Winthrop               $103,925
Omak                    $ 69,940

We may have a few more 2011 expenses coming in but here is the report of our revenue and expense for 2011 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An442Rd4N-ondHF3ZVJrY1M5dDcwN2R5bFFVVnVxRGc&hl=en_US#gid=0

I also took a look at year end Winthrop Washington website traffic and compared it to 2010.

As I've shared before the Winthrop website receives about 100,000 hits per year and 2011 was almost exactly the same as 2010. Of the total about 74% are unique visitors so 74,000+ were first time visits to the Winthrop Washington website.  The peak month of traffic is August and the Summer web pages are by far the most viewed on the site.
78% of the visitors find the website via a search, 9% come directly and 13% via referrals with the Winthrop Blues Festival being our #1 referral !! 

The biggest change in the website traffic from 2010 to 2011 is in mobile device traffic which has soared from less than 2% in 2010 to over 13% in 2011. Creating a mobile website for Winthrop will be a high priority for us in 2012.  

One final comment on website traffic. In December the Winthrop site had 4331 visits. In December MVSTA's website had 29,651 visits.  MVSTA's traffic is primarily Winter, Winthrop is Summer.  Winthrop about 100,000 visits/year, MVSTA 168,000 visits/year.  Although Winthrop has more unique visitors per year, MVSTA has a large returning visitor base.  The two websites enhance our area at different times of the year.  

MVSTA's web traffic actually decreased by 20,000+ visitors in 2011 because visitors are using the MVSTA smartphone app, the MVSTA mobile website and other marketing channels such as Facebook and the blog.  This will be the trend that will continue in the future as more people move away from traditional websites and onto mobile platforms and social marketing channels.  Here is a good visual to that effect, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/mobile-mania/

The next Winthrop Marketing Committee Meeting is Tuesday, January 10th at 9am at the Old School House Brewery.  I would be happy to speak more to these 2011 results and will share what I have been working on for 2012. 

Please let me know if you have any questions,
Kristen

Kristen Smith
Marketing Director
Winthrop Chamber of Commerce
http://www.winthropwashington.com/