Eco-Business has won top recognition for its revamped newsletter series at this year’s Asian Digital Media Awards, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
The media company was awarded ‘Best Newsletter’ in the small and medium media category at the Asian Digital Media Awards 2024, one of the largest regional news media industry events on digital trends, revenue and technology.
The award recognises excellence in newsletter services. This follows a revamp and rebranding of the Eco-Business newsletter into a fully-curated series, ‘Insights’, which was launched in August last year.
The series includes the flagship ‘Insights Weekly’ newsletter sent every week to a growing global database of 95,000 subscribers, ‘Insights Daily’ updates, and monthly ‘Insights’ country newsletters on sustainable development news and trends in Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and China.
A key component of the newsletter is a personalised note where writers share on-the-ground insights from the cities they reside in. From waste management issues in Cebu and Bali’s thriving start-up scene to new sustainable finance rules from Singapore’s central bank and China-United States climate diplomacy, editors and writers from Eco-Business share their observations and analysis, and deliver critical commentary on sustainabilty-related topics of the day.
Eco-Business deputy editor Ng Wai Mun said the publication has been progressively expanding its newsletter offerings to specific country markets such as China, India and Indonesia and the revamped series offered an opportunity to streamline the branding of its product offering.
“Newsletters are extremely important for us to reach a smaller niche audience and our various country markets, as well as provide a base for us to strengthen engagement with subscriber communities,” she said.
“The ‘Insights’ series has also been an important platform for writers and editors on the Eco-Business team to take the lead in content curation and commentary writing.”
Eco-Business founder and managing director Jessica Cheam on stage to receive the award for Best Newsletter. Image: Eco-Business
Jessica Cheam, Eco-Business’s founder and managing director, said she is heartened by the support from readers and newsletter subscribers and the recognition from the awards. “Our regional newsroom will continue to deliver high-quality and meaningful content that helps break down complex topics for our audience. We will also continue to refresh our newsletter offerings to reach out to new readers and keep existing readers engaged.”
This year’s WAN-IFRA Asian Digital Media Awards Asia had 136 submissions in total. Singapore-based SPH Media was the biggest winner of the evening with five gold and three silvers followed by the South China Morning Post, which clinched two golds and two silvers.
This year’s awards also featured some first-time winners, including KBR, liputan6.com, Man of Many and Yonhap News Agency.
Last year, Eco-Business picked up three Asian Digital Media Awards, two in the podcast category and one for its brand studio’s campaign. It won the top prize for ‘Best Podcast’ for a series on alternative protein and the Asian consumer’s shift to a more sustainable, plant-based diet and runner-up prize for a bilingual podcast recorded in Bahasa Melayu and English that featured a group of Orang Asli filmmakers.
Eco-Business’s brand partnership with Fair Finance Asia (FFA) to produce long-form stories also won the runner-up recognition for ‘Best Sponsored Content Campaign’ at the regional media awards.
The Eco-Business ‘Insights’ newsletter series.
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