RES 231415 - Laserfiche WebLink

communications and remind our businesses that the PDA is here for them. We want to be a one-stop-shop for Downtown businesses for any questions, concerns, struggles they may have and to serve as a megaphone to amplify their successes! We have actively worked to advocate for our Downtown and for our businesses and this is always at the forefront of our priorities. We are so happy with the success, thus far, of 1St Weekends on Main. It has taken time and effort to educate the community on this format and we are pleased with the community's reaction and attendance each month. We look forward to having productive conversations with all stakeholders regarding the future of these weekends as we head into the final months of 2023 and begin making plans for 2024. The return of the PDA Gift Card Program has been extremely well received by the community. The program fell into disrepair during Covid and PDA staffing changes. It took tremendous effort of PDA staff, especially Office & Membership Manager to identify all the issues and get it back online. Year to date we have sold over $22,000 in gift cards and we look forward to a big holiday season.The PDA does not make any income from this program, it is an expense for the organization as we pay for the activation fees and card stock for the gift cards. These cards are only redeemable at the over 125 participating businesses in Downtown and, historically, we have had a 70-75% redemption rate which is significantly higher than the national average redemption rate of 35%.These are dollars that go directly to our businesses and this program continues to drive business into our Downtown. The PDA is proud of our Social Media efforts and our ability to amplify the marketing efforts of our Downtown businesses and provide marketing and promotions to support them throughout the year. Our Social Media channels continue to be strong and effective and have grown significantly over the past year, with a combined reach of over 52,000 unique followers. Our Facebook following of 29,501 is nearly double of the combined following of the City of Pleasanton, InPleasanton.com and Pleasanton Weekly pages (16,200 total). With personal and community-focused content, the PDA's social media continues to be a highly visible and well engaged space where the community comes to talk about all things Downtown and to learn about the newest businesses, upcoming events and issues affecting our Downtown. Please see the attached Social Media summary for additional figures and examples. The PDA website continues to receive our attention as we work to make it easy to navigate and full of relevant and current Downtown information. Our continued focus is to constantly improve the user experience for our website visitors, provide better exposure for our businesses and to better reflect the charm and beauty of Downtown. We are extremely pleased with the results and happy to report that our web traffic has increased significantly. 2023 has seen the continued growth of events in Downtown and the return of Forkful! Through the hard work of our Events Director and wonderful support from our businesses and Board of Directors we have hosted March Brew Crawl, Summer Wine Stroll, a full season of Concerts in the Park, a summer of 11 Weekends on Main and Forkful back so far and look forward to hosting Halloween Brew Crawl, Magical Holiday Evening, Small Business Saturday and Holiday Spirit Stroll later this year. These events are wonderful ways to bring residents,