Toyota Grand HighlanderDriving 180K Views and 1,610 Clicks
for the Toyota Grand Highlander
Toyota did not want an ad. They wanted to be part of the reason a family got in the car. So in spring 2026 we published two custom guides in the Dallasites101 voice about exploring the metroplex through day trips and family friendly activities. We printed them as physical booklets and handed them out at our own events, plus we ran the same two lists across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, our website and a dedicated email to 50,000 inboxes.
IMPACT BY THE NUMBERSOne campaign, five places: print, Instagram, Facebook, email and the website. Every number below comes from Instagram and Facebook insights, Mailchimp and Google Analytics, pulled October 11, 2026.
180K
views on the two guides across Instagram and Facebook
19,741
opens on the dedicated email, a 39% open rate
1,610
clicks straight to the Grand Highlander page from that one email
What we deliveredTwo angles, one voice, every channel we have
Toyota's brief was to promote the Grand Highlander in Dallas without running a car ad. We picked the two moments a family actually needs a third row: Spring Break, and the weekend road trip. Then we built each one out everywhere.
In print
Two Passport guides, handed out in person
- Dallas Family Adventures Guide, 24 pages. Attractions, museums and interactive spots across DFW, from the Perot to Fossil Rim, each with hours, price and why we like it.
- Dallas Day Trips Guide, 20 pages. Caddo Lake, Ennis bluebonnets, Dinosaur Valley, Waco Surf and more, each tagged with the drive time from Dallas.
- The Grand Highlander opens both books. The welcome page credits Toyota for the free guide and makes the case for the car: seating for eight, flexible cargo, road-trip tech.
In the feed
Two sponsored features, three platforms each
- "25+ Family-Friendly Activities Around DFW," March 11, timed to Spring Break.
- "11 Drivable Day Trips from Dallas," April 23, timed to bluebonnet season.
- Each ran as a Dallasites101 reel, cross-shared to Facebook and TikTok, with a two-frame Instagram Story series alongside it.
On the site and in the inbox
A dedicated email and a year of shelf space
- One dedicated eblast, April 23, built entirely around the day trips list, with five Grand Highlander placements inside it.
- Both guides sponsored on dallasites101.com for a year, March 2026 to March 2027, so they keep earning search traffic long after the flight.
- Display ads on three relevant pages for 90 days, March 11 to June 11.
Toyota also came on as a sponsor of our spring event series, where both guides were handed out in person. The documented one is the Dallasites101 Silent Disco at Klyde Warren Park on April 24, 2026, the night after the day trips guide went live.
SocialTwo posts, 180,000 views, 1,580 saves
Both features ran in our normal format, so readers treated them like our own guides: they saved them and sent them to the group chat. The day trips post alone picked up 1,489 saves and 1,129 shares.
| Feature | Posted | Views | Reach | Saves | Shares | Likes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Drivable Day Trips from Dallas | Apr 23, 2026 | 62,558 | 46,285 | 1,489 | 1,129 | 1,324 |
| 25+ Family-Friendly Activities Around DFW | Mar 11, 2026 | 26,781 | 21,483 | 91 | 93 | 175 |
| Instagram total | Two reels | 89,339 | 67,768 | 1,580 | 1,222 | 1,499 |
- The day trips post travelled. 1,489 saves and 1,129 shares on Instagram, and 88,248 views on Facebook from 65,618 distinct people. Saves are the signal that matters here: people filed the list to use later, which is exactly how a printed guide gets used too.
- Spring Break has a shorter fuse. The family adventures post went up March 11 for a holiday that starts the following week, so it did its work fast and in a narrower window. It still held people for an average of 4.4 seconds, and the article behind it is still collecting readers seven months later.
- Both posts also ran on TikTok and each carried a two-frame Instagram Story series. Those were delivered as contracted; platform-level numbers for them are not in our reporting.
NewsletterOne email, 50,341 inboxes, 1,610 clicks to Toyota
On April 23 the whole weekly send belonged to Toyota: subject line, hero, every stop on the list, and five Grand Highlander placements threaded through it.
| Placement | Total clicks | Unique clicks |
|---|---|---|
| Placement 1 | 426 | 284 |
| Placement 2 | 346 | 217 |
| Placement 3 | 121 | 73 |
| Placement 4 | 270 | 172 |
| Placement 5 | 447 | 265 |
| Five placements, one send | 1,610 | 1,011 |
Sent
50,341
Dallasites101 subscribers, April 23, 2026
Opened
19,741
unique opens, a 39.3% open rate
Clicked to Toyota
1,011people
1,610 total clicks on the Grand Highlander link
- Two placements were contracted. Five ran. The guide was long enough to carry the Grand Highlander through the whole email rather than bolting it on top, and the placements furthest down the page did some of the best work.
- Roughly one in twenty people who opened clicked through to Toyota. For a brand email with no offer and no discount code, that is a strong rate, and it is the clearest line in the whole campaign from our audience to Toyota's own site.
- The subject line did the lifting. "11 Drivable Day Trips from Dallas 🚗" read as a Dallasites101 guide, not a car ad, and opened above our 2026 average for dedicated sends.
Website18,371 reads, and the guides are still up
Both lists also live as sponsored articles on dallasites101.com through March 2027. The day trips guide is one of the ten most-read pages on the whole site, so Toyota bought a seat on a page Dallas was already going to find.
Pageviews
18,371
on the two sponsored guides, March 1 to October 11, 2026
Readers
14,679
distinct people, 78% of them engaged with the page
Still running
5months left
both guides stay sponsored through March 2027
| Sponsored guide | Pageviews | Readers | Engagement rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Drivable Day Trips from Dallas | 15,423 | 12,261 | 78.0% |
| 25+ of the Best Family Friendly Activities in DFW | 2,948 | 2,418 | 74.9% |
| Both guides, March 1 to October 11, 2026 | 18,371 | 14,679 | 77.5% |
- This is the part that compounds. The social posts peaked in a week. The day trips article has pulled 1,300 to 2,800 readers every single month since, almost all of it from people searching for a day trip out of Dallas, and it does it again every spring.
- Display ads ran on three relevant pages for 90 days, March 11 to June 11. Across that window the site served 472,948 pageviews to 250,025 readers. That figure is site-wide, not ad-level; our content platform does not report impressions per placement.
- Who is reading: the Dallasites101 site is mostly new visitors arriving from search, mostly on phones, mostly in Dallas-Fort Worth. Locals planning a weekend, which is the moment the third row matters.
Strategy & ExecutionThe Grand Highlander sells itself on a specific day: the Saturday a family loads up and drives somewhere. So we did not write about the car, we wrote the Saturday. Two guides, one for Spring Break and one for road trip season, built from places our team had actually been, printed as something you keep and handed to people at our own events. Then the same two lists ran everywhere else we publish, which is why one email could send 1,011 people straight to toyota.com and why the day trips guide is still pulling readers in search every month, seven months later.