How Newspapers Can Monetize Data

“In god we trust, all others must bring data.” This quote by W. Edwards Deming sums up the focus information businesses will need in the future. Newspapers collect large volumes of data during long relationships with readers. These relationships are their biggest assets and can become their biggest opportunities. By understanding users in real time, newspapers can customize news consumption experiences and specifically target them to the needs and lifestyles of their readers. Newspapers are in positions to use information successfully by connecting data points for predictive analysis that could drive both user engagement and advertiser results.

Big data results from our use of connected devices—everything from cell phones and utility meters to card swipe machines and smart gadgets. All these devices interact with us and continuously capture and transmit data. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, as well as the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things is rapidly leading big data to become a key basis of competition and growth for companies.

What constitutes big data?

Krishna Tewari explains big data as the confluence of three trends: Big Transaction Data, Big Interaction Data and Big Data Processing.

Big data can be compiled from various disparate data sources of publishers, then analyzed and used to form strategies for marketing, customer retention, pricing offers, upselling and bundling of products and services.

What type of data is collected by publishers?

Newspapers are deeply connected with their audiences. They collect commercial information, in addition to personal preferences and media consumption habits.

Email Marketing to Drive Revenue in a Cross-Platform World

A recent study found small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) ($1-50 million and less than 1,000 employees) are spending the largest portion of their marketing budgets on email marketing, not traditional media like print, radio and TV, and not social media like Facebook or Twitter. At 15%, email marketing is ahead of events and trade shows, person-to-person contact, print ads and social media (Local Media Innovation Alliance, “Email Delivers Dollars . . . . and Data).

But it is important to remember that today’s email is different than the blanket campaigns of the past. It’s precision marketing, not blasting. “It’s a campaign to market products or to market your customers’ products. It’s email marketing. It’s about collecting data. It’s about making money immediately and it’s about driving the relevancy of your property to crazy busy people” (Ruth Presslaff, founder of Presslaff Interactive Revenue).

It is also a cross-platform world with mobile access to email on the rise. In March 2013, IDC surveyed over 1,000 iPhone and Android users between the ages of 18-44 and email ranked number one in use for 78 percent of respondents, ahead of browsing the web or Facebook. Presslaff commented, “When I want to sell a product, it’s email. When I want to reach a specific segment of my audience, it’s email.”

Sheryl Pattek, VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research said. “Smart marketers work to litter potential buyer’s paths with actionable data to help solve problems. Then they devise ways to contact them when they are most open to receiving marketing messages.”

Local media and other companies that provide marketing services to SMBs have an opportunity to provide email and list rental services to customers. For example, newspaper sales staff can offer print advertisers access to email addresses they don’t have, which come along with permission to send messages, demographic data and a high rate of opens and engagement. As reported in the Local Media Innovation Alliance report, “Email Delivers Dollars . . . and Data,” The Salisbury Post is a 20,000 circulation daily newspaper based in Rowan County, North Carolina. Their growing email lists can now fetch $125 per thousand addresses from small clients looking to reach these high-quality targets. They charge $750-1,500 to build a contest for a client, an effort which takes one person 15-20 minutes.

Considering the high SMB adoption rate, the evolution of the tactic and the opportunity for providers, here are some email marketing tips for advertisers, as well as publishers and marketing services companies looking to help them succeed (seven by Karen J. Bannan that appeared in B2B magazine were incorporated).

1. Use the right tools. Email marketing services such as Constant Contact, iContact and MailChimp automate delivery and provide templates to streamline the technical aspects of sending email. Pricing is simple and ranges from $15 per month for up to 500 addresses to $150 per month for 25,000 addresses.

Typically, publishers and marketing services companies interested in re-selling services can earn from 15 to 40 percent of the revenue generated by their customers and get free use of the mail services tools for themselves.

2. Build your lists. Consider every point of contact with your audience and try to solicit opt-ins. Your trade show booth, product warranty registrations, Contact Us forms, contests or contend offerings are all venues to ask for email addresses and contact details. Integrate mobile into your acquisition programs. You can launch a simple campaign where subscribers can text a short code with “subscribe” and their email addresses. Promote email sign-ups on your social media accounts as well. Add Facebook and Twitter buttons in your emails and ask subscribers to forward emails and share them with friends.

In general, you should make it simple for viewers to join your list. Don’t force them to fill out lengthy registration forms. You can capture more information later by providing a discount, free consultation or something else of value in return, says the California Small Business Development Center.

Newspapers can develop contests or giveaways that encourage readers to provide their email addresses and answer a few demographic questions in exchange for the opportunity to win valuable prizes.

3. Do a competitive analysis. One of the best tactics for SMBs to build lists is to look at the competition’s websites. See who their customers are and target them. Typically, there will be case studies or lists/logos of clients posted.

Newspapers have databases all over the place, including circulation lists, advertiser lists, registered story commentators, submitters of calendar and other news items, community contacts and story sources. They are compiled by audience development managers (circulation managers), digital sales managers and marketing directors.

4. Capture more data. The best way to boost engagement is to send more targeted information but you need as much data as possible about prospects to do this effectively. Consider merging Google or other web analytics data with email databases, adding fields that show products users may have researched. Or you can include geography, short-term goals, keywords search and comments.

Keep in mind, if data is king then content is queen. Data alone does not automatically guarantee relevant communications. Marketers need to pair data with context and content that is going to resonate with their audiences.

5. Think programs not individual messages. The objective is to create strong consumer communication experiences and build campaigns that tie together across messages to bring more depth to each and result in engaging experiences. Continuously nurture your customer relationships, helping them to covert and achieve brand loyalty. Rewarding customers with incentives and offers is just as important as winning back customers who are dormant or lapsed.

Newsrooms are getting into the act too and helping to deliver local content to readers who share their email addresses. Breaking news alerts are popular with sponsoring advertisers. There can be an element of fun as well, with “guess the date of the first snowfall contests” and more. Newspapers can ask readers for their birthdays and other special dates and sell a wide variety of local businesses the opportunity to target these diners, shoppers and travelers.

6. Use mobile wisely. It is important to design for mobile since consumers have the ability to open an email on one of almost 100 different screen sizes, according to Shawn Myers, VP of marketing for StrongMail. New approaches like responsive design help create templates that work with the dominant platforms used by consumers. Another recommendation is to prioritize and display only the relevant information and make it finger-friendly. You should also have optimized landing pages. You will drive better results from your campaigns if you remember that consumers value consistent experiences.

Simm Jenkins encourages us to be mobile marketers who just happen to be leveraging the email channel. He reports that K notice says the number of emails opened on a mobile device during the first half of 2012 overall rose to 36 percent. Ensure that mobile doesn’t just sit in the back of your head but greatly impacts all of your email markets.

7. Ask for referrals. Whenever you send emails, ask recipients for referrals. The most likely to provide them are customers who have used your product or service for a while. Anyone who recently purchased from you is also a good candidate. Give readers the option to share in various places, such as links and buttons in various places throughout the email.

8. Segment by profitability and look for similarities. Few people use their list of best customers to the fullest. Look at this segment as a whole and find commonalities. Is there a title, vertical market, geography in common? Have they performed the same action or responded to the same promotion? Once you find the common ground, you can search for other prospects that share the trait.

9. Append using social data. May social data appending services can look at the 100 most recent buyers, profile them and find patterns. If a majority of people who bought a product are members of the same LinkedIn group, you can try to join and promote to them or search for more people to target.

10. Use list verification services and platforms. It’s worth taking the time to run your database through services such as BriteVerify, FreshAdress and PowerData. More than three-quarters of deliverability challenges have to do with reputation. That’s why it is so important to keep your emails from bouncing, garnering complaints or hitting spam traps.

11. Send the right message to the right people at the right time. Create campaigns not only for each segment of your list (e.g., customer/sales lead, title, region, etc.), but also by how they interact with the content of your emails. For example, if someone clicks on a particular link X, they immediately receive Y communication. Provide value through your content and send e-newsletters, white papers, reports, surveys, product comparisons, how-to instructions, etc. Email at least once a month to stay visible. A newsletter is a good format for monthly distribution but you could send notices of sales or special offers bimonthly or even weekly.

12. Test and measure. Monitor which subject lines, content, design and frequency get the best results based on open rates, click-through rates and other measures.

Whether you conduct your own campaigns or provide the service to others, like all marketing tactics, email is not static. Marketers must continually evolve and advance strategies to stay on top of these trends and improve their results.

How have you changed your approach to email marketing? Do you have any great tips to add to the ones above?

Five Tips for Ordering Online Ads

You can imagine that with our large capacity of more than 1,500 employees and range of digital and print design services, we have really seen it all when it comes to instructions. We’ve gotten scans of handwritten doodles on napkins, three-word requests we have to interpret and creative briefs with about as many pages as a dictionary. It certainly makes each day interesting!

Fortunately, we have learned through all these client encounters a few tips on how to submit orders for online ads to get the best results from Affinity Express and from just about any provider or employee you may use.

1.Logos and Images

• Send logos that have good resolution. Vector artwork in Adobe Illustrator or .EPS format is preferred because these files can be scaled to any size without loss of clarity.
• If this is not possible, at least make sure that the logo you submit is not too small for the specific design you need.
• When ordering animated ads, limit the number of images to avoid blurriness. Ads should only have three or four images because any more than that will mean downgrading the image quality, which can be noticeable.

2. Look and Feel

Communicate how you would like your design to look in general. Other information that is useful is your brand colors or preferences for overall color schemes and main images to feature (or send images or reference samples). For example, “We are an exclusive jewelry maker and this ad needs to look very upscale. Please use icy blues and silvers.”

3. Copy

Write the copy exactly the way you would like to see it written in the ad. So if there if there are punctuation marks, include them. If a certain word or phrase should be in all capitals, state that. Indicate the main headline and differentiate it from the minor copy.

If you are sending in a document from which text should be lifted, be specific on which copy needs to be included, ignored and included if there is space. This helps a designer to prioritize what is important to you.

But remember that designers are not copywriters. They see text as blocks of information to be moved around to create space and can’t edit for you.

4. Animation

• Let us know the elements you would like to see in the first, second, third frame, etc.
• Draw storyboard if you can (but it is not required)
• Tell us how you would like the animation to flow from one screen to the next. In other words

1. Please start off the animation with the image of the car entering the frame.
2. While keeping the car on the screen, the next frame should have the logo along with the main headline.
3. Next bring in the sale price of the vehicle with the original price crossed out in red.
4. The last screen should be the logo again with all the contact information: phone number, address and website.

• If you are referencing one of your previous ads, indicate the information to include and to leave out.

5. Other Elements

Explain what elements, fonts and colors the designer can or cannot use. To illustrate: “Please use one or two heart elements in the same pink shade as the logo.” or “We do not want any fancy fonts in this ad.”

Things to Avoid

Refrain from giving directions are not very specific or can be interpreted in different ways:

Bad:     “The ad does not flow.”

Better:  “The flow of the animation needs to be the logo, the image of the bike, the headline, the minor copy and the contact information along with the website.”

Bad:     “The background needs to be green.

Better:  “Specify what kind of green you would like. If you can include an image with the particular color you have in mind or specify the color swatch number in Photoshop, that is even better.

Bad:     “The text needs to be eye-catching.”

Better:  “Please use a bolder font for the main headline and make the word “free” in all caps and red.”

Bad:     “The design needs to pop.”

Better:  “Please make the logo stand out more compared to the rest of the background. The sale price also needs to be more noticeable, as well as the ‘Click Here’ button.”

Remember that less is more and keep it simple.

• File sizes are limited on the web.
• Space is small.
• People will see your ad for little time.
• The less text the better, so focus on what is most important

Have you been successful providing instructions to designers? What tactics have been especially effective for you? If you design, what are the worst instructions you have received for a project? We’d love to compare notes!

Adam Burnham Talks About the Future of Multi-Media Publishing

Earlier this week, we announced that multimedia publishing veteran Adam Burnham joined Affinity Express as vice president of interactive services. I was fortunate to meet him in person and had an opportunity to ask him some of the same questions many of you are asking yourselves and your colleagues about the industry, transitioning to digital services providers and models that work. Here is what we talked about.

What are the top challenges and/or obstacles for publishers as they work to transition from print only to multi-media publishing?

The economics of the business are in a constant state of transition. The classified business has retracted to become a small minority of revenue for publishers and the future of legals and preprints are in question now. Publishers have to be ready to adapt their business to what their audience and to what their advertisers want. I am in no way suggesting print will disappear; as I do not think that will be the case. But it will be a different business. I fear those who are unwilling to adapt may not survive.

What ideas or approaches have you seen work to ease this transition?

The good news is there are a number of companies taking very innovative steps and trying new things. That is the best practical approach because, if any one company had it figured out, everyone else would be copying the model. But at the core, you have to sell advertisers things they want to buy. I believe those publishers that are constantly feeding the sales organization new products and platforms, and are willing to find success through experimentation with a fail fast mentality, will be the most successful. I typically find the smaller the company, the more fluid and dynamic it can be. The digital agency concept is sweeping the publishing business but few are fully committed to it. Companies need to start thinking about what they are today and envision what they will be tomorrow. Then they should build plans accordingly.

Which digital services are being embraced earliest by SMBs and why?

I would say there are two main categories: search engine marketing (SEM) and digital services. Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are dedicating a significant part of their overall expense budgets (not just marketing) to building out dynamic solutions and customer acquisition models online. Those publishers offering website design and development, coupled with search engine optimization, pay per click, maps and social solutions are able to get in front of virtually any business. And this is what SMBs want to talk about first. You can then layer on additional marketing opportunities across all platforms. But they need this foundation.

Is it more effective to offer standalone services or packaged offerings and why?

The more comprehensive the offerings, the better they are for SMBs when it comes to time, price and relationship. Spreading money across multiple channels doesn’t allow them to properly lever their total marketing spend to get the best possible pricing. Plus, publishers that can look to offer more than just one or two platforms, will find the relationship with the SMBs will be richer and last longer.

What is the advantage multimedia publishers have in local markets as compared to pure plays and other offerings?

Multimedia publishers have the single most important advantage: an established, in-market sales force with existing relationships and a local brand. This above anything else distinguishes them from any pure play competitor.

How do multimedia publishers have to think about their audiences now versus five or ten years ago?

They have to think in terms of total audience as opposed to individual segments. The reach of a local publisher is greater than it has ever been when you combine print, online, mobile and social channels. Offering a collective solution with robust targeting capabilities is a huge opportunity.

How can publishers prepare their teams for this transition and train them to up-sell the additional services?

They need to take action. Stop talking about what you want to do and stop discussing what you can’t do. Focus on what you CAN and WILL do. Hire specialists to work with the existing sales staff that also will cultivate new business on their own. Remove complacency from the current sales organization and look to serve the market as a whole. Stop constricting yourself by what you don’t know.

In your experience helping Digital First Media turn the company around, did anything surprise you when working to drive digital growth and launch new platforms and services?

I would not call it a surprise, but more of a challenge. You walk a fine line of being aggressive and driving change versus taxing the bandwidth of the local sales organization. I think you can only fit so much on one plate and it takes time for things to really click. Make sure you have proper support functions in place so sales people can sell.

What’s the best advice you could offer to publishers eager to offer digital services to their advertisers?

You can build the best solution, create the best marketing material, have the best training and sell the hell out of it. But if you cannot fulfill it, you will fail. Be overly-prepared to support the sales effort and partner with companies that are strong where you are weak.

What questions would you want to ask Adam? Do you have any perspective on helping publishers transition from print-only to multi-channel? What tactics or approach have worked?

About Adam Burnham

As vice president of interactive for Affinity Express, Adam focuses on digital product mix, workflow and fulfillment solutions, helping drive both top and bottom line improvement. Previously, he led the digital first sales strategy at Journal Register Company and Digital First Media; driving industry leading growth rates since January 2010.

Adam runs at a very aggressive pace to capture larger shares of marketing dollars with businesses of all sizes; local, regional and national. He specializes in growing revenue in both traditional and non-traditional ways, as well as in developing and integrating defined sales strategies.

Celebrating National Newspaper Week

 

National Newspaper Week

Affinity Express is Cheering for Our Publishing Clients

Newspapers have been the vehicle used by marketers for centuries to promote their businesses and drive new revenue. Acting as the voice of local communities, they are the ideal media choice for small- to medium-sized businesses. Today, the addition of online news sites and a range of digital services illustrates that publishers are very much in sync with the information and news consumption preferences of their audience, as well as the marketing needs of their customers.

In honor of National Newspaper Week, Affinity Express celebrates our publishing clients and appreciates their support. We are proud to be a resource for multimedia publishers striving to innovate and serve as digital agencies for advertisers.

Are you Attending the Fall Conference of Local Media Association in Atlanta?

Meet us at the Fall Conference for Publishers and Advertising Directors

Affinity Express at the Fall Conference of Local Media Association