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‘Experimentation Includes Failure’; Leaders Talk About the Keys to Innovation

by Media

Failures can and should be learned from. There’s even a Museum of Failure that started in Sweden and now pops up all over the world—the latest being Calgary. “The museum aims to stimulate productive discussion about failure and inspire us to take meaningful risks.”

During ASAE22’s recent opening keynote, former biotech CEO and author Safi Bahcall “challenged attendees to test new ideas, large and small, and ignore the critics,” reported Associations Now. Here are his five keys for successful innovation—with some of our own AM&P Network-ification.

Here are some keys to innovation.

First, celebrate “good fails.” Even ideas that don’t take off can provide meaningful information. Bahcall pointed to Amazon’s history which is littered with failures. “These days, you have to rely on people in your teams to be smarter than you,” Anita Zielina, who just departed as director of news innovation and leadership at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, told us at BIMS a few years ago. “And that’s a tough thing. And embracing failure is easier said than done. We like to win and are not so excited about failure. But the culture of failure empowers your team to experiment. If you don’t, you’re not going to have creativity in the room. Experimentation includes failure, and organizations need to live with that. There is no digital product development that doesn’t have unexpected turbulences. But it also allows for agility.”

Second, avoid the idea of the CEO as a singular leader who is the sole shepherd and generator of brilliant ideas. “Rather than being a ‘Moses’ proclaiming wisdom from a mountaintop, the CEO should be a ‘gardener’ who helps coordinate ideas and takes away roadblocks from experiments.” Zielina encourages leaders to think about whether their organization is prepared for transformation. They must focus on which audiences they want or need to reach, and how to ensure that appropriate resources are prioritized. Integral to this is a “talent pipeline” as well as clarity about the type of work culture you want to instill.

Third, work to strike a balance between people with big-picture, even unusual ideas (who he calls “artists”) with the more pragmatic, rigorous and detail-focused people (who he calls “soldiers”). In their session a few years ago on New Rules for Product Development and Time to Market, Molly Lindblom, senior product marketing manager for Agiloft, and David Foster, CEO, Business Valuation Resources, wrote: “The goal is to fail cheap, fail fast and fail forward… It’s about getting quick feedback from your customers and segments… When you invalidate an assumption, say you find out that you completely mischaracterized a customer segment, you walk away with those insights and gems that can point you in the right direction.”

Fourth, manage a supply of experiments that are adjacent to your core mission and some that might initially seem off-point. “I tell everybody that works for me that I’d rather have them try and fail than not try,” said Rajeev Kapur, CEO of 1105 Media. “And that I want them to make a decision. We can fix a bad decision; we can’t fix a no-decision. No one will ever get fired for trying something new or for failing at something they tried to do. I reward people who try, people who think outside the box. I am doing everything I can to empower my team all the way down the chain to say, ‘Look, this is what we need to do for the customer.'”

Fifth, Bahcall said creating urgency around an experiment is more important than letting everybody in on what you’re doing. “Create a culture to build trust and collaboration, and breaking down silos…” Tim Hartman, CEO of GovExec, once told us. “Think ambitious experiments and trust each other. If you look around and don’t see that, you have a problem.” “Once you have the data from real experiments, you can convince the skeptics,” Bahcall said.

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Off-Hour Sends, Numbers, Welcomes and Empathy Can Help Get Emails Noticed

by Media

Adjust your subject line to how your audience opens your emails. If it’s on their phone, go short; on desktop you can go longer. According to a study from Marketo, 41 characters, or 7 words, seems to be a sweet spot for email subject line length. Other advice? Be direct and reflect what’s in the email. That will also build trust.

“Catch up quickly on DMV news every morning,” an email subject line from The Washington Post read last week. The email promotes a new newsletter from the Post called The 7 DMV [DC, Maryland, Virginia for those out-of-towners]. “We’re launching The 7 DMV, a super-scannable briefing newsletter, written with your busy morning in mind.”

For some, we’ve reached the point where “quickly,” “busy” and “super-scannable” are words of choice for promoting content. (Also interesting that they’ve put a number in their newsletter title.) For others, like Morning Brew, short and sweet still reigns. “Something old, something new” was Friday’s subject line. They believe in their brand to the point of simply relying on their coffee icon in the subject line.

In their Email Engagement Report – Q2 2022, Omeda tested their results that short subject lines get more opens and clicks—on their own newsletter mailing. “In the end, our winning subject line was ‘Omeda Newsletter’—beating out every phrase and all the top subject line keywords we tested,” they wrote. “After testing longer and shorter phrases on other types of emails, what we found is simple: subject lines that are short, concise and specific are most successful.”

Here are 9 other ways to get more attention for your emails:

Focus on the content creators. When it came to hiring writers for Morning Brew, managing editor Neal Freyman said that he had focused on hiring people with a comedic streak, rather than traditional journalists. “We’re super bullish on the fact that people are really loyal to particular individuals. We do think that brands are important, which is why it’s Morning Brew not Neal Freyman that sends you an email. That works—it’s not extinct.”

Take a number please. Email open and reply rates go up when there’s a number in the subject line. “Numbers and data get your emails noticed,” a report said last year. “Demonstrate a clear and straightforward message about your offer, and set the right expectations for your readers, helping draw them in.”

Make it a welcome message. I recall a study that said welcome messages get opened more than any others. We like to be invited in. More than 30% of onsite digital subscriptions originate from welcome messages that provide an introduction to new readers and “warn” messages that serve as reminders as the reader approaches the paywall meter limit. Also use your welcome email or series to ask questions of your subscribers so you can segment better later.

Compare and test. Compare when people opened your email to the day/time you actually sent it. Then send your next email at that time when your readers are telling you they are most likely to open email.” Also test different send lines—a person compared to an organization; a mobile responsive design; and a strong call to action—is it telling people exactly the action they should take?

Monitor your sender reputation. According to Demand Metric, “a surprising percentage of study participants do not monitor their sender reputation or were unsure if it is being monitored. Marketers who are not actively monitoring their sender reputation should strongly consider leveraging Sender Score, Google Postmaster Tools, Microsoft SNDS, or other similar tools.”

Give thought to the preheader text. Preheaders summarize the content in your email for added explanation and enticement. Your readers get an opportunity to preview the email, even while it sits unopened in their inbox. I just started doing this for another newsletter, and the open rate has increased. When done right, the subject line and the preheader complement each other. One example: “Innovative event ideas – Coffee mugs for speakers, drive-in meetings and year-round platforms highlight new twists for the virtual age.”

Send at off times. “As found in our report, 70% of all email traffic occurs within the first 10 minutes of every hour,” writes Greg Kimball, SVP for Validity. “It’s easy for email marketers to schedule their bulk sends for round numbers like 12 and 1 p.m., but if every marketer thinks this way, that means your recipients are getting dozens of impersonal, automated emails in the same chunks of time throughout the day. Shifting your sends by just 10 to 15 minutes means your emails won’t get lost in the hourly influx of messages.”

Seek customer feedback. “To ensure high email relevancy, implement ongoing feedback mechanisms,” Validity reports. “Functionality like ‘rate this email’ provides a quick way to gain visibility into what subscribers want. It’s also a good idea to routinely schedule re-engagement campaigns to maintain list hygiene.

Be empathetic. “The COVID-19 pandemic taught senders important lessons about achieving the right balance of commercialism and empathy in email,” writes Validity. “…Senders need to find ways to give their emails a human element and sell with sensitivity.” Added Morning Brew’s Freyman: “We’re empathetic, we’re not condescending, and we’re not super cheesy. And then under that umbrella, feel free to go crazy.”

Vector of a businessman with a hammer resetting economy after COVID-19 lockdown

‘…Content That Encourages Habit-Forming Behavior’; Instagram Proving a Path to Revenue and Engagement

by Media

“…in just a few short years, [social media] creators have been able to bulldoze outdated practices and find new ways to reach audiences,” Candace Amos, deputy editor, social media, Los Angeles Times, once told us. Now it’s Instagram in particular that seems to have become a vehicle for new ideas and a revenue-plated path for media organizations.

“Our team has two ‘wings.’” Travis Lyles, deputy director, social, off-platform curation at The Washington Post, told Rachel Karten last week for her Milk Karten newsletter on Substack. “We have what we call the ‘core social’ team, which encompasses Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Telegram. And then we have the Instagram team, which is about 8-9 people focused on IG…”

Karten’s first response—as would be ours—is “Wow.” “We currently average about 10 posts per day, but that fluctuates on a daily basis depending on how newsy a specific day is, and any project work that we plan to promote,” Lyles went on. He then talks about how the Post was one of the first publishers to add text on design and photo posts, and then start doing carousels and vertical video.

The Post now has 6.2 million Instagram followers, hoping to turn them into new subscribers. Their style is photos or graphics with headlines embedded into them. Click on the image and a 2-3 paragraph synopsis of the story pops up, ending with how to get to the original article. For a story on how to cut your sandwiches—it has to be diagonal, apparently—they finished with this: “To watch this soul-gasping sandwich sin, tap the link in our bio.”

Here are 5 more tips and uses for media organization Instagram:

Promote your content. In a recent Instagram post, the Military Officers Association of America features their heartwarming magazine cover photo with the headline: Victory for Veterans: Troops, lawmakers, military families and you help secure toxic exposure benefits for millions. In the comments we read: “Have you read the October 2022 edition of the Military Officer Magazine yet?” Other posts promote their Digital Retirement Guide, President Biden signing the MOAA-backed PACT Act, and the July Magazine’s focus on Space Force. In a poll we did of our association group, Instagram was named by respondents as the platform that their audiences engage with them most on.

Attract a younger audience. The Economist has “developed templates for our Instagram feed that provide a sample of our articles, charts, podcasts, and films, while they provide a clear, authoritative, understandable entry point to our journalism—particularly for younger audiences (two-thirds of our 5.8 million followers are aged 18 to 34),” writes Liv Moloney, their head of social media, on the INMA site. They “set a rhythm of eight posts a day… We wanted to devise content that encourages habit-forming behavior and referrals to The Economist’s Web site and app. It was also essential to harness analytics to learn how to reach different types of readers and, ultimately, our next generation of subscribers.” Instagram’s link-in-bio feature has “driven several million referrals to our Web site and a marked uplift in subscriptions and registrations.” They’ve also run promoted posts and sponsorships for Instagram stories. Moloney credits their trustworthiness, visual abilities and superior data journalism for their success.

Get sponsorships for interviews. In fall 2020, Alexis Redmond—then director of career management resources for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA); today she is senior director of their student association—developed an Instagram Career Portal Live, where she interviewed members about their career journeys. “The development process for each episode is about four or five hours per speaker and no real costs,” she said at the time. “Now we’re in a situation that we’re going to be able to do it with vendors. Our sponsorship team valued the offering at $2,500 per episode, and for this year, they have sold seven already. We’re always being innovative. What new ways of presenting content are out there?” Read more here.

Establish your tone. “I think voice and tone on social for news organizations is incredibly important and something that we think about a lot and take very seriously,” Lyles said. “It can definitely differ on different platforms. For example, while analyzing trends on TikTok recently, we noticed a surge in content discussing 보증된 카지노사이트, where creators emphasized the importance of trust and security in gambling platforms. This shift in focus taught us to reflect on how our own messaging must align with our core values, tailoring each post or action to ensure it resonates authentically with the audience while maintaining credibility.”

Answer audience questions. To celebrate reaching one million followers on Instagram, Vice World News journalists responded to audience questions about what stories and regions they want to hear more about. The questions were sent through the Instagram Stories ‘question’ button, and it is still ongoing. This connects the audience on the platform with the journalists in a much more personal way. The journalists also get to see where their followers are and what is concerning them, while also creating appealing content.

 

 

US - EU Executive Order on Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework

SIIA Praises Issuance of Executive Order on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework

by PolicyPress Release

The following statement can be attributed to Chris Mohr, President and Paul Lekas, Senior Vice President, Global Policy, Software & Information Industry Association.

SIIA commends President Biden and the U.S. government team for today’s executive order to formalize the agreement between the United States and the European Union on transatlantic data transfers.  The flow of data between the United States and E.U. is essential to businesses of all sizes and across a wide range of industries serving an incredibly diverse array of beneficial information and technology services.  Since the European Court of Justice Decision in Schrems II, those data flows have been burdened while the issues raised by that case were resolved.  Those burdens have been especially heavy for small and medium-sized businesses.

The Administration’s action is an essential first step to lifting that burden to the benefit of all of our members – many of whom are SMEs – along with more than 5,000 companies on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, as reflected in the executive order and new Department of Justice regulations, will reinforce responsible data protection practices and provide businesses and consumers more certainty and clarity in the significant portion of day-to-day global operations that are impacted by data flows across the Atlantic. We believe that the combination of the protection of existing law combined with the state and individual-based mechanisms in the Framework fully address the concerns raised by the European Court of Justice in its Schrems II decision.

SIIA looks forward to working with EU and U.S. officials to implement the terms of the Data Privacy Framework. While the new framework is a significant achievement, we believe that Congress should continue its work to enact a comprehensive federal privacy law with a national standard that meaningfully balances consumer protections and safeguards with business compliance.

 

Businesss collaborations concept. Vector of businesspeople reaching an agreement after successful negotiations

‘Can You Come in and Talk to Our Spies?’ Journalists Weren’t All That Axios Taught

by Media

I didn’t always write with bullets. But as Politico and Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei said, you start to look at your numbers and how people are reading you in these days of distractions, and you adapt. Longform journalism still has a huge place in the B2B world – as our Neal winners showed this year – but for daily consumption, being short sits tall.

“The greatest gift you can give yourself and others in this cluttered world is their time back. Use as few words, as few sentences, as humanly possible,” VandeHei said in his TEDx talk in July, just prior to their sale for $525 million to Cox Enterprises.

“So that person gets the message you want, and you both get the time back that you deserve. And I can tell you this: I’ve seen it in my own life. If you start to think about the efficiency of communication, you will see in your own mind that you’ll start to think more clearly, talk more clearly, write more clearly. And you’ll see that it’s ultimately good for you because you’ll be heard again.”

Axios’ founders even wrote a book called Smart Brevity to share their transformative methods for “punching through the noise” to get people to pay attention to what matters most. “People want smart content, essential content, but they want it delivered efficiently, as fast as humanly possible,” VandeHei said.

Perhaps above all, Axios made their brand scalable. They built a national platform with an elite audience—and then added a high-end subscription business, Axios Pro. Then they started to take their Smart Brevity on the road. They’re in 24 cities today, with six more expected soon.

Here are five other reasons for Axios’ success:

Bring your message to the (interesting) people. VandeHei said how they taught Axios journalists to write their way—“they adapted right away”—and built this company around “smart brevity.” All of a sudden, they had incredible readership, and he said that he received hundreds of thank-you emails, followed by inquiries from entities like the NBA and CIA—yes, that CIA—wanting to know how to do this. “’Can you come in and talk to our team about how spies can give a much more crisper explanation about what they’re seeing on the ground,’” he said. “’What are the threats? They’re not great communicators, their messages are meandering.’ So my partner goes in, talks to the CIA, gives them the tips and tricks…” (The guy who wrote presidential briefs for Trump apparently was in the audience and quit to work for Axios.)

Niches contain riches (and first-party data generators). “Given the number of verticals that Axios launched, it’s essentially a general interest news outlet at this point—no different from a New York Times or USA Today—but its emphasis on niche newsletters allowed it to generate great first-party data that made it the perfect vehicle for native ads,” wrote Simon Owens in an excellent column titled 4 Things Axios Did Right in his Media Newsletter on Substack. “It’s perfectly designed for email consumption, but Axios also prioritized web optimization for each of its scooplets so that they could be easily shared on social media.”

An audience strategy built on first-party data. In their Email Engagement Report – Q2 2022, Omeda wrote: “Email continues to be a force, and with a few tricks to test out and some diligence, you can optimize performance over time. Plus, when your audience strategy is built on a foundation of first-party data, you’ll be well-prepared for future changes.”

Right vehicle at the right time. “There are so many ways technology has helped email newsletters become a replacement for the newspaper and magazine as people’s view into the world and how they get news and information,” said Kerel Cooper, CMO of email service provider LiveIntent. “It’s in your inbox. It’s there almost on-demand when you’re ready to consume it. With the pandemic and everyone being home, that growth accelerated.” Omeda wrote that newsletters have a better click rate than every other email type except for reader service and white papers.

Hire great people. “Axios devoted a substantial portion of its hiring to mid-career journalists with already-existing brands,” Owens writes. (Industry Dive, which was also recently sold for a $525 million tag, used that strategy as well.) “While the average salary was likely higher, these journalists were able to scale up their niche verticals more quickly and efficiently than they otherwise would have if they were hired right out of college.” In addition, they never became overly reliant on Facebook, thus having more control of their audience.