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‘We’re Looking for Ways to Deeply Engage’: Virtual Event Innovations

by Media

What could have been better this early morning than sitting on my patio with a velvety layer of fog over the lake and Zooming into a scones-making session with Stacy Brooks, director, communications and social media for the American Physiological Society (APS)?

Okay, having her send the scones over, of course, would have been sublime. But I will happily make them myself another day. This was part of AM&P 2020—the annual conference of a sister division here, Association Media & Publishing—and it put me in the perfect mood to watch their keynote speaker, Mario Garcia, the distinguished author and Columbia professor. (I will also soon write about Garcia and a terrific session Brooks co-hosted yesterday on writing and editing in this age.)

 

“We’re looking for ways to deeply engage with The New Yorker reader,” Eric Gillin, Condé Nast’s chief business officer of the culture division, said recently for the seven-day long New Yorker festival. Besides all the virtual interviews, they added a tactile component, a session where meals were sent out to paying attendees who then tuned in for a related panel. There was also a drive-in film in Queens, NY for local attendees to see a premiere.

 

These elements are critical to getting audiences to pay for virtual or hybrid events, said Eric Fleming, executive producer of experiential agency Makeout. Particularly “exclusivity” and a “swag-like experience” that audiences can engage with to help increase ticket sales by providing something that feels substantial.

 

Here are four other innovative ideas:

 

Make your virtual platform year-round. In June, the United Fresh Produce Association transitioned their popular annual conference into United Fresh 2020 LIVE! With 50% more attendees, they decided to create United Fresh LIVE! 365, a year-round online platform featuring a permanent expo, social gatherings, on-demand education, webinars, conference programming, and networking opportunities for the global produce industry. “We basically built a year-round convention center,” John Toner, VP of convention and industry collaboration, of the United Fresh LIVE! 365 platform, told Convene. “[The platform] serves as the connection point,” adding that exhibitors whose engagement strategy went beyond the show floor reaped the best results.

 

Mugs for the camera. To foster a spirit of connectedness at their annual conference, BIO (Biotechnology Innovation Organization) Digital changed the meeting’s tagline from ‘Beyond’ to ‘Nothing Stops Innovation.’ Then, in advance of the conference, the group mailed all speakers a custom mug with the new tagline.” It was an added expense, but worth it because it gave speakers brand recognition onscreen that reflected togetherness, said Erin Lee, VP of marketing operations and customer experience at BIO. She added that engagement has become “more about building loyalty, the power of the brand, and giving members access to resources and connectivity in a time of need.” BIO surveyed members—always like to hear that—to find out what would be most helpful for them. “We focused on being a service to the industry.”

 

Start a Niche-Within-Your-Niche Week. Two years ago, Access Intelligence’s Event Marketer put on a Women in Events Week. While they already had a Women in Events print feature, the special 2018 Women in Events Week brought it to life, as “the editorial team transformed the franchise into a week-long series of experiences across 15 cities that engaged more than 1,000 industry women in panels, presentations, professional development and networking activities that ultimately generated [thousands of dollars] in sponsorship revenue.” There were also unconventional networking functions like sneaker art classes and offbeat museum tours. All of this can be translated for this virtual age. Our own FISD did a splendid virtual FISD Week a few months ago that also featured a women’s panel—not the norm for this financial division—and other engaging activities.

 

Make the content a series. An in-person event is pretty much confined to those days. There should be no limit to a virtual event. Eric Shanfelt, founding partner of Nearview Media, suggests a series of sessions to comprise an event. “We’ll just do a live webcast every Friday at 1 pm Eastern. We’ll record it and put it in the members only section, and then in a podcast. Sponsors will like it because they get multiple mentions in email, the webcast, on-demand and the podcast. People can then come in when they want and view what they want.” Added Matthew Cibellis of Cibellis Solutions: “I want to emphasize that SIPA member companies might want to (at least for the near term) begin thinking through a sponsorable monthly series, rather than one or two big annual events as a means of engaging their attendees and sponsors.”

 

And, maybe, make scones for those monthly events. I’d be in!

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‘We Changed Parameters’ and Saw a 50% Jump; Lower Paywalls, Higher Returns

by Media

The international media association WAN-IFRA recently held its Digital Media Asia 2020 conference, virtually, of course. “Input from the management, marketing and data teams was key to improving the subscription rate of the South China Morning Post’s (SCMP) digital version, according to Vienna Lee, SCMP’s digital marketing director, audience growth.” (This was reported on the WAN-IFRA site.)

 

“The SCMP ePaper was previously free to all readers,” Lee said. “But on August 10th, we launched a paywall for selected markets. Then we changed the parameters so that readers would get five free articles before hitting the paywall instead of 10 previously.’’

 

“Surprisingly, there was a 50% higher subscription rate with five free articles compared to 10 free articles. The next initiative involved changing the background color of the subscription page from a lighter background to a darker background. ‘To our surprise again, readers preferred the darker background,’ added Lee. Further tests also showed higher engagement when readers logged in with their personal accounts, compared to being anonymous.”

 

I’ve mentioned before a report that came out last year from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and Lenfest Institute titled, How Today’s News Publishers Can Use Data, Best Practices, and Test-And-Learn Tactics to Build Better Pay-Meters.

 

Even though it came out before the pandemic, the practices it preached seem to be even more accurate today. Here are some of those:

 

Most publishers are too generous and need to stop more readers to force conversion. The report talks a great deal about the importance of having a high stop rate—that is the percentage of all digital users who are ‘stopped’ by a subscription prompt, a paywall or a meter limit. It is calculated by the number of users stopped by a meter or paywall in a given month over the number of unique visitors during that period. The report found that the organizations that are stopping more people have stronger digital businesses. During 2020, many publishers did lift their paywall for their COVID-19 stories and resources. But that bump has started to fade some.

 

You might want to lower your meter limit. As the above example attests to, a majority of publishers with metered models set their meter limits at five articles per month or lower. This number has gone steadily down since 2012. Some publishers used to set the paywall as high as 25 articles a month. “As publishers have experimented, and readers have become accustomed to digital subscription, meter limits have tended to decline among the publishers studied and within the industry at large.” I know many publishers, including Digiday, now do three.

 

Increase reader opportunities to encounter the meter. Is the meter simply the articles a reader clicks on, or are there more factors involved? You might lower the meter rate for more editorially-intensive content. Their limit might be increased if they do other things with you. For those with an ad blocker, a subscription message might be customized to invite the reader to subscribe or turn your ad blocker off to continue to read content before the average meter stop.

 

Quicken your load times. “Page load times represent the largest difference between successful publishers in the top percentile and 50th percentile of publishers studied, with a median load times of 5.76 seconds.” Avoid advertising overload—probably easier in 2020—use real estate to drive readers to subscription options, and encourage content discovery through customized recommendations and infinite scrolls.

 

Be clear and make it easy. “The most effective stop messages include a single clear call to action, offer attractive introductory trial rates and include buttons that make clear the location(s) to click to advance the offer. Others include content-specific messages that link to the specific articles or sections the readers are pursuing.” If you want people just to register in order to get past an initial paywall, try to convey that registration will be very brief. “Small changes in the purchase experience for a user—such as slight delays in page load times, unclear instructions, extra data fields, or confusing presentations of an offer—can lead a user to abandon their purchase.” Also, the desktop conversion rate was five times higher than the rate for mobile.

Again, you can see the whole report here.

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The Crisis Editorial Strategy That the FT and Northwestern Agree on

by Media
“It may seem to be verging on madness to make this move during such unusual times, but we have found this new currency, properly communicated, has given everyone involved a new sense of purpose at a strange time.”
That quote comes from Tim Part, a manager at FT (Financial Times) Strategies in London, in an article on the INMA website yesterday.
The new currency he is talking about is the introduction of a reader lifetime value (LTV) into their editorial lexicon. “Long ago we realized the story of reader engagement was a better one to tell to the newsroom compared to a simple volumetric yarn about pageviews,” Part wrote. “Quality reads and RFV (revenue, frequency, volume) scores have long been embedded in the newsroom, but it was important to move toward LTV as a key metric.”
Interestingly, I looked up reader lifetime value and came across pre-pandemic research from Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center that also pushes retention and individual subscriber value over the effort and expense of attracting new subscribers—though with different initials: CLV.
“Being able to move a reader to a subscriber, while important, has much less leverage and value than growing the long-term value of that subscriber,” said Tom Collinger, Spiegel’s executive director. “Understanding and then working to grow [customer] lifetime value (CLV) is a well-known goal and measure in the retail and e-commerce space. [CLV is a] far newer and less familiar goal” in American news organizations, but it’s one they should embrace as customer revenue becomes more of a priority and advertising dollars become less of one.
Here are key takeaways from Northwestern’s research and FT Strategies’ “new currency”:
Add dedicated Slack channels. While Zoom meetings can work internally, FT’s Part said it’s the “informal chatter around the main news desk” at events that needs to be created virtually. “Dedicated Slack channels were set up to replicate this as much as possible.”
Look at new technology. A new tool, Spark, “enables our journalists to collaborate more on articles. It means the messaging platform is less cluttered,” Part wrote.
Keep your audience informed. “The [FT Strategies] audience engagement team also beefed up its existing daily e-mail communications to ensure this remained the place to keep track of the many new initiatives the FT has launched during these unprecedented times.”
Keep your newsletters strong. “The newsletter is one of those things that is going to bump you from 97 to 98 [retention rate],” said Ed Malthouse, Spiegel’s research director. “The way someone running a newsroom should think is as follows: ‘I’m going to need to devote a reporter to create that newsletter. What’s that worth?’ There are costs associated with having that reporter. Everybody who subscribes to the newsletter—let’s say they go from having 25 to 40 future payments. You can then do the math to determine whether it is a smart thing to do.’“
Monitor engagement, even more now. “Many news organizations, understandably, have been laser focused on acquiring new digital subscribers,” said Medill Senior Associate Dean Tim Franklin. “But what this research shows is that isn’t nearly enough, and is not even the most important thing. News organizations need strategies to build long-term loyalty with the subscribers they already have. Otherwise, they’re just pouring water into a leaking bucket.”
Take into account the patterns of the new normal. I wrote a column about this last week when a dryer vent cleaning company targeted Saturday as the best day to schedule everyone, even though so many people are home during the week now. FT’s Part said they see their audience’s new behavior and hours in their metrics and reminds us that “the commute has disappeared, leading to a flatter level of consumption, but one which starts an hour earlier and finishes an hour later. Journalists need to understand these new patterns and be able to produce content tailored to them.”
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Turning Your Virtual Event Into an Ongoing Series Has its Benefits

by Media
In a post on Skift’s Event Manager Blog today, Julius Solaris writes that we need a better business model for virtual events. “[These events] need to help brands keep the conversation alive while bringing in revenue. We risk losing track of the endgame if we get sucked into the vortex of free events without a solid business proposition for what we are doing.”
He gives six suggestions:
1. Decide whether you are a conference or a tradeshow.
2. Use a subscription model for ticketed events.
3. Build a community.
4. Reward live attendance.
5. Offer better content on demand.
6. Offer one-to-one meetings and networking.
Number two intrigues me. “One of the best ideas for ticketed events that happen regularly is to bundle them and offer subscriptions,” Solaris writes. “As Netflix does with shows, planners should deal with events. Bundling creates more value than selling tickets for individual events.”
This strategy makes sense. BVR did something similar with their Virtual Divorce Conference, extending event sessions over the course of a month to do exactly that, add more value. Matthew Cibellis of Cibellis Solutions, an expert on events—virtual and in-person—expressed similar sentiments to me last week in an email.
“I want to emphasize that SIPA member companies might want to (at least for the near term) begin thinking through a sponsorable monthly series, rather than one or two big annual events as a means of engaging their attendees and sponsors,” he wrote. “Could you take each track for an annual conference and now divide it up by month? What about a month-one-track-one, month-two-track-two, etc. approach where sponsors who more closely align with track 2, say, can sponsor the monthly event that focuses on track 2 issues?
“Your attendee price may drop, but the sponsor experience should be far more actionable with real leads that are warm or seeing their business as more Top of Mind,” Cibellis continued. “If [organizations] are flexible in thinking this way, they do not need to do it all themselves. They can hire a marcom events pro or any number of more webinar-focused solutions companies and develop affordable approaches to the rich content developed for their annual meetings.”
Another possible strategy for virtual events that plays off of what Cibellis suggests is something akin to what Netflix has been doing: plan your monthly series, sell the bundle, but then also sell just the first session as kind of a trial. Netflix, which ended its practice of using 30-day free trials in the United States, began using free content sampling as an alternative subscription promotion strategy during the past year.
Writes MediaPost, “Through a free sampling portal (no registration required), prospects can view the first episode of Netflix original TV series like Stranger Things and Grace and Frankie or watch select full movies like Murder Mystery… At the end, Netflix shows a simple message suggesting that if you liked the content, you can join now to see ‘everything on Netflix that everyone’s talking about’ (including the rest of the TV series, if you just sampled one).”
Solaris, who mentioned Netflix, has obviously considered this: “Attendees may be busy for an event, or timing may not work out. That’s missed revenue. Bundling means selling more than the individual event; it means selling the many opportunities available throughout the year. An alternative is to consider a freemium model that offers one event for free and asks for payment going forward.”
I think the content is too good to offer free, especially when other people are paying for an entire series, but I like the idea that it can be an enticement to buying the whole series or “event.”
“Thinking outside the live event box in this way need not take the time of your staff,” Cibellis writes. “Outsource the consulting and have them lead the execution, using your team to drive the content to best align with what your sales team needs or would want. In the end, you don’t have to sacrifice quality for ad dollars.”
Solaris adds that for him, the missing piece is “virtual event technology, still largely unable to offer subscription model features for planners. It’s a pretty stupid feature to miss; we hope they can get on with it soon.”
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‘An Opportunity to Tout Your Vital Role’ – Moving Past All-Crisis News

by COVID 19Media
The excellent site What’s New in Publishing has put out a new report titled The Publisher’s Guide to Navigating Covid-19, looking at eight trends that have emerged globally, as well as strategies that publishers have implemented as a result of increased web traffic.
Let’s take a look at four of those trends and see how they affect smaller publishers.
COVID-19 has changed our media habits. We’re spending more time with streaming services, social media and messenger services. Gaming has also seen a major pandemic bump. “Many people say that they expect their new habits to continue after the COVID-19 outbreak passes too,” said Simon Kemp. “One in five internet users say they expect to continue watching more content on streaming services, and one in seven (15%) say they expect to continue spending more time using social media.” Given this, they say, publishers need to find more ways in which they can make their new relationships with audiences as “sticky” as they can—to take advantage of the now-waning COVID bump.
“We need to think how we can make our news and information [continue to be] relevant, but especially how we can make people aware about the width and breadth of coverage we can do…,” Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives at The Washington Post, told us in May. “We’re thinking very deeply about what are the things, the products, the tools that we can offer our audience and how can we bridge [new subscribers] from caring about the news in the time of the virus to caring about the news when things are going better.”
Publishers are producing new products. As I wrote recently, we’re seeing new whitepapers like InsideARM, which addresses the debt industry, promoting a free whitepaper titled Succeeding in Collections Today Requires More Agility. Future plc must have read the WNIP report because independent media analyst Alex DeGroote said this: “Some of its products skew towards gaming—like Techradar—and gaming has gone nuts in lockdown.”
According to members of WAN-IFRA’s Global Media Trends Panel, more than half of the editorial executives they surveyed had launched new products as a result of the pandemic. “Newsletters are the most common product,” they found, “with some 55% saying they have launched them, followed by infographics (49%), and videos and live blogs (30%).” Interestingly, further research found that the decrease in commuters has been offset by consumers listening to more podcasts (ranging from 13-16% globally). There has even been growth in advertising revenue for podcasts.
People, more than ever, need a broad content mix. The Pew Research Center reported that, “about seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say they need to take breaks from news about the coronavirus, and 43% say the news leaves them feeling worse emotionally.” So even if you draw people in with COVID-related content, you can only keep them engaged with more variety. “This may involve telling stories in fresh and innovative ways, exploring new beats and approaches to storytelling (such as solutions journalism),” they write. “To this, I would also recommend looking more at the power of your archive, evergreen content, and highlighting stories from the past 3-4 months which may have been overlooked as a result of the pandemic.”
Focus on starting and building a long-term relationship. “At the risk of sounding too cynical, the increased digital readership is an opportunity for publishers to tout their vital role in providing news and information to their communities—and to form ties that can last after the crisis subsides,” wrote Rob Williams on MediaPost. Although Deloitte’s latest Digital Media trends survey said that U.S. consumers had an average of 12 paid media and entertainment subscriptions pre-COVID-19, their data also shows that consumers are busy adding new subscriptions (often taking advantage of trial pricing and ad-supported services), cancelling old ones, and also trying out new services.
Again, you can download here.