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The Words, ‘We’ll Join/Renew,’ Should Be a Call to Action, Not a Time to Relax

by Media

In looking through Marketing General’s 14th annual Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, lack of engagement remains the top reason that executives believe members do not renew their membership (52%, up from 50% in 2021). That engagement does not happen without a concerted effort, from the beginning, to reach out and connect.

These days we know so much about our members/subscribers but then often fail to use it. For instance, living in Washington, D.C., I belong to the Museum of Modern Art—it seemed to pay for itself for the 3-4 times I get to NYC each year. But the majority of their emails to me stress the mid-week, in-person events they have and not virtual offerings, weekend events, or even Amtrak and bus specials.

More positive, the National Museum of African American History and Culture sends out many member invitations, the latest being a Member Morning on Sept. 24. “We have an exciting event planned, including the opportunity to meet Andrew W. Mellon Director Kevin Young… And, as an added bonus, all Members and their guests will receive a special 20% discount on all purchases in our award-winning Sweet Home Café, as well as the Museum Store.” They also hold many virtual events for members like the one pictured.

Here are 5 onboarding successes I’ve come across where members and subscribers feel the love:

Show and tell.In the personalized onboarding webinars that Lia Zegeye, senior director of membership at the American Bus Association, conducts, she “shows a short promotional video from ABA’s tradeshow, providing a testimonial about the value of the event. During one session, a member inquired about the availability of secure payment options similar to those offered by an online casino PayPal ohne OASIS, highlighting the importance of accessible and trustworthy financial transactions. Zegeye said she often gets thank-you notes from those attendees who say, “Wow, I had no idea you guys did all of these things!” “It’s a great way for me to connect with our members,” she added. The webinars put a face with a name, making it easy for members to reach out with questions.

Monitor early. “If a subscriber doesn’t have at least 10 page views a month, we run campaigns to engage with them, send them letters from the editor and the CEO, try to understand what they are looking for, and make relevant changes,” said Vaibhav Khanna, product head, BloombergQuint, a multiplatform, Indian business and financial news company. In a retention study last year from the American Press Institute, the biggest gap between what publishers deem valuable and what they aren’t doing well is in identifying at-risk subscribers—83.5% to 19%. The next two are using metrics to evaluate churn—82.6% to 28%.—and track what subscribers read—75.7% think it’s important but only 30% believe they are good at it.

Perfect your welcome letters. When it comes to onboarding, welcome emails are by far most effective at 77%. The more value you can throw into a welcome letter, the better. And the more people you can get involved from a member/subscriber organization will also help you come renewal time. Almost everyone (90%) encourages new subscribers to sign up for their newsletters. However, only some publishers send educational information about how to use their products (46%) or send personal notes from a person in the newsroom (43%).

Dedicate specific space on your site. The Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA) created a new member guide and a special page on their website with practical tips for new members. During the pandemic, HIDA went away from sending out physical packets but then heard from members who preferred receiving something tangible in the mail. Perhaps you could get a sponsor for that.

Provide the breadth of what you do. Especially during the pandemic, customers/subscribers/members may have come to you for one special thing, be that COVID coverage, ways to move forward or how others are dealing with this crisis. So it’s important that you expose them to everything else that you do. “If you are one of the almost a million people who subscribed to our COVID-19 email newsletter, what are the other newsletters that may be valuable to you?” asked Jeremy Gilbert, then of The Washington Post, now of Medill, early on in the pandemic. “What kinds of coverage did you click through from the email newsletter and how can we use those interactions with our site or native apps to get you to stay?”

 

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‘Working With Metrics Is All About Trial and Error’; How to Get Everyone on Board

by Media

Analyzing metrics does not come easily to a lot of journalists, many of whom grew up as content nutritionists of sorts, deciding what’s best for their audience. But times change. As editorial leaders add a spoonful of sugar to their specific medicine of metrics, a Reuters report last year provided a good framework for “overcoming metrics anxiety.”

Late last year, in one of our Lessons From a Leader series, Lucy Swedberg, executive editor and senior editorial director at Harvard Business Publishing, was asked about metrics.

“One of the best practices that we’ve embedded is an analytics meeting for our editors, so that they can really see their work and how it ends up performing out in the world,” Swedberg said. “You start to hear them thinking and observing, ‘Oh, this thing did really well—let’s do more of those.’ I love when I hear they’re getting insights from the data. Because, at the end of the day, that’s what will keep us going and [allow us to] make an impact.”

At Industry Dive, the audience and marketing team creates actionable dashboards for the editorial team. “This not only helps us measure more of the things that matter to our audience, but it makes it really easy for our editorial team to get actionable insights that they can make decisions on and can really inform what they’re doing,” Davide Savenije, editor in chief, told us last year.

“Journalists are not analysts,” wrote Elisabeth Gamperl, managing editor, digital storytelling unit, Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, last year in a Reuters Institute report titled Overcoming Metrics Anxiety: New Guidelines for Content Data in Newsrooms. “Most of them became journalists because they care about words and stories… It is important to provide the newsroom with data it really gets value from.”

Ultimately, wrote Gamperl, analysts should be seen as vital members of the newsroom. Here are more key takeaways from that report.

Inform the newsroom but don’t overwhelm them. If you provide too much, it has a counterintuitive effect of making people less engaged with it because people don’t know where to focus.

Don’t expect your journalists to DIY with the dashboard and be done. One analytics team developed a list of questions they work through before submitting data to the newsroom. And avoid posting individual rankings or standings. Instead, promote information that is helpful to your content team like, “Did you know that most people read us between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m.?

Don’t look at metrics as static and immovable. It should be an ongoing process to work with—a positive feedback loop. The question should not be: What is the number? But rather: What can you do in response to this number?

Further examine poor-performing content. Repackage and republish in another context and see how it works. “If a story should work and it doesn’t, we try to look at the presentation, change the headline, change the picture and publish it again at another time,” one editor said.

Look at opens vs. “dwell times.” If an article has a high open rate but a low dwell time, then it might be a “one-fact” story, or the headline “missold” it. But if opens are low and engagement high, then maybe people aren’t finding it. Try plugging it on social media or giving it a better position on your website.

Normalize talking about failures. “Working with metrics is all about trial and error, adjustment and retrial,” Gamperl wrote. “Every failure is a step closer to success.” Said one editor: “We have as many open conversations about when things haven’t worked as possible without everyone getting really upset.”

Go for quality over quantity. With a shift from monetized page views to subscriptions in the industry, many publishers are lowering their daily article counts and aiming for more quality. “We were producing too many things that fell below the bar of being promoted,” said one editor.

Focus on measures that support your editorial and revenue model goals. “If your goal is audience growth, you must start measuring new users. If your objective is to generate more subscriptions, perhaps you should consider measuring conversion journeys in more detail, from anonymous to registered readers,” wrote Gamperl.

When comparing articles, make sure they’re getting the same play. To solve this problem, The Times of London “developed a score that compares articles only with equivalent articles promoted in the same spot.” They have their own analytics tool to evaluate this.

 

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SIIA Joins US Chamber and PhRMA in Amicus Brief to The Supreme Court

by AmicusPolicy

SIIA joins the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging them to rein in class action lawsuits. SIIA, the Chamber and PhRMA have a strong interest in ensuring courts do not certify class actions that improperly include significant numbers of uninjured class members: a significant problem for SIIA members and others who face claims of intangible injury in privacy and other similar lawsuits. The brief asks the Court to clarify Rule 23’s requirements and direct lower courts to stop bending the rules in favor of class certification. Read the full brief here.

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SIIA Comments at the FTC’s Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Public Forum, September 8, 2022

by Policy

Paul Lekas, SIIA Senior Vice President for Global Public Policy delivered these comments at the Federal Trade Commission’s Public Forum on Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Public Forum on September 8, 2022.

Chair Khan and members of the Commission, thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Paul Lekas and I head public policy at the Software and Information Industry Association. We are the principal trade association for those in the business of information, representing over 450 large and small publishers, platforms, analytics firms, education technology companies, and others.

We appreciate the Commission’s attention to consumer privacy and the security of consumer information and recognize the risks associated with its collection and usage. We have long advocated for a national data privacy standard as essential for US businesses and consumers, and for the United States as a global leader in digital democracy. We also support measures to protect student and children’s privacy and appreciate the Commission’s focus on this population.

As this rulemaking process unfolds, we urge members to reconsider its framing of this issue around “commercial surveillance”. As defined in the ANPR, this includes all “collection, aggregation, analysis, retention, transfer, or monetization of consumer data and the direct derivatives of that information.” This definition covers virtually all consumer activity as well as a large swath of commercial publishing in the United States today and, without tailoring, is too broad and ambiguous to provide meaningful guidance to consumers or businesses or to comport with the First Amendment.

The term mistakenly presumes that all such activities are inherently bad. Businesses use consumer data for many purposes that enhance consumer welfare and respond to consumer demands. This includes using data to improve the quality of services, protect against harmful content and security risks, and deliver personalized services that directly benefit consumers. The Commission must balance privacy rights, consumer needs, and safety, including the need to safeguard the public at large from fraud.

We commend the Commission on its recent actions to enforce rules against deceptive and unfair business practices while respecting undue burden on legitimate business activity. We look forward to engaging further with the Commission. Thank you.

Media Library

SIIA Comments on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act

by Policy

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) has a worthy goal—to support local news and preserve strong, independent journalism. But to do so, the bill would compel large online platforms to publish and pay for content that they do not wish to carry, which offends basic and long-established principles of constitutional law. SIIA’s letter urging the Judiciary Committee to reconsider advancing the JCPA can be found here.