BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - (Page 14)

FEATURE insider benefits you might get from the relationship.” For example, a highly engaged customer—one who attends multiple Ziff Davis events (online or live) or frequently uses the company’s research product offerings—might be invited along with 10 other people to a brown-bag lunch in New York with one of the brands’ editors, he said. Or, a reader who participates frequently on one of the company’s websites, contributing helpful or insightful comments that add value to the site’s community, might be asked by editors to write more regularly for the brand. marketing at GlobalSpec. “You’re always going to learn from that. The more you test, the more you’re going to optimize the performance of that newsletter.” Chariton stresses the importance of following a testing plan that determines which factors will be tested and when, whether it’s subject line, personalization or format changes. “Make sure you have it mapped out; based on what you’re learning from each test, you may change the direction of future tests,” she said. “If you’re not seeing a significant change, you may want to stop that and focus on something else.” Testing is critical for ensuring that emails render properly on different mobile devices, Kouplen said, and editors are increasingly involved in the process. “They’re understanding more that they might have written a great headline for the website, but on this little bitty mobile device it needs to be even more concise to get the audience to respond,” she said. “It forces them to look at the results more closely and more often, and they’re seeing the keywords and topics audiences are responding to.” Investing even a little time in testing can pay off, Kouplen said. “If you spend just 10 minutes and give it little tweaks, how much of a lift will you get?” she said. “We’ve seen considerable lift when our brands do that.” More concise headlines also work better when email or website stories are shared to social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, Kouplen said. That lesson has been valuable because readers are, in fact, sharing stories with their social networks—“a ton” in the last few months, she said. “The numbers are continuing to rise,” she said. “Social is big.” Westerman echoed that thought, stressing the importance of integrating email efforts with social media. He noted, however, that some verticals have been slower than others in their uptake of social. “But it’s pretty clear that our future is a tight integration of all of our existing outbound marketing activities with social media,” he said. Test and re-test Ultimately, data and analytics are beneficial only when companies use them to make improvements. “That’s one of the beauties of email is that you can split a list easily and test different subject lines, headlines, different content formats,” said Chris Chariton, senior VP-product management and supplier Penton’s analytics strategy introduces science to art P enton Media has spent the past year focusing intensely Open rates for the new newsletter were twice the Penon online data and analytics, and those efforts are payton average, and the size of the email’s list has tripled since ing off with a better understanding of its audience. the initial launch. “We have a highly focused, highly targetThe company switched to an enterprise-class email sysed, highly engaged audience on a topic that really resonates tem that allows it to target audience members based on with those people,” Mehl said. their engagement with website and email newsletter conThe biggest challenge Mehl and his team have had to tent. At the same time, it has changed its corporate culture overcome is the change in processes, he said. “Once you and processes, creating the role of digital content strategist get the technology in place, [the challenge is] establishing a for each brand, said Brad Mehl, VP-audience development process for who does what and how people’s roles are goand research at Penton Media. ing to change based on the new capabilities,” he said. These employees identify trends in newsletter and To address that challenge, Penton has hosted dediwebsite activity—analyzing metrics such as email open Case cated training sessions for the audience development and click rates, as well as repeat traffic and duration of Study group and has assigned an employee to handle profesvisit on the website—and work with editorial and audisional development for the group. At the training ence development to shape content based on the informasessions, the group learned about the new capabilities and tion, Mehl said. “Previously, we had very good editors with performed scenario planning, identifying solutions for differa very good command of their markets, but now we’re ent business challenges—for example, how to increase attenquantifying the audience engagement with what they dance for a particular event based on specific background inwrite,” he said. formation about the audience. The digital content strategists are editorial-facing, Mehl “It’s about getting people to think about how they can said, but have an online background and are familiar with solve business challenges leveraging the new targeting caWeb metrics. “It’s taking editorial, which was previously pabilities,” Mehl said. mostly an art form, and bringing more science to it,” he said. He offered the following advice for media companies on a Penton has used the analytics and its enhanced undersimilar mission: “Success in b-to-b media is rooted in understanding of its audience to launch new email newsletters, instanding the audience,” he said. “Put some processes and cluding “ATW Skypaths” for its Air Transport World brand. capabilities in place to understand the audience, and make “We noticed in a redesign of our website that there was that part of your culture. Make it part of the day-to-day knita real need for airline professionals to get information on airting. That goes from the ways in which the audience plane routes,” Mehl said. “We identified the people who engages with the content, the challenges the audience has in had read articles about airplane routes on the website and their day-to-day jobs, how that content fits into their work life sent out an introductory email to those people. It was a and their work flow, and the messaging you use in positionblockbuster success.” ing the brand.” —M.E.M. 14 | Media Business | June 2011 | mediabusinessonline.com http://www.mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - June 2011

BtoB Media Business - June 2011
Contents
Upfront
ABM Annual Meeting
Sales & Marketing
M&A
Great Media Sites
Audience Development
Production
Events
People
Benchmarks
Endnote

BtoB Media Business - June 2011

BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - BtoB Media Business - June 2011 (Page Cover1)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - BtoB Media Business - June 2011 (Page Cover2)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Contents (Page 3)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Upfront (Page 4)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 5)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 6)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 7)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 8)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 9)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 10)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 11)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 12)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 13)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - ABM Annual Meeting (Page 14)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Sales & Marketing (Page 15)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - M&A (Page 16)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Audience Development (Page 17)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Production (Page 18)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Production (Page 19)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Events (Page 20)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - People (Page 21)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Benchmarks (Page 22)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Benchmarks (Page 23)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Benchmarks (Page 24)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Benchmarks (Page 25)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Endnote (Page 26)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Endnote (Page Cover3)
BtoB Media Business - June 2011 - Endnote (Page Cover4)
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