What’s Your Plan for 2010?
It's that time of year again. As I’m writing this, my TweetDeck is listing endless predictions for 2010 and best-of lists from 2009.
It's that time of year again. As I’m writing this, my TweetDeck is listing endless predictions for 2010 and best-of lists from 2009.
I’m not going to bore you with any of my own, but I do encourage you to read with interest the Outlook feature starting on page 20. A recurring theme is a focus on Web-sourced subscriptions. All of you have surely been pursuing these, but my guess is more often than not, tactics are pretty static—a “subscribe now” button here, a well-positioned and hard-won promo placement there.
Take a look at what Active Interest Media, Meredith and Hearst are doing in this regard. Meredith’s David Ball said they’re essentially moving beyond email capture, having attained “critical mass” at this point, and will be driving more renewals and payments online. More online affinity partnerships, where the company can pull in more subs, will be pursued. And Ball will be exploiting public-place copies—why not?—with cover stickers that feature a subscription code to text from a cell phone.
Hearst’s Chuck Cordray recently completed a mini press tour touting their impressive success with Web-sourced subscriptions—which have benefited from a major boost in traffic. It may sound basic, but publishers are finally getting how online analytics and their various subtleties can help with more than just understanding how many people visit a site.
Two cases in point: Corday said Hearst has been looking closely at what they call “content velocity,” which means they’re watching where visitors go on a site, what content they like and the paths they take to get there. That’s powerful insight when you’re trying to target specific promotions.
Second, Active Interest Media’s Barbara Besser details how her team has, after years of successful testing and placement of online subscription promotions, begun to aggressively pursue SEO strategies to increase visitor traffic to help boost new business. The breakthrough in this case is understanding the difference between visits and visitors. An engaged audience is a nice thing to have, but you’ll quickly max out your new business opportunities if you’re not also growing your audience.
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