Imagine a digital publishing agency that isn’t getting the right data. There are 40+ channels and 15+ websites and none of them are talking to each other. Reporting, though accurate, is incomplete. Focus is on sales and customer relationships – the now, not the pipe.

I wanted to change that focus to a more strategic and technical approach designed to maximize audience engagement in real time. I want to create an environment in which we can unify data, provide data governance and management, and have access to the analytics needed to create new product, increase revenue, and provide long-term bottom-line impact.

The Challenge

I needed to consolidate the data into something manageable that could inform my decisions regarding audience development and social media presence for all of the company brands. And I needed to do it without increasing the current allocated spend for the organizations automated systems.

I needed to convince sales, management and the editors this is a move in the right direction and then prove out the switch in systems.

The Actions

My eNewsletter manager was completely on board and I could not have completed the project without her. With her assistance, I was able to build out a complete RFP for a new automation system. We narrowed our RFP list down to the top 6 candidates and sent the RFP out. It designated everything from the types of data required to SLAs for support.

As the responses came in, I entered them into a weighted spreadsheet. Each item in the RFP had its own line item with a weight of 0-2, ranging from “nice to have” to “critical”. We compared both total scores and the scores for the “critical” line items. We wound up selecting a platform, Omeda, that had a higher “critical” score but a slightly lower overall score.

We implemented the platform in a little over 12 weeks from RFP to daily use. We went through the usual steps, working with the appropriate teams to complete them.

Contract Sign Off Cloud Governance Platform Preparation Content Transfer

Data Transfer Content Builds IP Warm Up

Test Sends Training Launch

The Results

We took the transition opportunity to review the health of our data and identify disengaged segments. As a result, though our data numbers went down, the health and integrity of the data improved. We saw an immediate improvement in our ability to track the behavior of our audience, manage their preferences and subscriptions, and build improved relationships with them.

Through the implementation of the new platform, we were able to create a better customer experience, better track top performing articles consolidated between websites and eNewsletters, and select more applicable topics, higher performing imagery, and trending curated content.

Our audience, which had been stagnant, began growing at a rate of 1% per month just from the improvements in the system. We were able to adjust eNewsletters to improve opens and clicks by up to 3.2% and 1.5% on average. We adjusted our eMails as well, increasing open rates by up to 1.0% and click rates by up to 10%.