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“Are you still interested in ‘Detroit’?” the subject line flashed on my screen. Detroit is a Pulitzer Prize-finalist play now in Washington, D.C. I had checked out ticket prices yesterday. “We noticed that you viewed ‘Detroit,’ but didn’t finish your purchase. The good news is, there are 8 dates available.”
Marketing of this type is pretty standard now, and it does make you look at your “destination” again. But in the current world of analytics and engagement—authentically voiced at SIPA’s recent Conference by Valerie Voci (pictured here), vice president, marketing, for CQ Roll Call—it’s just the beginning.
“We’re always looking to decrease the people who just leave,” she said. “We’re looking when they abandon, where they go when they abandon.”
Voci made clear that it is increasingly a team effort. “Some of the things the editorial team does [now] used to be on the marketing side. Editorial is looking every day on their most read stories. They’re looking at who’s referring [their readers] and where content is being shared. They’re learning from it and they’re making some changes.
“They’re certainly not going to change what they’re writing about. They have their goals as well. But they’re starting to see [that] this works a little bit better. They’re even going so far to look at placement on the site, how they’re creating images for their blogs, also looking at social measurement tools, so we have a lot of tweets from our Roll Call editors. [There’s a] Roll Call handle that our marketing manages; we’ll put some promotional things there. But mostly it’s about our content.”
Voci is happy to let the editorial people be the stars. Her job revolves around lead generation, so if social media can bring the audience closer to the reporters they follow, all the better. “We’re looking at our reporters and editors who are industry experts, to use them in different ways,” she said. “I didn’t know if this one great reporter would be good on TV and he’s amazing [in two-minute videos].”
CQ Roll Call has topic-specific Twitter handles, and reporters also have their own handles. “We’re looking at the activity—who’s following them, are they being retweeted, how many mentions?” Voci said. “Are they really engaging? So it’s changing from just looking at raw numbers to really analyzing it. You can see why that takes more than just a Webmaster and a marketing person.”
It takes an audience engagement team, collected from various departments. Listening to Voci—and you need to be attentive to do so; she talks qualitatively and fast—leaves you feeling that the ball is in your court. “We know who’s on our site,” she said. “We know what device they’re using. Mobile early, then desktop, then iPad usage around 10 o’clock at night—really people! 10 o’clock? But that’s what happening.”
She said they even know that people are illegally sharing passwords. “We’re not trying to be cops but trying to understand how people use our data and our content and their subscriptions so we can be better informed and we can better inform our sales team when it comes time for renewal. We’re looking at all the referrals.”
Speaking about renewals, Voci said, “We’re looking at critical points in the subscription cycle, 30 days [in], 60 days, 90 days and we’re starting to map now when people don’t renew. And seeing what their traffic was. We’re using a couple pieces of software for that and creating retention programs that kick in automatically when we reach these critical points. I like to fail fast and learn quicker… When they reach a threshold [of contact points], we’re scoring them. [Maybe they] filled out a survey, read a special report, read stories.”
She said that her team’s main job is to “nurture, nurture, nurture”—meaning that the leads they give to sales should be strong. “That forces the marketing team to think differently, a little more logically. [But you] have to put a lot of stuff in to get a lot of stuff out.
“You know how your prospects find you,” she said. All the information is there to track their behavior on your site. If you need more information, she suggested sending something out that you know your audience will value and respond to. CQ Roll Call is a thought leader when it comes to Congress, so when they sent out a survey based on their knowledge, it got a 71.7% open rate. And that gets them clean data.
They have gone as far as creating personas based on how people use their site. “Sometimes the mythology is that the person who reads free stuff will never buy paid stuff,” Voci said. “And in marketing we’re all about measuring. I want to prove that true or false. Because that will change what I do [and] will also help with product development—you need to constantly be developing.”
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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline
