As a publisher, maintaining a connection with the audience and figuring out a way to monetize traffic is a constant struggle. Could content personalization and segmentation be the answer?
Content personalization isn’t just for ecommerce and brand marketers. Consumers have increasingly high expectations for content that is tailored to their preferences as they have become more and more accustomed to receiving individualized content and ads on a daily basis. So why not emulate this process for your news, media and content sites?
We know what you’re thinking. The news is the news. How can you personalize something like that? Are we just talking about localization here?
If you want engagement and an uptick in subscriptions and revenue, creating personalized and segmented push notifications and email messages is crucial. You need to target users by topics that interest them.
According to a study by Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26 percent more likely to be opened and marketers have found a 760 percent increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. There is long-term value for publishers that use personalization as more opportunities for continuous engagement mean audience loyalty follows.
Here’s how to transform this brand marketing approach to fit your news and content sites:
Dive into audience data
Dig into your audience and subscriber data. How are subscribers engaging with certain types of content and for how long? Start tracking subscribers and building audience profiles around their behavior. This can give you the foundation of what content to serve up. While taking these insights into account, remember that this same data can be used to better your ad targeting practices. 71 percent of consumers prefer ads that are personalized to their online behaviors and interests. Learning to correspond the right ad with the right subscriber can drive higher engagement and revenue.
Look beyond social media
We know you probably maintain a very active social media presence, but these platforms own the user data. With referral sources like Facebook and Twitter, publishers can’t analyze user information to create a more personalized experience. Email and push notifications are another story. Since you control and generate the data, you can study audience interests to improve their experiences. With time, you can create a tailored user persona for each subscriber based on their email address and even start identifying the user across all the channels. Once you have that lined up, customizing the content to provide a consistent and unique experience is more effective.
Timing really is everything
It makes sense that sending the right content to the right user at the right time drives engagement. But how can you figure out what time is best? Analyzing responses based on open rates is one way to get the guesswork going, but isn’t examining click-through rates (CTR) the more valuable identifier? Determining when subscribers are most likely to act is critical. Your user data can help you pin down patterns in consumer behavior to make sure your timing ensures maximum engagement opportunity.
Notifications sent at the wrong time is the factor that most bothers 38.39 percent of push notification recipients the most. Sending segmented messages with time-zone scheduling can prevent you from becoming an annoyance in the user’s day.
Of course, certain types of content can require different strategies. Breaking news should be delivered via push notification as soon as possible as it is important for those updates to be timely in order for them to be of value.
Segmenting your audience
Creating segmented push notifications is simple to accomplish with Pushnami. You can segment your subscriber list based on location, device, demographic, activity and interests. Start by separating your subscribers into four segments: all subscribers, active users, engaged users and inactive users. From these segments, create sub-segments for better targeting and more personalized pushes. Different segments require different campaign topics and frequencies. Hint: the more specific a segment is, the better experience subscribers will have.
By applying different filters, Pushnami allows you to segment to your heart’s desire. You can automatically create segmented lists based on the filters applied. Our advanced API updates your lists every time a user subscribes, unsubscribes or logs additional user activities that will impact your push notification campaigns, meaning the target audience for each one of your campaigns will always be reached.
Segmented push notification ideas
Geo-targeted notifications: Create different push notifications based on where your subscribers live. This way you can keep your content locally relevant.
Audience journey: Your audience isn’t all at the same point of their journey with your content. Some of them haven’t subscribed yet. Some just subscribed for the first time. Some have been loyal consumers for years. Create triggers that automate pushes for different points of their specific journeys.
Welcome your new subscribers: Welcome brand new subscribers with an automatic push notification. Make the first one worth their while. First impressions last!
Personalize your segmentation
Next, try personalizing campaigns for each individual subscriber. Campaigns can include names, locations and suggested content based on subscriber activity. Pushnami can help you self-schedule and optimize your campaigns to save you time.
For example, a news site might publish a story about a New Hampshire lottery prize exceeding 1 billion dollars. They can send a push notification to subscribers based in New Hampshire who have shown an interest in the lottery, prizes or state contests based on their story browsing history. The more specific the segmentation, the higher the click-through rates become.
Adding personalization to your push campaigns communicates to your subscribers that you take the time to deliver content tailored to their interests. Sending out too much irrelevant content will increase the risk of them unsubscribing. Utilizing user data with Pushnami allows you to create relevant push campaigns your subscribers are eager to open.
Ready to take your news and content marketing strategy to the next level using personalization and segmentation? Reach the right audience with push notifications today.
