roundtable 2004 inman
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ajc.com & user registration
ASTECH Roundtable Laura Inman
Director of Market Development, AJC
Presentation Agenda
• Organizational overview & stats
• Getting to UR
• Why UR and to what extent?
• Lessons learned
• Still learning…
AJC Key Initiatives
• CIM re-established as Coxnet
– Leverage technology and resources among 16 Cox newspapers
• Migration to newspaper centric operations
and strategy. February, 2003
• Re-positioning of accessAtlanta.com March,
2003
• Develop industry and market parity with new
products.
•Ajcjobs & Harvest shopping tool, 2002
•cars & real estate, April 2003
•Ajcpersonals, March 2003
•Legacy obits &, Fall 2003
•E-gain inbound email management, October 2003
•Teen mall, Holiday 2003
•Ajcsportsplus, March 2004
•UR, April 2004
•Online Circulation commerce, May 2004
•Celebrations, June 2004
•Video, July 2004
Fall 2004= shopping, apartments, sportsplus v.2, targeted ad delivery system, wireless
Launch mania: 3rd party vendors
multiple, incompatible registrations
Internet Management
Interdepartmental Management
John Triplett
New Bus Dev
VP
Hyde Post
Online Editorial Dir
Julia Wallace
Editor
Debbie Campbell
Online Sales Dir
Mike Perricone
VP Advertising
Laura Inman
Dir Market Dev
Paula Rattray
VP Marketing
John Mellott
Publisher
Market Development Team
16 FTE's
Chris Hood
Advertising Mktg Mgr
Events / partnership agreements
Business Dev. 2 coord
Beth Chandler
Territory Mktg Mgr
Community product marketing
Business Dev. 1 coord
Open Mgr
Circulation Mktg Mgr
Mkt execution for readership and circ growth
2 coord
Carol Firicano
Classified Mktg Mgr
Classifieds Print/ Online
1 coordinator
Dan Wooten
Web Development Mgr
Product development
Creative Direction. 1FTE needed
Kristi Kent
Internet Mktg Mgr
Transactional business,
SEO/SEM & email/UR. 1 Coord needed
TBD/ Not budgeted
Email Marketing ManagerRevenue and Marketing
Dotted line to Sales
Laura Inman
Internet Mktg Dir
Paula Rattray
VP/ Strategic Mktg
Print and Online Marketing
• Operational challenges
– Are we a vertical or horizontal structure? Yes
– Managing change
– The “who does what” scenario
• Strategy, Development, Creative
– Product Development
• Brand mgrs + Sales mgrs. + Mktg mgrs + Content producers
• A 6 phase development approach (Concept, Research, Plan,
Design, Implement, Launch)
– Synergy or Compromise
• Process that doesn’t inhibit innovation
• Leverage and Integrate
Brand Integration
• AJC parent brand sets the marketing strategy
– 97:3 factor
• Online marketing to determine and apply the message as related to online business goals
• Marketing the online and print brands shift among print brand marketers and online marketers, based on driving revenue initiatives:
– online revenue focus: jobs,cars, homes, travel
– traditional print revenue drivers: class. & retail
AJC Stats
• Ajc.com (includes all verticals and accessAtlanta.com)
– 2.3 MM Unique Visitors July, Sage 2004
• April 3.2 MM; May 2.6MM; June 2.3MM
• Year over year comparisons in August, 2004
– Local Market Share of online users 21% March, 2004 Media Audit
– Confirmed user registration members since 4/13/04 launch • 428,491 as of 8/9, people- not computers!
– Average confirmation rate is about 52% of registrants
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Monday – Thursday circulation 371,853
– Friday circulation 424,691
– Saturday circulation 459,409
– Sunday circulation 622,065
Exclusive
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Readers
Exclusive
Ajc.com & AccessAtlanta.com
Website Visitors
AJC’s Most Loyal Customer
1,782,695 81,077 965,222
2002-2003 Gallup Poll of Media Usage
& Consumer Behavior
Demographic Summary of AJC Vehicles
Atlanta
MSA
AJC Avg.
Weekday
Readers
AJC Avg.
Sunday
Readers
ajc.com./
accessatlanta
Past 7 days
BOTH
Print AND
On-Line
Men 49 50 47 50 50
Women 51 50 53 50 50
Married 61 64 63 56 55
College Grad+ 26 32 30 41 39
Own Home 61 67 65 60 60
White 65 66 64 60 58
Non-White 35 34 36 40 42
1+ Children in HH 41 41 43 50 50
Age 18-34 36 30 33 46 46
Age 35-54 42 44 45 45 46
Age 55+ 22 26 22 9 8
Median HH Inc. $54.0K $60.5K $59.3K $70.5K $67.2K
Mean HH Inc. $65.7K $72.9K $71.3K $79.1K $76.7K
2002-2003 Gallup Poll of Media Usage & Consumer Behavior
Common business unit objectives
• Grow market share
• Grow revenue
• Obtain or improve category leadership
• Comprehensive solution for consumers and
customer base
• Incremental business value
• Innovate, Fail faster!
• Leverage talent and resources
Pre-UR focus • 77:23 rule of traffic and unique visitors
• Second to the Washington Post in local news site market penetration
• Amassing millions of page views per month
• Selling mass, buckets of banners, interactivity and frequency
• Spirit of innovation and major focus on product development & market parity
• Channels with sold out inventory and limited email marketing product success
• Organizational evolution
• Maintain position of breaking local news
Why User Registration?
• Better audience knowledge
– Demos, interests, relationship with print product
– Who are our most loyal customers?
• Revenue opportunities
– Targeted e-mail opportunities
– Targeted online advertising
• Build a foundation for better product and service
– More appropriate content
– Online customer care center
How far do you go?
• All the way.. • Deals and Steals newsletter pre-checked
• Thank you email confirmation
• 4 day window to confirm the email address
The UR process
• Register in all areas except:
– Home page and channel fronts
– Classifieds
– Buyer’s Edge (Harvest)
– Personals
– Health
– Your Money
– Obits
– Travel
– AJC services, store and circulation
Post-UR focus • 84:16 post UR rule of traffic and unique visitors
– Eliminate “drive by” visitors • Changed the “one page” counting methodology
– Understand the dynamics of the online user and consumption patterns
– Understand the search engine referral traffic value
– Drive frequency among user base
– Targeted ads and audience systems that are actionable
– Grow email newsletters and develop business strategy
– Establish a reach story that acknowledges the value of loyal customer base
– Create new inventory opportunities for high yield categories
– Integrate with circulation and establish a single view of the customer
UR Preparation
• 1 year development cycle for CIM proprietary system completion
• ACJ projected significant loss of unique traffic
– 60% to be recovered within 6 months
• Established an email driven customer care group focused on service, responsiveness & brand image
– E-gain inbound email management tool • 3 FT people trained in customer service and new
technology
UR preparation
• Communication plan for internal knowledge – Presented to 28 different internal customer groups
– Developed power point for internal customers and executive management
– Developed press release and main features for news and executives
• Technical issues – Hosted and serviced at Coxnet,
– Legacy system integration issues limited, hence Astech!
– Centralized system has operational challenges • Priority & speed to market
• Customer integration
• Data “czar”
UR preparation
• Marketing/promotional
– Summer Splurge Contest
– Open to all ajc.com “members”
– Objective was to incent accurate information
– 6 week contest ending May 31 • Tracking value limited as the entire UR base is eligible in
the contest
– Prizes included: • Braves suite, $2,000 shopping spree, Cancun trip & Mike
Luckovich (Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist) personalized caricature
Inbound Customer Care Cases
5,645
9,840
11,51712,629
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
March April May June
March April May June
e-mail newsletters 2,878 3,450 7,422 9,302 223%
ajc.com 2,415 3,837 2,554 2,372 -2%
user registration 116 1,925 1,372 800 590%
sports plus 73 497 83 65
access Atlanta 163 131 86 90
Total 5,645 9,840 11,517 12,629 124%
124% increase
in incoming
customer inquiries
User registration
newsletter queue
the source of
increase
Inbound/outbund email report, July 2004
UR data results
• See handout
Next steps for V2
• Increase confirmation rate window
– Extend the window from 4 days to 14 days with another confirmation notice
– Multiple email accounts, spam filters etc
• Changes to version 2
– Will not ask for income in version 2
– Will add race question in version 2
– Will only ask for zip- not city, state
– Will develop a solution for international zip codes
Would we do it again?
• Yes
• Q & A
• Thanks
• 404-526-7384