what's new in digital marketing to improve your subscription marketing

What’s new in digital marketing? How to improve your subscription marketing ROI in 2013

Carola York, Managing Director, Jellyfish Publishing

Specialist Media Presentation, 6 February 2013

© Jellyfish Publishing 2013

Carola York, Jellyfish Publishing | Specialist Media Presentation | 6 February 2013 2

Carola York Managing Director, Jellyfish Publishing

Jellyfish are a digital marketing agency, renowned for their expertise in PPC. Jellyfish Publishing is a standalone business division within the Jellyfish Group, dedicated to serving its numerous publishing clients. It works in partnership with publishers to create digital campaigns which generate new subscribers - on a risk-free Cost per Acquisition model. I joined Jellyfish Publishing last year following 25 years working for a range of consumer and business-to-business publishers – both big and small - including The Spectator, EMAP, The Tablet, TSL Education, The Economist and IPC. As a specialist in subscription marketing, I help Jellyfish’s publishing clients grow their print, digital and app subscription businesses.


What I’m covering today...

• Some of the latest techniques Jellyfish Publishing are using to help grow subscription sales from PPC

for our publishing clients - across mobile, tablet and desktop devices.

• A brief run through how Google’s latest offering for app analytics can help you measure ROI and return

from your app marketing budget.

• What’s new in the social media marketing world - a look at Facebook Custom Audiences and Facebook

Exchange .


What’s new in PPC?


The search landscape is going through a major shift

• People using their mobiles and

tablets to search the web is

continuing to rise exponentially.

• 46% of Christmas Day search

traffic was on tablets and mobiles.

• Mobile web browsing is

predicted to overtake desktop in

2014. That’s next year!


What does this mean if you are selling subscriptions through PPC?

• Search on mobile, tablet and desktop need to

be managed and tracked separately.

• People use them in different ways – at

different times of the day – to buy different

things.

• So the PPC activity you run must reflect this to

ensure you get the best response and return on

your marketing spend.


Understand how people visit your site

• What traffic comes from desktop, tablet and mobile? At what time of day?

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Visits by Hour of Day

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Allocate your budget appropriately

• Allocate your budget - using Ad Scheduling - to the most appropriate devices at different points in

the day.


Use different messaging and call-to-actions

• If your website is not particularly mobile friendly, test using ad messages such as ‘click to call’ to

get people calling in to order (otherwise they might just give up placing an online order via their

mobile).

• Or if it is mobile/tablet friendly, use ad messages such as ‘... on your tablet’, and ‘mobile friendly’ to

encourage people to click through to order.

• If you find getting people to sign up via mobiles is difficult, test promoting your mobile app (if you

have one) instead of a print subscription – otherwise you’ll be paying for lots of clicks and getting few

orders.


Consider using Call Extensions

But ensure your call centre or subscription bureau log the ‘source’ of the call - or use

Jellyfish’s Infinity call tracking service which can attribute the call back to the individual

keyword.


For apps, test using Mobile App extensions

These drive people directly to your app - in either the Apple App store or in Google Play.


Don’t assume mobile/tablet users want to only buy apps

• In Jellyfish’s experience, even though someone is

searching on a mobile or tablet, they are still more likely to

want to buy a print subscription.

• So, give the customer the choice – print, digital, or app

subscription, depending on your offering – in order to

maximise your potential number of subscription sales.


Using PPC to market apps

• Google Analytics is great for analysing website traffic -

and Google AdWords is great for managing PPC.

• But until now it has been impossible to track paid app

sales (made within an app) directly back to PPC

keywords, unless you’ve set up your own custom

tracking.

• It’s therefore been impossible to measure an accurate

ROI from your app marketing spend on PPC.


Launch of Google Mobile App Analytics

• Google has recently taken a big step forward with the

launch of their Mobile App Analytics package.

• This is great news if you sell an Android app through

Google Play!

• But sadly Google doesn’t yet support the tracking of

Magazines sold through Google Play.

• Nor does it support the tracking of sales made in iOS

iPhone and iPad apps.


About Google Mobile App Analytics

• It allows you to capture usage data about your Android app - and integrate it with your Google

Analytics account.

• The suite of reports available provides metrics which

can help you evaluate the performance of your app

including:

• the number of downloads/installations

• the devices and networks used to access the app

• the geographic location and languages spoken by visitors

And most importantly...

• in-app purchases


Tracking in-app purchases

• If you want to track the all important data related to single or subscription sales of your app, you’ll

need to make sure you set up the ‘ecommerce tracking’ option.

• Once set up you’ll then be able to see reports on:

• in-app revenue

• total number of transactions

• the percentage of sessions that included a transaction

• the average value of transactions within the app

• the total quantity sold

• the number of unique purchases


What’s new in remarketing?


What is remarketing?

• When people visit your website, but leave

without buying, remarketing lets you reconnect

with these prospects and entice them to return

and buy a subscription.

The main remarketing options available include:

• Email

• Text and image ads served via the Google Display network – launched in March 2010

• NEW! Facebook Custom Audiences – launched in September 2012

• NEW! Facebook Exchange – launched in September 2012


Remarketing via Google

• Google allows you to target people who have visited

your website – and it then display your ads on other

websites they subsequently visit.

• You simply need to add a small snippet of code from

AdWords onto the pages of your website – and then

launch your AdWords campaign.

• Does it deliver a good ROI for subscriptions?

• YES!


Ensure you minimise the feeling of being ‘stalked’

• A basic Adwords remarketing campaign will follow your

prior site visitors across the web, serving the same ads over

and over again on any of the web pages they visit.

• Both excessive ad repetition (and presence on subsequent

visited sites which might have inappropriate or irrelevant

content) can contribute to the feeling of being stalked.

• So you need to think carefully about how you set up

remarketing to maximise your return – but minimise the

intrusion.


Top tips for success

1. Create different audience groups by considering:

• Which page on the site did they leave from?

• Had they been looking at general content – or a subscription specific page?

• Did they start the subscription sign up process, but not complete it?

2. Create different ad messages (and maybe offers) for each audience group . Consider that

they visited your site, but left. Why? What might entice them back?

• A reminder of the latest subscription offer (if they started the sign up process but didn’t complete it)?

• A reduced price offer if they just visited the subs page and then left?

• If they looked only at editorial content, why not just get them signed up for something – a free e-newsletter – to

allow you to contact them with a subscription offer in future.


Top tips for success

3. Decide where the ad clicks through to.

• An existing page on your site? Or a new, customised landing page – reflecting the ad message/ offer?

4. Consider when to serve the ads – and for how long.

• Do you want ads to be shown immediately after someone visited your site. Or delay when they are served? How

many times do you want them to appear? Between 7 and 12 is generally recommended.

5. Consider which categories that you may want to exclude.

• Juvenile, gross & bizarre content? Profanity & rough language? Sexually suggestive content?

6. Test. Analyse. Refine.


Options for both text and image ads

Text Image


Great for brand awareness – and subscriptions

Here are some recent results for remarketing campaigns run by Jellyfish Publishing run for a couple of our magazine clients:

Impressions Clicks Click through

rate

Cost Subscriptions Cost Per

Acquisition

Conversion rate

View through

subscriptions

Cost Per

Acquisition

Text 643,582 1,686 0.26% £891.02 24 £37.13 1.42% 0 £37.13

Image 220,904 465 0.21% £273.06 17 £16.06 3.66% 99 £2.35

Impressions Clicks Click through

rate

Cost Subscriptions Cost Per

Acquisition

Conversion rate

View through

subscriptions

Cost Per

Acquisition

Text 44,936 93 0.21% £31.62 1 £31.62 1.08% 0 £31.62

Image 155,490 291 0.19% £112.28 5 £22.46 1.72% 49 £2.08


facebook’s Custom Audiences

• Advertising on facebook can be good for brand awareness, but in

our experience, is often difficult to generate any reasonable volume

of subscriptions to justify the effort or spend involved.

• facebook’s recent launch of Custom Audiences provides a new

opportunity to target just people you have had contact with before –

a form of remarketing .

• And early reports from those testing it show it is has the potential

to generate between 5 and 25 times more return than the standard

facebook interest targeting. Great news!


How it works

• If you have email or phone lists (collected via your website, from events you run , from lapsed subs

lists etc), it allows you to just serve an ad to just these people - in facebook.

• It’s run through the Power Editor function in facebook (you can’t manage custom audiences

through the standard Ads Editor).

• You upload your list – it’s hashed to keep it secure and facebook don’t keep or pass on your data.

• facebook then match your list of contacts against all their active users – finding the people who

have the same email or phone number – and then serve the ad just to them.


What to consider?

1. Understand who is in your list of contacts.

• How did you gather the list?

• How long ago?

• How much do they already know about your publication?

2. Ensure your ads – and offers – are then designed to attract the people on each specific list.

• Don’t use one generic ad for all lists.

• Reflect their knowledge of your publication - and use the offer most likely to attract them to sign up.

3. Create ads for facebook’s mobile newsfeed.

• Mobile newsfeed ads generally achieve higher response rates.


What to consider?

4. Consider where your ad will click through to.

• Keeping people within the facebook environment usually generates a better response than directing them

to a website.

• Can you create a sign up page on your facebook page?

5. Make your sign up form as mobile-friendly as possible

• 19 million of the UK’s 27 million facebook population access it via their mobiles

6. Test. Analyse. Refine.


Ideas to test

• Reactivate registered website users who have not visited your

site for some time – encourage them to sign up for a free trial.

• Tempt lapsed subscribers back with a really strong

subscription offer.

• Entice ‘abandoned baskets’ to go back and complete their

order.

• Encourage people to download your mobile app (perfect for

mobile newsfeed ads!)


Facebook Exchange

• Facebook Exchange (FBX) allows you to re-market to

Facebook users who have already visited your website. So, as

with other remarketing, should lead to high conversion rates

and a good return on investment.

• Initial results from across the digital marketing industry

show click-to-conversion rates of 8-10% (compared to the 4-

6% maximum usually seen from standard facebook display

ads) .


The Pros and Cons

The Pros

• It could offer a great opportunity to generate additional subscriptions at a good ROI.

• It compliments all the other remarketing you might have in place.

• It offers high quality inventory – all impressions are above the fold and remain viewable regardless of how

the user scrolls.

The Cons

• You can only serve ads on the right-hand side of facebook on desktop – they don’t appear in mobile

newsfeeds.

• You have to work through a 3rd party. Facebook Exchange is currently only available through the digital

marketing software of approved partners and most charge minimum fees.


In summary


Top tips

1. Understand what traffic comes to your site from desktop, tablet and mobile – at what time of

day.

2. Test different ad messaging and calls-to-action in your PPC, depending on the device.

3. Offer customers the choice of a print, digital or app subscription – regardless of the device

they are using to visit your site.

4. If you have an Android app, investigate how Google Mobile App Analytics can help you track

your app marketing ROI.

5. Make sure you are running remarketing campaigns via Google as they are great for both brand

awareness and subscription generation.

6. Test facebook’s new Custom Audiences offering.


For further information

About Jellyfish Publishing’s services, visit: www.jellyfishpublishing.co.uk

About Infinity Call Tracking, visit: www.infinity-tracking.com

About Google’s Mobile App Analytics, visit: www.google.com/analytics/features/mobile.html

About facebook Custom Audiences, visit: www.facebook.com/help/459892990722543/


Follow Jellyfish Publishing

Twitter: @JFPublishing Jellyfish Publishing

Thank you Carola York Managing Director 01737 749673 [email protected]

Jellyfish House London Road Reigate Surrey RH2 9SS


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