No presenter will exemplify this more than Meg Hargreaves, senior vice president & publisher, federal legislative services, for CQ Roll Call in Washington, D.C. Her presentation will focus on a recent CQ Roll Call product development initiative to “better meet high-level, end-user needs and drive new revenue from new customers.” It began with the strategic premise that Washington policy makers and those that try to influence them crave focused, accurate quality news and policymaking content covering specific topics. But they already are on information overload. That’s a fine line.
After conducting market research, CQ Roll Call developed and rapidly launched the new Executive Briefings Series covering transportation, defense, energy and climate, banking and finance, agriculture and food, technology and the states. Each individual Executive Briefing would include an early morning newsletter called The Morning Take offering insights from a veteran journalist in the space, a website providing the day’s essential news on how legislation and regulations affect the community, links to important government documents, events and news stories and daily updates about congressional schedules, legislation and regulations of importance
Results. The first Executive Briefing launched in July and five more have since been introduced rapid succession. “The series has been very successful for us so far,” Hargreaves said. “They take few resources—primarily an editor for each Briefing and a production assistant for every two Briefings —so are relatively low-cost.” Uptake has been strongest from existing accounts but many readers are in fact new users from within those accounts, which expands CQ Roll Call’s overall footprint.
The lesson that less is more when it comes to emails is an important one, Hargreaves added. When subscribers receive less email but better information, it’s a win-win proposition. “Our Executive Briefing editors are carefully selected because they are experts on their specific topics,” she said. “They know these beats inside and out and come on board with a following, including social media contacts, which is very important. The agriculture and food editor is a former beat reporter on that topic for the Des Moines (Iowa) Register. Where subscribers previously had to go to a few places to get information like this, we now become their one-stop place on that subject because our editors, in essence, curate the information they need on a daily basis. Subscribers specifically appreciate The Morning Take, which saves them substantial time.”
Besides the editor, CQ Roll Call also had to invest in: modest CMS tools to help create and maintain production scalability and a WordPress platform. Hargreaves will present a case study in her presentation in Munich that will cover the complete development of the Executive Briefing series, from beginning research to focus groups to interviews and hiring and finally to design and distribution.