Anlässlich unserer 5. Paid Content-Konferenz: Wenn der Kunde gerne zahlt…Mehr Zahlungsbereitschaft für Digital Content am 17.09. haben wir Tom Betts, Head of Web Analytics, zur Paid-Content-Strategie der Financial Times UK interviewt.
1. What does paid content mean to the FT and why is it important?
The FT is successfully complementing and reinforcing the traditional ‘big engines’ of print advertising and circulation revenue with new digital channels and sales of content. Measuring the health of our brand and business against our print and digital audience, we find our business more resilient, sustainable and increasingly profitable. This also means we have the resources and confidence to invest in our award-winning content and journalism, ensuring that the FT will stay the must-read source for global business news and commentary for its global audience.
2. How would you describe the relationship the FT has to its customers and how does customer data play a part?
Having a direct relationship with our customers is extremely important to us. The FT allows customers to access content in a channel and platform agnostic manner and this is facilitated by a model whereby a single digital subscription allows readers to access across a wide variety of devices. Not only this, but our direct relationships mean that we have a fascinating understanding of how our customers use our products. It allows us to better understand the needs of readers so that we can provide a more personalised and relevant service as a result.
3. How and what for does the FT analyse and use data and in what way does data influence your business model?
We make use of customer data right across the organisation. I struggle to think where we’re not using customer data and analytics to help a diverse internal audience make better decisions about our business. We inform editorial processes by understanding how our customers behave, and we power our marketing using statistical models to predict customer behaviour or interests. To increase the relevance of advertising we use proprietary first-party data to better understand our readers, and in product development, where we use data to be the eyes and ears of our customers, new ideas are evaluated and products optimised.
4. What are the key challenges implementing data analytics in a digital media business and what can be done to face them?
Knowing where to start! There are likely to be many, many opportunities to apply data analytics to a media organisation and the key to getting started is to build strong internal relationships with users of data and work with them to prioritise your to-do list. Getting buy-in from recipients of your insights will bring many benefits, and in my opinion an analytically mature organisation is one where the use of data analytics is distributed across the organisation.
5. Big Data and Publishing – What are your expectations and predictions for the future?
I think that publishers and media organisations are sitting on untapped goldmines of information. Most media companies are not used to having a meaningful direct to consumer relationship and aren’t used to knowing so much about their customers, how they behave and what they value. Building direct to consumer channels is key and can turbocharge how you understand your customers.
Die Fragen stellten Rachel Genz und Jacqueline Hoffmann