This document discusses how publishers can use personalization to address challenges in growing and monetizing their digital audiences. It outlines how personalization can help publishers improve discoverability of their content online, deliver a better content experience to keep readers engaged, grow their email lists, and improve monetization efforts. The key aspects of personalization discussed are segmenting audiences based on interests and behaviors to tailor content, calls-to-action and other experiences. It also provides guidance on collecting data about readers to power personalization, such as through forms or gated content.

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SECTION_01:
INTRODUCTION
The publishing industry is experiencing major challenges as it continues to transition from print
to digital—making one shift, while another one slowly takes place in tandem. As fast as media
companies can create a digital strategy, the online landscape evolves and transforms.
At its core, the media industry relies on attracting an audience that can be exposed
to advertising. With the rise of ad blockers, the competition from news-delivery platforms,
the proliferation of content on all channels and the fast-changing online channels and growing
number of devices used—there are plenty of challenges facing the publishing industry as it
struggles to stay relevant.
In this guide, we will dissect the largest of these hurdles, and show you how personalization can
help publishers leave them in the rear-view.
WHY PERSONALIZATION MATTERS TO PUBLISHERS
The livelihood of today’s publishers relies on growing and maintaining an audience, digitally,
while developing new monetization capabilities of that audience. And here is where
personalization is most helpful.
AS FAST AS MEDIA COMPANIES CAN
CREATE A DIGITAL STRATEGY, THE ONLINE
LANDSCAPE EVOLVES AND TRANSFORMS.

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SECTION_02:
GROWING AN AUDIENCE
Audience development really means achieving two key objectives:
· Being discovered online
· Delivering a great content experience
BEING DISCOVERED ONLINE
To be discovered, one needs to rise above the noise of the other content. There are more
than two million blog posts published every day. This means there’s lots of content – good and
bad – competing for the reader’s attention.
With the rise of content marketing, companies are not only producing more content, but they
are hard at work distributing it on social media, paid media, and even on new content sites and
hubs. These websites help brands establish their leadership in their fields, but they also
compete directly with publications.
In addition, the way in which we consume content today is changing. Gone are the days
when the average user went to a publication’s homepage, scrolled down, clicked on an article,
and then returned to the homepage to look for another article. Today, things are done very
differently: We read and watch most content on smartphones, and we look at social media
and news delivery platforms as our main sources of information, filtered by personalization
technologies. From there, we click directly into specific articles, in many cases never seeing
what’s on the homepage.
The result? A previous HubSpot report found that only 28% of publishers are happy with
their current ability increase traffic to your site.
2 MILLION
BLOG POSTS ARE MADE
ONLINE EVERY DAY

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So what can publishers do differently to improve discoverability online and bring
personalization into play? Knowing your audience personas and tailoring your content to them
can benefit your publication in terms of SEO and organic traffic.
Audience personas can help you distribute your content organically in the right places, such
as relevant articles, social media groups, and so on. Lest we forget paid distribution services,
which typically include targeting capabilities that can benefit from persona information as a way
of delivering your content to the most relevant audience.
Personalization doesn’t just help you get discovered, they also keep people engaged after
you’ve been found.
DELIVERING A GREAT CONTENT EXPERIENCE
Personalization matters even more once an individual discovers your publication. Attention
spans are diminishing online, meaning that once a new reader discovers you, you have a very
short time to impress that person and get him/her to take action.
With the abundance of content available a lot of factors go into how readers receive your
content. You know to cover your bases in terms of delivering an easy content experience, making
sure your publication’s performance and load times are good, that navigation is easy, that the
content is delivered in a format that is easy to engage with.

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Assuming all your competitors cover these basics too though, how do you stand out?
This is where personalization can help you stand out.
For example, after a reader discovers one of your articles, you can offer him/her further
reading on the topic. Or, if it is a returning visitor and you already know past areas of
interest, you can leverage that knowledge to offer more relevant content right next to
the current article. Tie in aggregate reader behavior, and you can surface content that
is both popular and personalized to the reader of a specific article. Readers who read
this were also interested in ABCD, for example.
But the buck doesn’t stop at online engagement. Your goal is likely more complicated
than that—to get your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, subscription or an upcoming
event. Once you have someone’s contact details in your database, you can leverage
that info to personalize future marketing and sales efforts around these goals.
According to HubSpot, calls-to-action targeted to the user performed 42% better
than generic calls-to-action.
ACCORDING TO HUBSPOT,
CALLS-TO-ACTION TARGETED
TO THE USER PERFORMED
42% BETTER THAN GENERIC
CALLS-TO-ACTION.

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By offering a personalized content experience and by tailoring the calls-to-action to
each individual, publishers can increase the odds that newcomers will become subscribers
as well as returning visitors. Take for example a regional magazine that features a variety
of content around local dining, events, politics and more. By understanding which topics
readers have previously engaged with—and showing them a subscription CTA that features
messaging around topic, they could boost subscriptions.
Subscribe for new articles daily
Subscribe for features on local musicians daily
Subscribe for new local restaurant reviews daily
Subscribe for up to the minute political coverage daily
PERSONALIZED CTA:
More on how to aggregate user data and create contextual CTAs later.
GENERIC CTA:

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GROWING YOUR EMAIL LIST WITH PERSONALIZATION
Everyone knows, a large email list equates to more exposure for both you—and your
advertisers. That said, convicting someone to subscribe to your communications is easier
said than done.
Publishers who are successful in growing their email newsletter sign-up typically
focus on two critical elements: Making things simple for the user and personalizing
the value proposition.
Keeping personalization top-of-mind, here are some ways to address these:
• Make sure the sign-up offer is clearly visible-and only showing up for users who have not
already registered. Nothing is more frustrating than a page blocking pop-up when you al-
ready subscribe to a publication.
• Ask for one field of information to begin with – email. You can always ask for more
information later on using dynamic form fields that recognize what information you
do-or-do-not already have.
• Allow your visitors to select newsletter frequency to reduce concerns of email overload
• Offer registration for interest-oriented newsletters using the different topic areas of
your publication to segment content/newsletter types
• Build unique CTAs for these different newsletters. Place topic-specific CTAs on articles
tagged with the same topic.
• Experiment with targeting email registration CTAs to people who have shown different
levels of interest based on time on page or page views, as a way to zero in on your
most engaged readers

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SECTION_03:
AUDIENCE MONETIZATION
Generating digital revenue has become an ongoing challenge, as publishing houses
need to find smarter ways to monetize their product and to move away from substantial
dependency on traditional digital revenue channels: banner ads and paid subscriptions.
Two phenomena are driving this: The first is an ongoing psychological process, called
banner blindness; the other is its technological extension: ad blockers.
BANNER BLINDNESS:
The process of getting an advertisement on a website is often reduced to
a direct sale process between an advertiser and publisher, where ad space
(and in theory consumer attention) is purchased on a per-view basis. These
exchanges between companies aren’t necessarily rooted in context, meaning
that the advertisement readers see, often has little to do with the content on
the page. This has led website visitors to become skeptical of the ads they
see, and ultimately resulted in what we know today as “banner blindness” or
the tendency to ignore display ads altogether.
AD BLOCKING:
The way ad blocking technology works (at least for now) is, using a list of
advertiser IP addresses, it detects content coming from one of those IP
addresses and then summarily rejects that content or “strips” it from the web
page, usually filling the space with other content so the reader’s viewing isn’t
full of holes where advertisements had been.
At the moment, ad blockers generally deal with the most “annoying” types
of ads, such as pop-ups, pre-roll video ads, or retargeted ads. While these
technologies were initially only used on desktop browsing clients, they are
now finding their way into mobile browsers.
The bad news for publishers—their readers are increasingly migrating away
from desktops So as mobile usage increases, and publishers are becoming
more heavily reliant on mobile audiences for revenue, this environments is
becoming less and less effective for traditional digital advertising techniques.

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So how can personalization help?
Rather than serve readers a one-size-fits-all experience, tailor the promotion to meet
the persona. Replacing flashing banners with personal content offers served to smaller
segments of your audience may result in a lower number of views, but can actually yield
better return in terms of CTR and revenue.
The monetary benefits of personalization don’t stop online. Personalized email offers
to subscribers have a much higher ROI than static ones, and personalization can also
take place on social media, retargeting, and on nearly every digital channel.
MONETIZING YOUR EMAIL LIST WITH PERSONALIZATION
Having a larger email list isn’t the only way in which personalization can help you boost
the ROI from your publication’s email. Once you have additional names in your database,
being able to send them more targeted communications and offers from advertisers is
a huge market advantage.
For each topic your magazine writes on, you could have a unique segment of your
email list that matches to that area of interest—that you then can offer to advertisers
looking to dial in on a more specific subset of readers.
For example, a local city magazine may have an email database of 500,000 readers that
they divide into 5 lists of 100,000 – one for each area of their site (events, nightlife, dinning,
politics, and culture). From there, they could send emails promoting a new restaurant
opening to their dining list, and a separate email with a museum exhibit to their events
and culture lists.
This allows them to create better advertising experiences for their readers, while
simultaneously improving campaign performance for their advertisers. Win-win.
All of this is great in theory—but how do publishers actually gather personalization
data, and use it to power content, emails, and more?

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HOW TO COLLECT INFORMATION FOR PERSONALIZATION
Advertising dollars, subscription growth, and the overall health of a publication hinges
of the quantity and quality of contacts a publisher has – in it’s precious database. Here
too lies the key to a successful personalization strategy.
Let’s start with the what – what information you should collect in order to deliver a
personalized experience. You want to collect any piece of information that can help
you deliver more targeted content or calls-to-action – so basically anything that is of
interest to your advertisers and to you.
As a publisher, you are uniquely positioned to gather this info. You have insights
regarding the interests of your users. You know what and when they are reading, their
engagement level, and what prompts them to take action. You just need to cement the
ways in which you gather and package this information.
ANONYMOUS INFORMATION: includes things like area of interest or content
consumed, time on page as a measure of the visitor’s interest in the content
on the page, geography and location data, etc. and in general can be divided
into:
• Browsing behavior – browsing paths, time spent on pages, scrolling and
clicking
• Interests – content consumed on site
• Demographic – location, gender...
• Channel and device – means of engagement, such as email, mobile,
web, etc.
• Anonymous surveys – use of survey tools to elicit feedback on the
experience

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PERSONAL INFORMATION: is directly tied to a contact in your database.
Most people are willing to provide this more personal data in exchange for
a something that benefits them in return. It can include, but is not limited to:
· Name
· Email address
· Job title or area of work
· Interests: Select selected
· Subscription preferences
· Purchase intent
While there are many simple ways to collect anonymous information (many you are
probably using already) personal information takes a little most trust to earn from
your audience.
USING GATED CONTENT TO COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION
One of the most effective ways to gather personalized information from your readers
is by offering premium content in exchange for personal details. Premium content can
be anything from an informational ebook to a webinar, research, or anything else your
audience would find valuable.
This method creates a win-win scenario for your readers and your business. Your
publication already has the resource your readers are looking for: your writers. The
journalist’s toolset consists of knowledge, experience and connections. Because of
this, gated content allows
• Readers to get additional, and often times more valuable, content from the
sources they already rely upon and love to read.
• Publishers to earn reader trust and build relationships that work toward subscriptions.

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Advertisers like this method because it is based on actual performance, thus reducing
their risk - no downloads, no cost. For the publisher, however, this monetization method
relies on a fine balance: Too much sponsored content could hurt the user experience and
the publication’s credibility, compromising its long term growth. Most publishers build a
resource section especially for the sort of content. Understanding how to drive traffic to
this section, or directly to these gated assets, is the key in making this method work.
Consider the following:
Group premium content in a specific resources section. Make this page easy to find by
adding it to your top navigation or side bar.
Surface the premium content next to relevant articles – a guide to your 401 forms would
probably do well near an end-of-year op-ed entitled “New tax regulations could save
you thousands of dollars,” rather than near a video entitled “You won’t believe where
your next dream vacation should be.”
MEDIA.COM
SUBSCRIBE
DOWNLOAD
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Use relevant text links within articles to entice more people to “learn more” about
what they have just finished reading.
Use overlays and dynamic calls-to-action to drive your audience to your conversion
pages.
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SECTION_04:
HOW TO DELIVER A PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE
TO YOUR AUDIENCE
So you have reader information, and know how you want to do it—we now approach
the final and most important step. Having the know-how to deliver your intended
experiences.
You can personalize reader experience at different levels—from creating audience
segments by areas of interest, subscription type, or geographic region, or digging all
the way down to actions like emails opened, articles read, or specific pages of your site
viewed.
What personalization ultimately boils down to, is a publication’s ability to gather
segmentation data on an individual level, then aggregate that data into lists that fuel
online experiences.
This requires you to first know who a reader is, and then manipulate content or experiences
to match that identity. You can do this by manually uploading lists of contacts or readers
with properties attached to each person—or you can do this through automation.
WHAT PERSONALIZATION ULTIMATELY BOILS
DOWNTO, ISAPUBLICATION’SABILITYTO GATHER
SEGMENTATION DATAONAN INDIVIDUALLEVEL,
THEN AGGREGATE THAT DATA INTO LISTS THAT
FUEL ONLINE EXPERIENCES.

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Those forms you had readers fill out when they downloaded gated content or signed
up for an email newsletter? They were merely an automated vehicle through which
additional data can be stored for later use.
That initial information gathered on a user—and all subsequent data—should be stored
on individual contact records within your database at large.
From there, you should use those pieces of data to build and manipulate lists of
user-segments based on the data that makes sense for any given scenario. Lists can
then be used for email sends, or to power dynamic pieces of your website – ranging in
size from CTA’s to the entire layout of your homepage.
For example:
DATA:
Subscription renewal date
USE CASE:
Build lists of people who’s subscription expires in 2 months to send automated
renewal emails.
DATA:
Area of interest
USE CASE:
Build several versions of your newsletter that aggregate content by topic, and
send those to each corresponding list.
DATA:
Email engagements or number of visits to your site
USE CASE:
Offer to contact this premium list for advertisers looking to generate leads
amongst your most engaged users.

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Let’s dive deeper into two common examples of this method:
1. Segmentation based on interests: classifying your audience by areas of interest,
geographic region, or any other stagnant piece of data that lives on their profile
2. Segmentation based on engagement: tracking each person’s personal actions to
gauge and react to their engagement with your publication
SEGMENTATION BASED ON INTERESTS:
Segments and personas should be rooted in careful planning. Don’t make group
of topics for the sake of going through the motions. Rather think about your site
set-up, what your readers want to consume, and how segmentation can help
your advertisers reach the right people.
These segments can then be targeted with tailored offers throughout their buyer’s
lifecycle. For example, web visitors who land on an article or within a section
that belongs to a specific segment can immediately receive offers to read more
articles on the same topic or from the same section. Similarly, subscribers can
only receive new content based on their area of interest.
For example, the “car fans in California” segment is more likely to be responsive
to cars designed for warm weather (such as convertibles or soft-top SUVs)
than a more broadly defined segment of “car fans in the U.S.” – that is, offering
warm-weather cars to auto enthusiasts in northern Illinois may not be very effective.
SEGMENTATION BASED ON ENGAGEMENT:
Segmentation based on engagement relies on tracking the activity of individual
visitors and responding with email, content offers, and other identifiers that fit
this specific visitor intent. Per our previous example, instead of placing a person
into a “car fans in California” group, we’d classify this person as a “car fan in
California, recently interested in sports cars,”and add them to that subsequent list.
If a few months later this individual turns into a “convertible sports car fan,” we
want to immediately respond with relevant offers, reflecting the more focused
interest, instead of relying on a wider segment definition. Typically, achieving
such a fine level of tracking requires implementing a personalization software
solution. As with segmentation, these solutions should be used across the buyer
journey to optimize all audience interactions.

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SECTION_05:
SUMMARY
The average reader is exposed to hundreds of content messages a day, most of them
irrelevant. Consumers today expect better and more personal content experience, and
as a publisher, you are in the right place to deliver on this expectation. You have
engaged users, and can produce content they are willing to exchange their personal
information to obtain. All you need is a game plan to get started.
What information do you want to learn—and how will you use it to improve their
experiences with your brand. The power is yours, use it wisely.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JULIANA NICHOLSON
Juliana is a Marketing Manager at HubSpot, working to help media
companies transform the way they think about attracting, converting,
and closing audiences for themselves and their advertisers.
ABOUT BRIGHTINFO:
BrightInfo makes every content experience count. Its real-time content
personalization engine automatically serves your most relevant
content to your audience on your website, ads, email and social
media, boosting lead generation by up to 125%. BrightInfo requires no
configuration, customization or integration and delivers value within
minutes of activation. Visit www.brightinfo.com to learn more.
CONTRIBUTORS:

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