BlueConic supports your CDP use cases with rich first-party data capabilities. When it comes to determining the best CDP use cases for your business, the possibilities are unlimited. However, when starting out on your CDP journey, it helps to understand how other service businesses similar to yours use their CDP to the fullest. In this article, you’ll find some of the top CDP use cases for organizations in the media and publishing industry.
If you’re in media and publishing, no matter if you’re B2C or B2B, how you generate revenue will often influence the types of use cases you want to implement. For instance, if you rely on a paid digital subscription model, you may approach things differently than a publisher that is primarily dependent upon advertising revenue.
What is a CDP use case?
To begin, make sure you’re familiar with what exactly a BlueConic CDP use case—a process that describes the current state, target outcome, supporting activities, and relative complexity required to successfully reach your business goal. Then, explore the five use cases below.
If you’re feeling stuck or looking for inspiration, you can always reach out to your BlueConic Customer Success Manager, who can walk you through use case ideas and answer any questions.
Top 5 CDP use cases for media and publishing
Choosing the best use case(s) for your organization depends on your specific goals and data sources, but many BlueConic customers in media and publishing find one of these use cases to be a good starting point:
- Lead generation (to increase subscriptions to your newsletter)
- Ad waste reduction (to ensure that advertising expenses are used meaningfully)
- Personalized content recommendations (to increase engagement and drive revenue)
- Content metering (to drive digital subscription growth)
- Audience monetization (by creating segments for advertisers)
Use Case 1: Lead generation
What: Increase the number of subscribers to your mailing list through which you can send content and advertising or promote your paid digital subscription service.
Why: By consistently generating leads, you ensure that you always have a strong mailing list to target—with subscribers interested in consuming your content and/or making purchases. Having an easy sign-up process and strategies to keep those individuals subscribed makes churn less of an issue.
How: First, identify and/or create the segment(s) of customers you want to target for your newsletter. (If you need additional data to populate profiles in your segment, you can set up a BlueConic Listener or Connection to collect that data.) Then, activate the segment by creating a BlueConic Dialogue; depending on the dialogue type, BlueConic comes preloaded with examples to collect email addresses and capture that lead information. For more information, review the article BlueConic CDP Use Case: Accelerate Lead Generation Campaigns.
Next steps:
- Progressive profiling: Refine audience segments by asking subscribers to provide small bits of information about their interests.
- Personalized email recommendations: Deliver dynamic, individualized content recommendations via email based on their interests and other data.
Use Case 2: Ad waste reduction
What: Avoid spending money on advertising that doesn’t generate profit for your business.
Why: No business wants to invest time and money in advertising campaigns that fail to meet expectations. By looking more closely at your first-party customer data (e.g., interests, behaviors) and ad strategies and practices (e.g., ad placement, target audience), you can get a better sense of what will work so you can stop investing in things that don’t.
How: First, determine the advertising platforms you want to optimize using the data you have stored in BlueConic. Then, identify and/or create the segment(s) of customers you want to target—based on purchase data, behavioral traits, etc.—and connect to a platform to send those profiles (e.g., Facebook Advertising Connection). Once your ad campaigns are running with the new segment(s), measure your success by examining metrics such as cost-per-lead, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value.
Next steps:
- Audience suppression: Stop targeting profiles who do not match your target audience.
Use Case 3: Personalized content recommendations
What: Show dynamic, personalized content recommendations to customers based on their profile data, browsing history, and behaviors.
Why: Content recommendations guide users to the most relevant and appealing content for them, which enhances their experience by encouraging them to explore additional content during their session. It also increases the likelihood that they return, which is significant if you run ads or you’re looking to increase engagement (and avoid subscription churn if using a paid model).
How: First, set up a Content Collector to scrape your content catalog and store it in a BlueConic content store. Then, use the Content Recommendations toolbar plugin of the content editor to insert personalized content placements on your pages or channels. Configure your content recommendations using filters and recommendation algorithms to ensure that your recommendations are based on each individual's behavior, interests, and preferences. For more information, review the article Create personalized content recommendations in BlueConic.
Next steps:
- In Case You Missed It content recommendations: Serve unread, relevant content to visitors when they return to your site.
- Newsletter cross-promotion: Recommend other newsletters on different topics (e.g., sports, politics) if the visitor engages a lot with that content.
Case Study
Boston Globe Media Grows its Active Subscriber Base by Delivering a Personalized Content Experience
Use Case 4: Content metering
What: Allow readers to view a set number of content pieces (e.g., articles) for free before they need to purchase a digital subscription—warning or blocking those readers when they reach configured limits.
Why: If you rely on a digital subscription model for revenue, then you need to find that “sweet spot” where you grant enough free views to engage and grab readers so they’re willing to pay for full access. Since unified profiles in BlueConic update in real time as user behaviors change, you can make timely adjustments to your content meter strategies to optimize both engagement and revenue.
How: First, determine the business rules you'll use for content metering and the desired audience (identifying and/or creating the appropriate segments). Then, add the BlueConic Content Meter Listener to your tenant and configure it as appropriate, creating and/or assigning profile properties to store the values accumulated by the listener. Make sure to then create a Dialogue for each message you want to display during the metering experience (e.g., "You have 3 articles left."). For more information, review the article Use content metering to improve conversions.
Next steps:
- New customer onboarding: Send emails to new digital subscribers with subscriber-only content within the first 30/60/90 days of their subscription—to reduce the likelihood of cancellation during that time.
- Upsell: Encourage subscribers to upgrade or add on to their current digital subscription.
Use Case 5: Audience monetization
What: Generate revenue from your audience by segmenting them into specific groups for advertisers to target.
Why: For publishers and media companies that serve ads on their site as a source of revenue, having high-quality first-party data is an important component in monetizing your audience because it allows you to gauge their interests and evaluate the type of content they consume; audiences segmented as such can then be packaged for advertising partners.
How: First, identify the types of audiences to create (e.g,. paid subscribers only, everyone interested in health and wellness), using one or several listeners to help collect data for these high-value segments. For instance, use the Interest Ranker 2.0 Listener to track visitors' interests or the Scoring Listener to track their behaviors, such as articles read. Then, determine how to use that data for advertising, whether that means selling targeted ad space on your website, implementing Dialogues to drive traffic to partner advertisers’ sponsored content, or a different strategy.
Next steps:
- Target lookalike audiences: Create high-value audiences in BlueConic using lookalike modeling on ad and social platforms.
- Ad suppression: Stop serving ads to visitors who already own the advertised product/service or haven't demonstrated interest in it.
BlueConic CDP Resources and User Stories
- What is a CDP use case? (Knowledge Base article)
- What are Value-Based Outcomes? And why are they important? (Knowledge Base article)
- Media and Publishing Solutions (BlueConic.com)
- Business Transformation in Media & Publishing (Ebook)
- Audience Monetization: A Powerful Revenue Opportunity (Blog)
- Why Publishers Rely on CDPs to Grow Revenue (Webinar)