A forum for the print and
digital publishing industries

• 11 Ways to Create Effective Landing Page Forms

Your form’s design and layout directly impact whether or not your website visitors will convert on your landing page offer. Because these forms are the final step before conversion, it’s important to create a form that’s easy and straightforward. Mirabel’s Marketing Manager will explain landing page form best practices and cover what to include in terms of form fields, structure, and landing page design. Ultimately, you’ll learn how to create an effective landing page form and how to ensure an easy, intuitive user experience for your website visitors.

• ‘You’ve go to bring mobile front and center’: Powerful New Targeting and Measurement Solutions for Publishers in a Post-Cookie World

The value of mobility data is driven by the idea that the mix of mobile apps on a device and how frequently they are used are a strong representation of their general interests and behaviors … Knowing the kind of apps a specific target group uses and at what times would let marketers form more effective partnerships and serve highly targeted content at the right time. “Mobility data enables us to dig deeper into segments,” says Mike Peralta, VP, and GM of Marketing Solutions. “While most people could guess that users of apps like American Eagle, Nike, or Poshmark skew female and younger, with mobility data, we can obtain more interesting insights.”

• The Ad Industry Pursues a Global Framework to Navigate Diverse Privacy Laws

Amid mounting privacy laws and the internet’s largest platforms implementing strict data curbs, internal discussions within the IAB Tech Lab aim to establish an accountability framework to help members better coordinate their policies across the globe. Growing demands for better data protection have created the sternest headwinds the online ad industry has ever faced as governments crackdown on clandestine data flows, resulting in a regulatory minefield most companies find challenging to navigate.

• How a Video Content Strategy Can Benefit Publishers

It’s no secret that generational differences affect the way audiences interpret and absorb information. Social media platforms continue to evolve, and so do the perspectives of users who continue to find new ways to satisfy their needs for both entertainment and connection. This blog post will explain the increasing shift to video content in publishing and explore some examples of publications that have proven to be experts at connecting with audiences through video.

 

• Break Through the Internet: How to Create a Blog Conversion Strategy

By prioritizing blog conversions within your content marketing strategy, you could be racking up high-quality leads and, eventually, quantifiable sales results. By optimizing your blog for conversions, you could also stay ahead of the competition. While there’s no one-strategy-fits-all model for increased conversion rates, Mirabel’s Marketing Manager will dive into key conversion metrics, how to optimize your blog for a high conversion rate, and more.

• 50 Ways to Make Media Pay: Other Established and Emerging Ideas

In this blog, we explore examples of well worn wider business practices that can support revenue growth and new income streams, as well as look at areas that are growing in popularity. Some of these emerging ideas are newer than others, but as publishers look to reduce advertising dependency, so a number of older ideas are being looked at again, or benefitting from more effort and resources being allocated to them.

• Publishers Seek Reader Payments Without the Pressure of a Paywall

Business publisher Quartz has joined the likes of Vox and The Guardian in moving to a membership model, backed by the belief that readers will want to support the missions and journalism of the respective publishers enough to pay them without the pressure of a paywall. And Vice News plans to add a tip jar to gather reader donations this year. But can publishers still grow direct reader revenue without a paywall?

• Talk of the Town: How to Use Events as a Supplemental Revenue Source

Hosting events is a way to supplement magazine advertising revenue. Additionally, events can increase your brand awareness and gain customer responses on how to improve your product. Events are costly but can reap huge benefits for both your magazine and your advertisers. Follow these steps to help your event be as successful as possible.

 

• Why Your Email Sender Reputation Matters, Especially Now

It’s easy to avoid common email deliverability problems, but coming back from a poor sender reputation is tricky. It’s a longer-term process that requires an organic increase in email deliverability. Take a few email marketing strategies from Mirabel’s Marketing Manager on how to improve your email deliverability and sender reputation.

• ‘There is no slowing down’: Exponential Growth in Digital Advertising, IAB Report Shows

Total U.S. digital ad revenue for 2021 came to $189B – a 50B jump in a single year, and at 35.4%, the highest YoY growth since 2006, according to the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report by IAB and PwC. The increase is 3x compared to the previous year’s 12.2%, and twice that of 2018-19.

• Google’s Privacy Sandbox Plans Include Separate Vetting for Third-Party Code

Apple and Google, the duopoly controlling the $133 billion-per-year mobile app market, typically differ when policing their respective ecosystems; the iPhone-maker is rigid in its controls while the latter typically favors open sourcing. However, the pressing need for more innovative security controls has prompted some to think their policies may soon overlap when it comes to policing third-party code on publishers’ apps.

• The Best Magazine Software for Publishers in 2022

When it comes to magazine media and digital publications, reliable software tools are a necessity. From publishing CRM and magazine design, to circulation and subscription management, this ultimate guide to magazine software is an overview of the most popular software tools in the publishing industry.

• If You Build It: How to Set Up and Strengthen Your Email Marketing List

When carried out effectively, email marketing is one of the most lucrative digital marketing strategies. It offers low costs and a high return on investment (ROI), proving to be a vital asset to your marketing plan and overall company growth. The most important thing to consider, however, is who you’re sending your email marketing campaigns to. Whether it’s your target audience, form-filled leads, or existing customers, an email list is crucial to your success.

• Why Email Advertising Innovation Has Stalled, and How Publishers Can Move Forward

Email has struggled to shine commercially as part of a product mix. For many publishers, it is still an incremental revenue stream providing just a small percentage of inventory. This in turn means it isn’t in line for as much attention and innovation as other areas of the business. Now, however, email is beginning to be seen as a more powerful product in its own right.

• WTF Is the Digital Markets Act?

The value of data has been clear in our digital economy for a long time. UK mathematician Clive Humby described it as the new oil back in 2006. But he qualified his description, saying: “Like oil, data is valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used.” More publishers are collecting increasing amounts of data to grow their audiences and support subscription and advertising sales, but without the refinement of effective data strategies, more data doesn’t guarantee better performance.

• The Highs and Lows of Publishing CRM, and How to Embrace the Complications

Sadly, magazine CRM systems are neither invincible nor undefeated. Keeping an exact score is difficult, as the CRM failure rate has been measured to be anywhere between 18% and 69% over the years … In this blog, we’re going to focus on the common complications of what can feel like an impersonal system, but should be approached as a human-first experience, not only for the customers (who come first in both spirit and also in CRM name), but for the publishing CRM users who craft and maintain that all-important relationship.

• Where the Action Is: How to Create an Effective Call-to-Action

In the Digital Age of endless choice and opportunity, a successful digital marketing campaign is incomplete without a proper call-to-action (CTA). In fact, 47 percent of websites have a clear CTA that takes readers 3 seconds or less to see.  A CTA moves your audience forward. If they feel confident in the product or service you offer as their solution, they’ll want to know the next step.

• In Graphic Detail: What Trends We Can See From Publisher 2021 Earnings Reports

The pandemic’s first year turned the publishing industry on its head, forcing executives to not only halt certain businesses, but to look for new revenue opportunities in an attempt to mitigate some of the impact.  In the second year, however, publishers seemed to have a better grasp on our new reality and saw some businesses come back online, working in conjunction with the primary businesses that kept their companies afloat — and in some cases growing.

• How Publishers Can Build Effective Data Strategies

The value of data has been clear in our digital economy for a long time. UK mathematician Clive Humby described it as the new oil back in 2006. But he qualified his description, saying: “Like oil, data is valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used.” More publishers are collecting increasing amounts of data to grow their audiences and support subscription and advertising sales, but without the refinement of effective data strategies, more data doesn’t guarantee better performance.

• So Happy Together: The Must-Have Integrations Your CRM Needs

CRM stands for customer relationship management, and in publishing or any other industry, it’s capable of streamlining any number of activities and interactions that take place between your company and your potential and current customers. Ideally, a CRM should complete and streamline tasks in the natural environment you’re already comfortable working in, then have the fruits of that labor appear in the shared system for all team members to access.

• What Is Content Marketing and Why Is It Important?

According to modern business strategists and marketing experts, content marketing is the key to success in this increasingly digital age of Internet, e-commerce, and social media. But what exactly is content marketing and why is it such a valuable tool for your brand? This article will explore the definition of content marketing, its benefits, and show some examples of the various ways that brands are utilizing content marketing throughout different industries.

• 50 Ways to Make Media Pay: Paywalls

Many news outlets have historically dropped paywalls (or elements of them) for emergencies, breaking news stories or major events. In keeping with this, multiple publishers did the same thing with COVID-related content, including outlets with historically firm paywalls, like the Financial Times. It wasn’t a move that everyone agreed with, and as the crisis continued, some publishers – like McClatchy in the U.S. – decided to reinstate their full paywalls.

• Metrics Show How Poor Digital Experience Impacts Revenue

Common sense says your customers’ digital experiences are closely tied to overall customer satisfaction. But new metrics can now show the effect of a substandard digital experience on the bottom line.

• 8 Survival Skills Every Publisher Needs to Offer Marketing Services

Publishers, even if your business starts morphing into the “annoying agency,” there are still some strategies that may be worth considering. Regardless of your talent, salesmanship, and entrepreneurial skill set, you may find some of these survival skills are worth further cultivating.

• Are Your Marketing Emails Illegal? How to Comply (And Thrive) With the CAN-SPAM Act

When considering email marketing as an outreach tactic, it’s important to understand the rules and regulations that can turn your company’s innocent approach into a legal nightmare. Let’s start by exploring the different components of an average user’s email inbox.

• Growing Reader Revenue in 2022

As subscription revenue becomes increasingly vital to news publishers, how best to inspire readers to sign on to the value proposition is at top-of-mind. There’s no singular answer, no magic bullet, and no one-size-fits-all approach, but publishers are getting creative with their subscription appeals, and readers are responding.

• ‘There needs to be a mindset shift’: The Publishers’ Guide to Building Effective Data Strategies

More publishers than ever before are using data to grow traffic and revenue. However, more data does not equal better results. A new report by paywall solutions company Piano explores the challenges faced by businesses banking on data for growth. It also presents insights on how companies can collect and use data more effectively.

• The Advertising Sales Reps’ Guide to Programmatic Advertising Sales: Part II

In publishing, the addition of digital advertising has opened a new world of revenue opportunities as well as many challenges. And the technological transition has brought with it opportunities for publishers that did not exist as publishers gain the ability to sell advertising inventory across the entire internet. It’s a challenge for many sales reps to understand how digital advertising works so they can take advantage of these opportunities.

• Happy Landings! How to Get Started With Landing Pages

The goal of a landing page is to increase lead generation and optimize conversion rates. While other web pages on your site prompt visitors to click around, a landing page guides visitors to a specific content offer. Let’s dive deeper into the benefits of landing pages.

• Dysfunctional Dynamics Continue to Blight Ad Tech’s Prospects

Any time a buyer has to sacrifice quality to meet a big-budget spending constraint, that buyer is in a lemon market and should exit until that hard reality trade-off can be overcome. It’s a critique often levied at the state of online advertising. And for good reason: the further out media buyers go into the online ad market to buy publisher inventory the more low-quality inventory they end up buying. But as long as ad tech vendors can deal with that inventory, media buyers don’t have to (i.e incorporate that trade-off cost into ROI) and the money keeps flowing.

• Do Publishers Need an Exit Strategy From Social Media?

What was once supposed to be a golden opportunity to reach and connect millions of people all over the world has soured, with the biggest platforms now being accused of threatening the very fabric of society and democracy. As more and more issues have surfaced, brands are getting twitchy. From ad boycotts to deleting brand accounts, some feel it is better not to be associated with social media at all. So, is this something publishers should also be seriously thinking about?

• The Advertising Sales Reps’ Guide to Programmatic Advertising Sales: Part I

Programmatic advertising, at its most basic, provides a variety of ways to automate the proactive efforts mentioned above. With that automation, opportunities abound to provide advertisers, publishers, and audiences only those quality ads that make sense. And with that quality comes ample opportunity for all to profit.

• CRM 101: A Crash Course on Customer Relationship and Marketing Automation

Many companies have difficulty organizing, analyzing, and acting on the data these users provide. The data could be their clickstream across your website or social media, email communications with salespeople, or basic demographics and contact information. It seems like a daunting task to organize and nurture every user according to where they are in the buying process. Fortunately, a specific marketing automation software exists to make it possible.

• ‘It’s not a peanut butter spread approach’: How Advertisers Are Adapting to a More Nuanced Social Landscape

The days of the one-size-fits all social media approach are seemingly over. Advertisers say the way people use social media is changing, pressuring brands to abandon broad campaigns and instead create content for each individual platform.

• Affiliate Revenue: Still a Publisher’s Best eCommerce Bet?

Globally, the affiliate market – which encompasses cashback and reward sites, as well as publishers and other content creators, social networks and other delivery mechanisms – is worth over $12 billion a year. In the U.S. alone, affiliate marketing spend is projected to reach $8.2 billion in 2022, up from $5.4 billion in 2017. Put simply, with values like these, this is too big a market for publishers to ignore.

• The Highs and Lows of Publishing CRM, and How to Embrace the Complications

Keeping an exact score is difficult, as the CRM failure rate has been measured to be anywhere between 18% and 69% over the years. Even if you look past the bewildering gulf between those numbers, you still have a technology that carries endless promise for all, yet still somehow fails one out of every five attempts.  So when there is a failure, should blame be put on the system? The answer to those questions may not be simple, but the solutions to overcome the larger contributing issues are entirely too easy.