Everyone is always talking about content marketing. But in reality, if you look closely, very few major advertisers have taken the plunge. If you read the newsletters you receive every day, very few of them use value-added content.
It is all the more distressing from the media whose entire business is based on content!
If you open the newsletters of your favorite media, you will find only a series of headlines classified by categories ... is this really what subscribers are asking for? When you subscribe to a media site's newsletter, you're likely to be interested in what the site has to say ... but not necessarily in everything it says.
The content must be personalized!
Doing "content marketing" when you publish a maximum of one news per week is not obvious. But from the moment when about thirty different news (or more) are published each day ... the potential is much more important!
This potential lies in the advanced personalization of content. And to personalize content, all you have to do is follow what the consumer points to! If the reader reads week after week of economic and ... let's say ... regional news, that these two categories represent more than 80% of the consumed content, it is obvious that we have to stop talking about national politics in the first headlines.
No, customization is not infinite
Personalization doesn't have to mean delivering unique content to everyone! It is quite possible to use statistical clustering of different observed behaviors (behavioral clustering) to simplify the content personalization process. In email marketing, advanced content personalization does not necessarily have to be done in real time. Most of the time, a "one-shot" calculation of all the versions to be distributed will be more than sufficient.
Behavior prediction
But what to do with new individuals about whom we know nothing yet?
Obviously, new entrants must go through a learning phase. A behavioral tracking system obviously does not have a built-in crystal ball.
On the other hand, based on past groupings of profiles, a number of predictions can be made, not all of which will be correct, but which will already allow for significant improvements in personalization. These predictions will be based on data collected during the individual's registration, for example age, gender or some other declarative data explicitly intended to improve the content consumption experience. Think also about using the data available on social networks, an Internet user who is a fan of a dozen Facebook pages on sports or political news gives a clear signal.
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Reading content isn't everything. The best way is to talk to us.
Be careful with the use of predictions not to bias the behavioral learning process. If you never show the sport category to an individual, he or she will never be able to show you that he or she is interested in it.
What about privacy?
This is a question that must be asked. And the answer is relatively simple, don't limit yourself to what the law says, go much further by clearly explaining the principle to the consumer and giving them the choice to participate or not. Yes, an authorization is necessary, but if you clearly explain the benefits of this practice to the subscriber, there is little chance that he will refuse to benefit from it.
An example
Why talk about this subject today? It's because of an experience I had a few days ago. The Belgian daily Le Soir has released a new digital version of its journal. This one is absolutely exceptional (this is obviously a personal opinion). In a responsive interface halfway between Feedly (tablet version) and Pinterest, Le Soir offers a brand new experience to read its daily newspaper. For the moment this new interface is still in beta version but if the few teething problems disappear, ... it will be a success.
Besides the innovative aspect of the media, what is interesting is the offer of a free month, with full access to the articles of the daily newspaper, ... a Freemium offer with full functionality!
Retain Freemium to sell better!
It is in this Freemium content offer that we find a link with the subject of our article. Since the registration to this new service, no email other than the registration confirmation has reached me!
However, Le Soir has one month to try to make me loyal to its service so that I want to continue the experience. And in this perspective, a strong (and visible) personalization of the content by sending a newsletter every day is a unique opportunity to keep me loyal. If it's easy to subscribe to a Freemium offer, it's even easier to forget it exists. And the marketing effort to promote it should be very important.
Imagine, each day, an email with a selection of titles (or more) that interest you? How can you do without such an experience after 4 weeks? This is probably the easiest way to increase the conversion rate of Freemium users into paying users.
Conclusion
The media are in a perpetual search for new business models. And a mix between content, emailing, freemium and behavioral targeting seems to me to be a track to take into account in this sector. And this is not only true for print media, it is also feasible for video content (whether online or on interactive TV), for radio (selection of podcasts linked to your listening habits), for online music platforms, ... huge revolutions in usage are to be expected!
