In the midst of the worldwide pandemic, people check on the latest news more often than before the crisis. So, media companies got significant traffic growth especially at the peak of the crisis. At the same time, advertising budgets are cut, and online publishers face the challenge of finding new revenue sources. These and other global problems are described in detail in the Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute.
The Gravitec.net company as an expert in developing software for media, helps publishers overcome the crisis. We introduce creative solutions for the most painful issues in communication between news media and their readers. We’ll show how the behavior automation of our smart web push service improves the major marketing metrics of online media.
Key Challenges: Media Companies and Readers
The lack of trust in the news is an issue that urges people to search for information across multiple sources. And, the number of digital media, including social networks, is growing. So, a publisher needs to run as fast as they can, just to stay in place. And, they have to run twice as fast as that to win the competition for reader attention. You might think that winning means more readers. But, the key challenge is to effectively interact with the audience that you already have. Regular readers are what will keep you afloat at times of crisis.
TIP
Solving the Problems
We show how our media client minuto30.com builds its audience of regular readers using the smart push service by Gravitec.net.
- Minuto30 is one of the most popular newspapers in Colombia. Their website traffic is roughly 4 million visits per month.
- Gravitec.net is a web push service with 4,000+ clients (+11,000 websites) from different countries. We have developed a fully automated notification service to deliver the news to segments of subscribers by their interest. This is a cross-platform technology that enables you to send personalized notifications from a website immediately after your content is published.
Behaviour Automation Test
In 2019, minuto30 started using the Gravitec.net web push service. First, their editors were creating and sending campaigns manually. But after our team developed the behavior automation, we offered minuto30 to test a new strategy. We were testing the automation strategy for 3 weeks with different approaches.
1st week of testing. We were automatically sending “TOP News” (the most rated articles on the website) from 8.30 a.m. until 7.00 p.m each 30-40 minutes. Campaigns were sent to all subscribers.
2nd week of testing. We created segments of subscribers that are interested in a specific category of content. Each of these segments was receiving “Breaking News” 3 times per day. “TOP News” was sent to all subscribers.
3d week of testing. We divided existing subscriber segments into even smaller groups to better target the news. Additionally, we increased the number of campaigns sent to segments to 5 per day.
Here is a table with all the daily figures and results that we achieved with manual and automated campaigns.
CTR was growing as we increased the number of targeted campaigns. Plus, the churn rate with automated campaigns is twice lower than that for the manual approach.
Now, let’s dig deeper into all the benefits of using behavior automation by minuto30.com. We’ll show how our client uses the Gravitec.net service and the achievements they get.
Subscribers
Minuto30 has roughly 400,000 subscribers to their news with our web push service. This is 10% of their website traffic.
How does it work?
Visitors see a permission prompt once they open a website. They need to click “Acepto” to subscribe.
After a visitor subscribes to notifications, they see a Bell widget in the left bottom corner of the web page.
By clicking on the Bell, they can select a news topic they want to subscribe to.
Additionally, the service compiles data about subscriber behavior (such as favorite topics) during their visit to a website. This data helps the publisher send reader-friendly notifications that are relevant to subscriber interest.
Immediately after a sign-up, a subscriber receives a welcome message. So, if a visitor clicked “Acepto” by mistake, they can easily unsubscribe.
This approach gives up to 1,200 subscriptions per day.
Achievements
The website converts roughly 10% of its visitors into subscribers. This is 1200 subscribers per day that will potentially become regular readers! These figures are twice higher than those for email marketing.
Automation
Our team has developed a custom automation strategy for minuto30. Our service automatically creates and sends notifications to segments of subscribers corresponding to their interests.
The most important news such as about the update on the pandemic is automatically sent to all subscribers. The news of a certain topic is sent to a segment of subscribers that have interest in it.
Achievements
This significantly saves time and doesn’t require additional staff. Plus, behavior automation allows to match subscriber interest, and improve the effectiveness of the interaction (CTR).
Breaking News
Minuto30 automatically notify subscribers about the breaking news once they are published. The news is pulled from the website RSS Feed and targeted to a specific subscriber segment. Notifications are displayed on a subscriber’s device over the top of all opened windows.
A notification can be received to ANY device. On average, 85-95% of all clicks are made from mobile devices.
Achievements
Readers see a new article immediately after it is posted. This way they inform readers about the latest news faster than competitors.
New and Returning Visitors
After a new visitor subscribes to notifications, they typically return to the website. Using our automation strategy, minuto30 increased the Returning Visitors rate by roughly 17%.
Achievements
Targeted notifications encourage subscribers to return to the website. New visitors become more engaged with each new article they read.
Traffic
Using the Gravitec.net service, Minuto30 increases its website traffic by roughly 70,000 visits per day.
Detailed statistics per day:
- 16 campaigns sent to all subscribers
- 20 campaigns sent to subscriber segments
- The total number of sent push notifications is 8,456,463
- CTR is 2,94%
- The number of clicks is 68,000
Achievements
This is an easy way to increase your website traffic. And, if you make money on advertising, this will grow your revenue.
Personalized news
Minuto30 sends the news to 13 segments. Segments are created using data about a subscriber device, browser, country, language, and interest. Campaigns are targeted to a particular segment depending on a topic so that a subscriber receives personalized news.
Achievements
Personalized communication with readers fosters their interest. As a result, retention rates increase.
Reader Engagement
Despite the significant number of notifications that are sent to subscribers by minuto30, the number of their regular readers is growing. This strategy won’t work for commercial websites, but people like to check up on the news. Plus, subscribers can choose which notifications they click. Before they commit to reading, subscribers can skim the notification title, and swipe it away if they’re not interested.
Achievements
Readers stay up to date with your content even if they open only one notification per day. This affects the growth of reader loyalty and engagement.
Analytics
The Minuto30 team sees statistics on sent campaigns. They can compare campaign CTRs for different segments to get insights into what works best for their audience.
Achievements
Statistics show how subscribers interact with your content, so you know more about your readers’ behavior. The strategies of how to interact with readers can be easily changed.
Paid Subscription
Minuto30 has no paywall. We’ll show a case of our other client to illustrate how notifications convert readers into paying subscribers. Prensa Libre is a media company from Latin America with over 7 million visitors per month. They have a section with the premium content on their website that is gated by a paywall. A visitor needs to become a paying member to get access to their premium section. Twice or three times per week, Prensa Libre sends targeted push notifications that contain links to premium content. 3-5% of clicks on such notifications lead to paid subscriptions.
Along with access to premium content, paying members get special offers received in notifications. In this way, the media retain their paying audience. Our clients from non-media industries use web push to build and maintain relationships with existing customers too.
Achievements
Push notifications with behavior automation help media convert loyal subscribers into paying customers.
Autonomy
Google and social media offer publishers new ways to interact with users. For example, Facebook has its “Facebook for Media” section to publish your content, and attract reader attention. But, in this case, you depend on social media algorithms and requirements.
By sending notifications to subscribers, minuto30 and other our clients directly interact with their readers without third-party platforms. Subscribers can be reached at any time wherever they are.
In January 2020, Google announced that in two years they will get rid of third-party cookies. Probably, this will result in the inability to show targeted ads to visitors on a website. Alternatively, websites will depend on new third-party platforms in placing ads. Most likely, this will decrease advertising revenues for publishers even more.
Gravitec.net push notification service compiles data about subscriber behavior on a website. Using the data, the media can offer companies to place personalized advertisements. This will help keep advertising prices high.
Achievements
This is a way to build a recurring audience by the means of your own website. Plus, with push notifications, media have an alternative way to get advertising revenues.
Summary
By implementing the smart push technology by Gravitec.net, Minuto30 solved multiple problems and found new ways to get ahead of competitors.
- Subscriptions. Roughly 10% of casual visitors become subscribers.
- Traffic. An increase in website traffic boosts the advertising revenue.
- Personalized news. Lack of reader trust and loyalty was overcome by sending personalized news.
- Breaking News. The competition on the speed of content delivery is won by sending the news from the RSS Feed.
- Automation. Fully automated campaigns save staff and time resources.
- Reader Engagement. The number of engaged readers is growing with each new article they receive in push notifications.
- Returning Visitors. The company builds the audience of regular readers from push subscribers that return to the website.
- Analytics. The company has the means to know its readers’ behavior.
- Paid Subscription. The new revenue source can be established by converting subscribers into paying readers.
- Autonomy. The media builds its recurring audience on its own website instead of using third-party platforms such as social media.
