BtoB Media Business - September 2011 - (Page 18)

Production PRODUCTION E-newsletter expansion Production departments find ways to adapt to rigors of daily electronic news distribution BY MARK J. MILLER PRESSING ISSUES E -newsletters are, like online banner ads, one of the original methods publishers used to generate digital revenue, particularly in b-to-b media. Despite their longevity, e-newsletters are still seen as a high-growth area for some b-to-b publishers. Last year, 61% of b-to-b marketers in North America used e-newsletters as a content marketing tactic, according to data compiled by MarketingProfs and Forrester Research and reported by eMarketer. With their continued proliferation in some sectors, e-newsletters have turned many b-to-b publishers, which once published nothing but monthly magazines, into purveyors of daily journalism. How have production departments that were originally designed to produce monthlies been keeping pace with this expanded responsibility? UBM Electronics, which publishes EE Times, uses a homegrown CMS in the production of its e-newsletters. Amandeep Sandhu, director-audience engagement and analytics at UBM Electronics, said functionality was added to the system to automate the generation of newsletters. When UBM was looking for options to accomplish this task, it didn’t find any it felt were suitable. “We went the route of developing this functionality in-house,” Sandhu said. “Publishers should be looking for ways to automate this process but also increased functionality of user behavior targeting for content in these newsletters. “Our newsletters contain various types of content specific to the newsletter topics but also related articles in other sections of the website, like tech papers, webinars, etc.,” he said. “As the system is automated and driven by taxonomy of the website, these related pieces of content are brought in automatically without any human intervention.” The only content that is manually inserted are some of the advertisements, but that process is handled by the audience development department at UBM Electronics. The current plan is to automate that task as well. Meanwhile, Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes Education Week, also has e-newsletter templates built into its CMS. However the company also sends out many e-newsletters that are created with hand-coded templates, said Stacy Hollenbeck, online news production manager at EPE. “We’re chugging out a lot of e-newsletters, and we need to have an easy way to produce them.” EPE similarly found it difficult to locate software to deal with its e-newsletter needs. “The features of email marketing programs are becoming more and more elaborate,” Hollenbeck said. “Because of that, finding an email marketing software that fits your needs might be harder and/or costlier than designing an e-newsletter.” Software vendors are working to streamline the production of e-newsletters for publishers. For example, two vendors—mail service provider Contactology and CMS creator Metro Publisher—formed a partnership this summer designed to help publishers automate the creation of e-newsletters. The central idea behind the affiliation is to bring together Contactology’s technical know-how (gleaned from working on Salon.com’s email newsletters) with Metro Publisher’s editorial experience (which can ease the creation of newsletters by automating the selection of editorial by category, time published, author or content tags). “Automation not only saves time but also allows publishers to push out more content that’s also relevant,” said Will Elliott, VP-marketing and sales at Contactology. “A publication that was struggling to get out a monthly newsletter can now automatically send out email newsletters broken down by topic, blogger, etc. The more relevant content, the better engaged the subscribers and increased opportunities for inemail sponsorship and ad revenue.” Costs for the service are based on the number of audience members. For 500 subscribers, it runs $13.00 monthly; the service is free for publishers with 100 or fewer recipients. “It’s amazing to me how many business owners cling to this notion of ‘building’ their website and somehow take pride in managing teams of developers and designers,” said Mark Pratt, VP-business development at Metro Publisher. “That’s an incredible waste of capital and time.” n the past six months, the production department of IDG Enterprise, which publishes Computerworld and other tech brands, increased its responsibilities to include distributing email newsletters and smartphone and tablet apps. Chris Cuoco, VP-production operations, recently shared his thoughts with Media Business. MB: What big changes do you see BIO on the production front in the next six CHRIS CUOCO months to a year? VP-production Cuoco: I believe operations, IDG Enterprise that the digital production role will continue to expand. The digital world is very fast-paced; and to succeed, we need to execute accurately across multiple platforms, including digital and print editions, mobile apps, as well as new programs as they come along. Additionally, production teams will need to work closely with both digital and print vendors to make sure we are continuing to be cost-effective and efficient. MB: What issues most concern you on the production side? Cuoco: IDG Enterprise is a “digitalcentric” company, thus our production team works on both digital and print production. I think that our biggest challenge is maintaining a working knowledge of new technologies in the rapidly changing media landscape, including mobile apps, tablets, digital editions, HTML5 and more. MB: What do production execs need to do regarding issues on the horizon? Cuoco: The production role continues to evolve to a dual digital and print production process. I believe that production executives need to work closely with employees that have a traditional print production background to provide training and the opportunity to work in a digital or hybrid production world. —M.J.M. Digital production continues to expand I 18 | Media Business | September 2011 | mediabusinessonline.com http://www.mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - September 2011

BtoB Media Business - September 2011
Table of Contents
Outsell report bodes well for b-to-b media
Companies plan for growth amid economic uncertainty
Dealmaking picks up, raising hopes of a comeback
Sales & Marketing
Events
Audience Development
Production
People
Benchmarks
How SourceMedia transformed its operations

BtoB Media Business - September 2011