How is your organisation using data and analytics to support the corporate vision and purpose?
The landscape of journalism has radically changed over the past 20 years, recently accelerated by Covid-19. Print circulation and revenues have declined dramatically, users and revenues have moved online, and competition from the tech giants and social media platforms for readers’ attention and for ad revenue has never been greater. With our subscription-first strategy, data and analytics is fundamental to support our corporate vision and purpose.
We use data and analytics to determine the interests of our readers, the editorial direction and the effectiveness of our marketing strategy to drive registrations and subscriptions. Data has enabled us to shift our strategy away from what journalists think may work towards looking at what readers actually want to read.
2020 was a year like no other – how did it impact on your planned activities and what unplanned ones did you have to introduce?
Covid-19 brought a sharp focus on the fundamental challenges for journalism. With advertisers tightening their belts and brands collapsing, £1 billion is predicted to drop off the industry’s topline revenue according to Enders Analysis. We are very much moving away from an advertising-led revenue model to a subscription and registration model, putting our readers at the heart of what we do.
There is a huge amount of data that we can gather from interactions with our own website. We are also getting smarter about how we use data collected online to assess engagement and to help determine what topics are of interest to our readers and to assess the level of engagement with our content and the performance of our marketing activity. We can see what editorial content is most read, what drives acquisitions and retention. This helps us to develop our own strategies to ensure that our content remains relevant to our readers.
