Customer Data Management for Publishers

High-quality data leads back to the growth path.

Disruptive changes are shaping the publishing industry; print is losing more and more in favor of digital offerings. Everyone wants everything for free. Publishers are forced to monetize their offerings. High-quality data helps them do this.

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Everywhere you look in the publishing industry, there are cutbacks and enormous cost pressure, publications are on the brink of extinction. The pressure to monetize previously free offerings is now high. This puts off many existing customers, who turn to other, 'still' free offerings. However, it also filters out those customers who are willing to pay for good publishing offers.

In many cases, however, the steps toward monetization are somewhat clumsy and follow their own necessities rather than the credo of creating concrete added value for customers. Which is a pity and avoidable. After all, publishers have plenty of customer data, both online and in print, from their publishing and subscription business as well as their advertising division. If this data is used correctly and its quality is optimized, monetary aspects can be tracked in a much more targeted and customer-oriented way because they are data-based. The decisive factor is the ability to hold the data in such a way that it reveals the knowledge it contains, from which information can be derived and profitably applied.

Challenges of the industry

"Publishers need to prioritize process optimization as well as improvements to their innovation capabilities."

Data quality makes an important contribution to this:

Personalization:
Reliable data makes it possible to address customers individually. Customers appreciate this. Personalization strengthens customer loyalty, improves digital sales and additional business in particular, and helps to develop new target groups.
Data analytics:
They often pose challenges for publishers because skills and the right data management are lacking. Reliable data makes analysis easier. The knowledge gained opens up prospects in the direction of new business models and innovation.
Process optimization:
Reliable data ensures that processes can be optimized. Optimized processes, in turn, ensure faster, more precise and thus more cost-effective processes that can be tailored to the needs of the clientele.
Cookieless:
The digital ad business in particular relied on identifying target groups via cookies. Reliable data enables alternative ways of identification, e.g., through privacy-compliant matching in so-called clean rooms.
Data governance:
Reliable data, together with optimized processes and resilient structures, create an architecture in which data management and data competence can be further developed in a focused manner, with the aim of monetizing offers and increasing reader revenue.

"Personalized offers help publishers to expand their digital business. However, this requires appropriate data management of high maturity, based on high-quality data."

Ricardo Becherer, Account Manager at Uniserv

"Personalized offers help publishers to expand their digital business. However, this requires appropriate data management of high maturity, based on high-quality data."

Ricardo Becherer, Account Manager at Uniserv

More sales through personalized addressing

From individual addressing to personalized apps, applications and content offers - the range of personalization is wide, and the topic itself is highly topical. The digitalized business is predominantly affected. This is because it offers publishers the best opportunities to play out content specifically for customer groups right down to individual customers. Print does not offer this opportunity, which of course, against the backdrop of cost pressure, for example, is practically a plea for digitization. Publishers are being asked to consider where and how they can digitize.

Customers virtually demand and want this personalized approach. After all, no one wants or has time to spend on content that is not relevant. Everything has to be 'snackable', consumable 'en passant'. What's more, in addition to money, they also pay with their data and ergo expect something in return, in the form of individual content.

The new technological, cloud-based developments in particular make it easier for publishers to individualize their business, i.e., to adapt it to the specific needs of readers or reader groups and thus create a customer experience that is as individual as possible. Digitally, a great deal of data is generated at the various touchpoints. This data must be recorded, channeled and managed accordingly. In addition to the necessary skills, this also requires intelligent tools to turn the data into useful, reliable data. For personalized addressing, you need up-to-date, complete, correct and unambiguous data:

Address validation: postal valid addresses.

Identity resolution: tracking down duplicate and multiple data records.

E-mail validation: communicate digitally at any time.

The Uniserv Customer Data Hub also dissolves data silos and consolidates the existing data into a uniform, central data stock with a 360-degree view of each customer as complete data truth. This enables you to offer your customers personalized and fully digital new services.

Boosting Reader Revenue in the Post-Cookie Era

"It's all about reader revenue," you might say in the publishing industry. Advertising accounts for a large part of revenue for publishers. Accordingly, so-called first-party data is increasingly coming into focus, especially now that Google has announced the end of cookies, and this type of customer identification is also 'under constant fire', so to speak, in terms of data protection. With first-party data, i.e., the company's own data pool, it is possible to segment user groups and thus play out targeted, personalized advertising. In this context, it is becoming increasingly important to think about which ID solutions should be used in the future to activate your own data for marketing purposes.

But this will only succeed if publishers can rely on their data, not only for targeted advertising, but also in relation to new online revenue models and subscription marketing. With the threat of more advertising dollars moving behind the walls of walled gardens, these are the mainstays of media. The better publishers know their clientele and can leverage customer data, the better the customer experience and predictability of their own revenues. For more reader revenue, it is important to know your customers, to identify them precisely:

Identity Resolution: track down duplicate and multiple records.

E-mail validation: communicate digitally at all times.

Master data management: a holistic view of the customer.

Skilled data analysis - entry into solid decision-making bases

In principle, data analysis or data evaluation describes the process of extracting valuable information from raw data. This data often comes from a so-called data warehouse, in which the preliminary work of logically linking data has already taken place. This means that they are available for statistical analysis, for example. A great deal of knowledge can be gained from this.

So much for the theory. Publishers have enormous amounts of data at their disposal, from very different sources, such as advertisements, subscriptions, and so on. However, publishers often lack the necessary skills and tools to analyze their data in order to derive concrete recommendations for action or decisions. In order for the data to be analyzed and reveal its secrets, it must be of high quality, i.e., it must be up-to-date, complete, unambiguous and correct. After an analysis, for example, it can be deduced which publishing titles are profitable and which are not. Data analysis also provides valuable information on user groups and their contribution margins. Conclusions can be drawn about cross-selling and upselling. To name just a few examples.

The decisive factor here is central data storage, in which there is a Golden Record for each individual customer and business partner as the basis for a 360-degree view. In order for data to be analyzed comprehensively, it must be available in a reliable and consolidated form. This is the only way to reveal the knowledge they contain. The Customer Data Hub is an invaluable companion for this. It breaks down data silos, brings data together and consolidates it. This robust database can then be perfectly analyzed to provide valuable insights which form the basis for sound business decisions.

Customer Data Management for Publishers

High-quality data leads back to the growth path.

Key challenges in the publishing industry

More sales through personalized addressing

Boosting Reader Revenue in the Post-Cookie Era

Skilled data analysis - entry into solid decision-making bases