• Don’t Be Spammy: 10 Email Body Content Design Tips to Help Avoid Filters

In the hierarchy of email marketing importance, it would seem that body content ranks lowest, as this can only be seen once the sender name and subject line have successfully garnered an open. Spam filters look at everything, including the copy and visual elements in your email’s body content, prior to letting your message into inboxes, so it’s just as important to prioritize this. Let’s take a look at what you should and shouldn’t do with your content in order to bypass spam filters, maintain a solid email marketing sender reputation, and boost engagement (read: clicks).

• ‘Net-zero by 2025’: Pressure Builds on Publishers to Prove Sustainability or Lose Ad Buyers

Whilst over 130 governments worldwide have agreed to meet Net Zero carbon emissions targets by 2050, as well as employ a Net Zero Workforce, publishers are starting to heed the call for a more sustainable planet by bringing forward their own plans a few decades earlier. The incentive to do so isn’t just coming top-down from Governments but also from media buyers who, at the behest of brands, are starting to evaluate publisher ad inventory using rigorous sustainability criteria.

• ‘Advertising has taken a hit’: The Crypto Crisis Has Created an Advertising Vacuum

Don’t expect to see many crypto ads for a minute. The companies behind them are trimming down costs wherever they can, including advertising. It’s all they can do to weather a storm that’s been swirling since autumn. Since November, the value of the cryptocurrency market has plummeted from $3 trillion to roughly $900 billion, and analysts predict the meltdown will continue.

• The Best Magazine Software for Publishers in 2022

When it comes to magazine media and digital publications, reliable software tools are a necessity. From publishing CRM and magazine design, to circulation and subscription management, this ultimate guide to magazine software is an overview of the most popular software tools in the publishing industry.

• Construct and Convert: 10 of the Best Landing Page Design Tips

So, you’re creating a new landing page. That’s great! Landing pages are prime opportunities to convert your website’s visitors into leads. To increase your conversion rate, the landing page design needs to provide a smooth user experience. To get that smooth user experience, keep these 10 landing page design ideas in mind.

• The Increasing Value of Standalone Newsletters

Publishers are seeing newsletters as distinct products, driving engagement and revenue. Newsletter strategy used to be focused exclusively on driving traffic to publishers’ websites with click-through rates the all-important metric. Increasingly, however, publishers are seeing newsletters as more than traffic drivers, developing them as distinct, standalone products that will cement audience engagement and even generate ecommerce revenue.

• ‘The juice is not always worth the squeeze’: Publishers Evaluate Cost-per-Click Pricing Models in Their Commerce Businesses

The first quarter of 2022 wasn’t the most successful for some publishers’ commerce businesses. But a few media companies are hoping to avoid this downward trajectory with new pricing models for affiliate deals. Execs hope this strategy will help to bring in more retail partners and take advantage of their audiences’ changing online shopping habits.

• Cover to Cover: How to Start a Magazine in 2022

If you’re looking to start a magazine or pivot to digital editions, read on. We’re outlining the basic steps of how to start a magazine in 2022.

• 12 Growth Hacks to Enhance Your Content Marketing Strategy

Creating the perfect content marketing strategy for your brand is no small feat. No matter how well you know your audience or how long you’ve spent optimizing your content, every content marketer has faced the challenge of gaining readership and brand awareness… This marketing blog will explore different ways on how to use digital growth hacking to expand and enhance your content marketing strategy, plus teach you how to learn from your content and get real results.

• Publishers: 4 Technologies to Include in Your 2023 Plans

“Publishers across the world are betting big on AI” write Señor, Sriram and Bravo. Clearly, the taboo around AI is fading. More than 75% of publishers say AI will play a crucial role in the success of their business within the next three years. This is not just in large newsrooms but in newsrooms across the world in developed and developing countries. The main barrier to the adoption of AI however is attracting talent and skills. Therefore, a more collaborative approach between media, research institutions, and third-party solutions needs to be encouraged.

• How Brands Are Reigniting Interest in Advertising With Contextual Targeting

The Federal Trade Commission plans a “start-to-finish reboot” to its guidance for digital advertisers, the agency said Friday. The agency last issued updated guidance for online disclosures in 2013, when it recommended that marketers make sure all terms, conditions and disclaimers were available to people who accessed ads on small mobile screens. Lesley Fair, a senior attorney with the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, stated Friday: “It’s time for a start-to-finish reboot, given the major changes in advertising tactics and techniques that marketers use.”

• Let’s Get Digital! Why Now Is the Best Time to Embrace the Shift

In the past, digital editions have been regarded as a side dish to the main course of a print edition, or an optional add-on to a subscription you already have. While I may have agreed with you five years ago, the relevance of digital content increases exponentially alongside our use of technology. The technologically advanced, data-driven society we live in needed a face-lift when it came to presenting content in a user-friendly, accessible way. It’s time to stop thinking about digital editions as a sidekick. They’re the superheroes we deserve, and they can help your audience connect with your content moving forward. Here’s a closer look at why now is the time to shift to digital.

• Here Are the Top 10 Marketing Content Types (With Examples)

Content marketing can be accomplished through various channels and diverse types of content. The content marketing type you choose to employ should depend on your audience’s preferences. For example, your product or service might be best showcased through blog articles, videos, or a how-to guide. We can’t say exactly which content type would best suit your brand’s needs or best hit the metrics of your specific content marketing analytics — that will come through trial and error. We can, however, describe the top types of content that users want to see from brands they support.

• Publishers: How to Develop Effective Retention Strategies

Keeping customers – subscribers, advertisers or both – seems like common sense, but many businesses instinctively spend more time developing new business than nurturing existing customers… The need for effective retention strategies has been thrown into the spotlight for publishers dealing with subscription drop offs following the highs of the pandemic’s stay-at-home shopping sprees. Current record growth in advertising revenues could morph into a similar slump as the cost of living crisis bites harder and marketing budgets tighten in line with consumer spending.

• FTC to Revamp Digital Advertising Guidance

The Federal Trade Commission plans a “start-to-finish reboot” to its guidance for digital advertisers, the agency said Friday. The agency last issued updated guidance for online disclosures in 2013, when it recommended that marketers make sure all terms, conditions and disclaimers were available to people who accessed ads on small mobile screens. Lesley Fair, a senior attorney with the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, stated Friday: “It’s time for a start-to-finish reboot, given the major changes in advertising tactics and techniques that marketers use.”

• 6 Ways to Capitalize on a Challenging Publishing Environment

As was the case for many companies around the world, the coronavirus pandemic brought a plethora of unforeseen professional challenges. For the publishing industry in particular, these challenges included a significant decrease in revenue from advertising and subscriptions, as well as a lack of opportunity for new advertising partnerships. As publishers have persevered through many other changes and challenges over the years, I have no doubt we will continue to do so now. To help, I’ve compiled six tips to help you emerge even stronger than before.

• Bad Sender Reputation? Here’s How to Check Yours and Ultimately Fix It

Common mistakes can hurt your email sender reputation. If you receive too many spam complaints, your reputation goes down. If you send unsolicited emails after buying an email list, your reputation goes down. If you fall into a spam trap or honeypot scam, your reputation goes down. Between sender reputation, sender scores, email deliverability, and IP reputation, it’s a lot to consider in a single marketing strategy. Here are a few basics on how to improve your email sender reputation.

• ‘More than 60% of readers do not return’: What Publishers Can Do to Stem the Tide and Boost Engagement

45% of readers who load an article will leave within the first 15 seconds and more than 60% will not return, according to a new Chartbeat whitepaper.  “The Essential Engagement KPIs for Optimizing Conversion Rates,” delves into the importance of developing an effective audience engagement strategy, the essential KPIs for tracking it, and how publishers can use the measurements to build strategies that will optimize conversion rates.

• The Rundown: Google’s Marketing Live Announcements Signal Strategic Priorities

The flagship Google Marketing Live conference is underway this week in which the ad industry’s largest name typically showcases its wares. This year’s installment is taking place as lawmakers and potential interlopers dial up the pressure. Renewed offerings in the retail media sector, not to mention the upcoming formal introduction of ad units in its TikTok-rival YouTube Shorts, point to growing competition in the sector while last week’s Digital Advertising Act underlines external tensions.

• Everything You Need to Know to Start a Magazine Podcast

Since 2004, podcasts audiences have flourished. There are more than 2 million podcasts with 48 million+ episodes, which provide content targeted at a wide range of audiences. Additionally, there are an estimated 120 million podcast listeners in America, which makes podcasts a desirable advertising channel. Moreover, publishers have an advantage because magazine content seamlessly converts to podcast material. Whether the podcast features interviews with notable community leaders or recaps on city-famous events, this content is engaging.

• 8 Quick Tips for a Perfect Mobile-Friendly Landing Page

With over half of users visiting via mobile devices, your ability to optimize your content for smaller screens is a crucial part of your digital marketing strategy. Otherwise, you’ll lose out on potential conversions, because your landing pages are hard to navigate and/or slower on cell phones and tablets. In this article, we’re going to focus on why you need to optimize landing pages for mobile and how to create the perfect landing page with industry best practices.

• How Publishers Are Future Proofing Their Commerce Offerings for Post-Pandemic Consumers

Amid Digiday Media’s first Commerce Week, publishers gathered virtually on Thursday to hear from one another on their commerce strategies. Execs from Vice, Vox Media, Leaf Group and BuzzFeed joined panel discussions to chat about how — with shoppers at home during the pandemic — they expanded their offerings and where they’re making investments to future proof that side of their businesses. Here are five takeaways from the event.

• ‘Astronomical growth over the last 2 years’: Publishers Prioritizing Digital Transformation

The majority of the publishers surveyed by WAN-IFRA for its World Press Trends Outlook 2021-2022 report are “decisively upbeat about their companies’ future prospects,” says Teemu Henriksson, Research Editor, WAN-IFRA.  81.8% of the 162 publishers from 58 countries say they are optimistic about their business outlook this year. The figure reduces slightly to 78.8% when they are asked to rate their prospects for the next three years.

• What’s Your Mix of Six? Alternative Revenue Streams in Digital Publishing

Nowadays, no single revenue stream is enough to sustain, let alone grow, a digital publication. Instead, online publishers are relying on a combination of revenue streams to ensure they can bring in sufficient capital. While there are numerous potential revenue sources, most companies will find success by creating their own “mix of six” streams that are suited for their individual publications. In the world of digital publishing, there are so many ways to monetize your content that it can be overwhelming. Here’s a simple breakdown comparing potential sources of revenue between print and digital publications in 2022.

• Changing the Subject: The Best Free Tools for Email Subject Lines

If you want your email to be opened, first and foremost you need the best email marketing tools. Digital marketing tools for effective email subject lines are huge time-savers. The subject line is the first thing your recipients see, and it’s what determines if they’ll click to view more. Mirabel’s Marketing Manager rounds up the top free email marketing tools for the best subject lines. From testing to generating, here are our top picks from around the internet.

• Print Newspapers Lead the Publisher Cost Crunch

In the latest wessendenbriefing distributed to senior publishing executives, the challenges confronting print newspapers is laid bare, with surging commodity inflation a clear and present danger. This is overlaid with problems in physical logistics, energy and staff costs – all of which are combining to create to create a perfect storm for the industry. On top of the aforementioned challenges, the print newspaper industry is also coming under renewed pressure from the environmental movement for its lack of green credentials (although, as the wessendenbriefing notes, ‘true end-to-end assessments are much more complex than many suggest’).

• Google’s Latest Privacy Tool Is Also a Useful Feature to Bolster Ad Performance

Google is set to launch a new tool to help users better manage the types of ads they see and precisely who’s behind them, in a move it hopes will placate the privacy and transparency lobby. Dubbed My Ad Center, the upcoming feature will let users of the online giant’s search engine, Discovery tool, and YouTube customize their ad experience on those properties in a variety of ways.

• 6 Ways to Perfect Your Territory and Account Management Strategy

The territory fight: It’s the bane of every publisher and sales manager’s existence. All managers in the publishing industry have to deal with it, but there aren’t many who like to, and for good reason! The best sales reps are notoriously competitive, testing even the best manager’s patience from the very beginning, which is why having good account management rules is important. The challenge is that if your rules are too strict, you won’t get the level of competition necessary to maximize your sales revenue, and if your rules are too relaxed, it turns into a free-for-all where sales reps are often pitted against each other. Then, frequent disputes arise, which wear thin on managers and impact your sales team’s morale. As any publisher knows, it’s not a small issue.

• Deeper Intelligence: How an Analytical CRM Can Benefit Your Business

Every successful business utilizes a CRM to ensure that their strategies are based on relevant prospect, customer, and employee data. Each business requires a different strategy from the next, which makes determining which CRM to use a battle in and of itself. When figuring out how a CRM will benefit your business, you need to compare the different options and see which of these best suits your goals. This blog will help you identify the three main types of CRMs and what you should consider when deciding which is best for your business.

• ‘Building a path to audience loyalty’: Why Publishers Need to Focus on Increasing Engaged Time

Engagement is on the rise, according to Chartbeat’s global audience insights from the first quarter of 2022… “Our recent analysis of audience data from the past three years found that outside of Q2 2020, engagement has not been keeping pace with traffic,” notes Neary. “With many regions seeing incremental increases in engagement last quarter, it will be important to build on this momentum with strategies for increasing engaged time even further.”

• Google Responsive Ads Go Vertical Automatically

Responsive Display Ads (RDAs) will undergo a major transformation in the second half of 2022 — connecting creativity and advertising — to provide a better mobile offering for advertisers. It’s part of Google’s strategy to bring more creativity and automation into advertising. With responsive display ads, marketers upload images, headlines, logos, videos and descriptions. The platform automatically generates ad combinations for websites, apps, YouTube, and Gmail.

• No More Cookies: How You’ll Be Able to Survive Without These Dying Tracking Tools

Renewed privacy concerns are inviting not only deeper, scrutinizing looks at tracking techniques, but sweeping changes by tech companies who essentially hold the keys to the toolbox. In this blog, we’ll look at some of the modern, more common tracking practices, the takeaway if these techniques are ultimately taken away, and what those working in the publishing industry can do to craft and execute even more effective outreach plans in their wake.

• 11 Ways to Create Effective Landing Page Forms

Your form’s design and layout directly impact whether or not your website visitors will convert on your landing page offer. Because these forms are the final step before conversion, it’s important to create a form that’s easy and straightforward. Mirabel’s Marketing Manager will explain landing page form best practices and cover what to include in terms of form fields, structure, and landing page design. Ultimately, you’ll learn how to create an effective landing page form and how to ensure an easy, intuitive user experience for your website visitors.

• ‘You’ve go to bring mobile front and center’: Powerful New Targeting and Measurement Solutions for Publishers in a Post-Cookie World

The value of mobility data is driven by the idea that the mix of mobile apps on a device and how frequently they are used are a strong representation of their general interests and behaviors … Knowing the kind of apps a specific target group uses and at what times would let marketers form more effective partnerships and serve highly targeted content at the right time. “Mobility data enables us to dig deeper into segments,” says Mike Peralta, VP, and GM of Marketing Solutions. “While most people could guess that users of apps like American Eagle, Nike, or Poshmark skew female and younger, with mobility data, we can obtain more interesting insights.”

• The Ad Industry Pursues a Global Framework to Navigate Diverse Privacy Laws

Amid mounting privacy laws and the internet’s largest platforms implementing strict data curbs, internal discussions within the IAB Tech Lab aim to establish an accountability framework to help members better coordinate their policies across the globe. Growing demands for better data protection have created the sternest headwinds the online ad industry has ever faced as governments crackdown on clandestine data flows, resulting in a regulatory minefield most companies find challenging to navigate.

• How a Video Content Strategy Can Benefit Publishers

It’s no secret that generational differences affect the way audiences interpret and absorb information. Social media platforms continue to evolve, and so do the perspectives of users who continue to find new ways to satisfy their needs for both entertainment and connection. This blog post will explain the increasing shift to video content in publishing and explore some examples of publications that have proven to be experts at connecting with audiences through video.

 

• Break Through the Internet: How to Create a Blog Conversion Strategy

By prioritizing blog conversions within your content marketing strategy, you could be racking up high-quality leads and, eventually, quantifiable sales results. By optimizing your blog for conversions, you could also stay ahead of the competition. While there’s no one-strategy-fits-all model for increased conversion rates, Mirabel’s Marketing Manager will dive into key conversion metrics, how to optimize your blog for a high conversion rate, and more.

• 50 Ways to Make Media Pay: Other Established and Emerging Ideas

In this blog, we explore examples of well worn wider business practices that can support revenue growth and new income streams, as well as look at areas that are growing in popularity. Some of these emerging ideas are newer than others, but as publishers look to reduce advertising dependency, so a number of older ideas are being looked at again, or benefitting from more effort and resources being allocated to them.

• Publishers Seek Reader Payments Without the Pressure of a Paywall

Business publisher Quartz has joined the likes of Vox and The Guardian in moving to a membership model, backed by the belief that readers will want to support the missions and journalism of the respective publishers enough to pay them without the pressure of a paywall. And Vice News plans to add a tip jar to gather reader donations this year. But can publishers still grow direct reader revenue without a paywall?

• Talk of the Town: How to Use Events as a Supplemental Revenue Source

Hosting events is a way to supplement magazine advertising revenue. Additionally, events can increase your brand awareness and gain customer responses on how to improve your product. Events are costly but can reap huge benefits for both your magazine and your advertisers. Follow these steps to help your event be as successful as possible.