Here's the highlights from Inspirational Tour 2019 in Stockholm:
Lars Gudbrandsson, Bonnier Publications
Bonnier Publications comes from printed magazines to now being a media house with content available on multiple platforms in various formats across multible brands in the Nordics. Their ePaper solution, Wype, was initially launched in 2015 as a low-effort product and remained the same up until the beginning of 2019. The original solution only contained a few functions to which Lars Gudbrandsson states: “It was probably ok when it was launched […]”. But ongoing enhancement is necessary in order to keep a product going, so, Bonnier Publications improved the experience and added extra functions and features like adjustable text size, social sharing, push notifications and unlimited archive. The results of the new Wype app as well as the new functions have resulted in a significant increase of active users and particularly subscribers as “the new product gave new possibilities”. Now, Bonnier Publications is also working on distributing their audio content through the app, which they are looking very much forward to.
Mats Löthén, Aftonbladet
Mats Löthën described how they at Aftonbladet 6 months ago decided to reshape their digitalization strategy and among other things focus more on their ePaper offering. Hence Aftonbladet is currently implementing a comprehensive facelift and upgrade of the Visiolink solution. They believe there is a significant potential in the years to come transitioning more readers to their digital ePaper. Their expectations for the renewed ePaper, that are planned to go live late 2019, is that readership will triple and the ePaper will be bigger than the print version within two-three years. Also, they expect a better understanding of their readers by having a good insight into reader data and analysis.
Jakob Rostamzadeh, Visiolink – Data Driven Decision Making
In average, readers spend almost 27 minutes a day with the ePaper. Also, there’s an increase in the use of tablet, smartphone and desktop when reading the ePaper, meaning that more readers choose the digital way. Devices used for ePaper reading is distributed as follows: Tablet 57%, Smartphone 32% and desktop 11%.
When analyzing the cycle of the ePaper, Jakob Rostamzadeh makes sure to follow three continuous steps consisting of Monitoring, Understanding and Acting. To understand the huge amount of data being monitored, Business Consulting at Visiolink uses Engagement Studio to present data about article performance, reading time, number of readers etc. in a manageable overview. Once you understand the data, it’s time to act on it – for example through a voucher campaign. As Jakob Rostamzadeh said: “Optimize your campaign by using the right channels and hitting the correct target group. A good way of targeting is by Push Notifications”. Subsequently, it’s necessary to monitor and measure the performance of the campaign in order to learn from it and build even better campaigns.
Jens Funder Berg, Visiolink – Subscribe to the brand
“It’s not a channel game – it’s a brand game!” Jens Funder Berg said and elaborated: “Under the theme “Subscribe to the Brand” we aim to clarify that each media channel cannot be considered standalone anymore. The readers expect the content to be available anytime, anywhere and on any channel. That’s why the media brand now is key – and the different channels and products just act as enablers to reach the readers.” The value of a digital subscription is the same as for a full print subscription. This means that media companies now count subscribers without having to distinguish between more or less valuable subscriptions. “Publishers have stopped talking about the ‘Print vs. Digital’-deathmatch and are now talking about how the two formats can be stronger together”.
Gregor Falkner, Dag og Tid – Successfully implementing audio content
Dag og Tid is a quite conservative newspaper and relatively new in the digital world. So, for Dag og Tid to successfully implement audio content in their digital solution they had to re-think their strategy. First, they analyzed their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as well as competitors and trends in the market. Hereby, Dag og Tid stated where they want to be in 2022. Gregor Falkner wasn’t convinced that producing podcasts would be the right way of achieving the goals set. However, he found that Narrated Articles was a great way to implement audio content to the ePaper. Dag og Tid now publishes five Narrated Articles every week – most of them behind a paywall – and one out of three app users have tried this audio content by now. Some of the experiences Dag og Tid made from the first month was that audio is a unique selling point, and it has changed the way they write articles - for the better.
