Once a month I’ll be sending out a 4-page letter (in the mail) about publishing technology, with a focus on customer data. I’m sending an actual letter because everyone’s in-box is so crowded, and everyone’s mailbox is (relatively) empty. If you’re in publishing and are interested in technology issues, please send me your name and…
I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. If a person doesn’t want to get your email, you don’t want to send it to them. It’s as simple as that. When a person gets an unwanted email, they have four main choices. Ignore it. Delete it. Unsubscribe. Mark it as spam. Three of those choices…
If it’s not ink on a page, it’s not a magazine. Some people get bent out of shape when I say this. They assume I’m being a Luddite, or expressing a dislike of digital publications. Neither is true, as I’ll demonstrate. In the same way that a magazine is ink on paper, a news app…
I get this question pretty frequently. If you’re one of those shoppers (like me) who looks at the price first, investigating Customer Data Platforms is going to frustrate you. The best answer to “how much does a CDP cost?” is “it depends.” But don’t worry. I will give you some general ideas. The pricing question…
You can read below, or watch this short video. The quote in the headline is an overly harsh standard I read in an online forum one day. It goes too far because there are some kinds of science that can never become engineering. Like social science. I mean … God forbid that social science becomes…
At the recent Renewd Summit, I had the pleasure of leading a roundtable discussion on the customer journey and engagement. The two sessions with fellow publishing professionals helped me to clarify some ideas on how to engage web visitors. Here are some of my takeaways from those discussions. Many customer engagement efforts start with trying…
If you want to know how your customers are interacting with your brand, should you use Google Analytics, or do you need a Customer Data Platform? Or maybe you need both. But how do you know, and when do you use which? This article should help you answer that question. The quick answer is that…
If you don’t think long and hard about how you intend to manage your customers’ email addresses, your CDP implementation is likely to disappoint you. The guidelines in this article should put you on a path to uncover the right solution for your unique requirements. The main purpose of a customer data platform is to…
After I sent my Krehbiel Report on how Krehbiel’s Razor can help smooth your operations, I realized I was basically saying “go thou and think properly” — which is not very helpful for practical operations in a business. If I may draw a lesson from my seminary training, the law is made for the sinner….
It’s not about my beard. It’s about cutting through the misconceptions that sabotage projects. Successful operations require aligning disparate systems toward a common goal. Sometimes those “systems” are people or groups of people. Krehbiel’s Razor is a mindset that breaks down barriers between people and helps find a way to solve problems and finish projects….
When considering a Customer Data Platform, many people ask questions like … How do I pick the right one? Do I need a data lake along with a CDP? How much of my current tech stack can a CDP replace? Those are all good questions, but there is no generic answer that will work for…
Publishers are missing out on some remarkable tools to help them know and serve their target markets better. Why? I recently went to Austin for the IIEX conference, which is for the market research industry. I quickly realized how many useful research tools are available, and how infrequently most publishers use them. For example, one…
Does your market put on, wear, or apply makeup? Do they drink soda, pop, or coke? Do they call their phone an Android? How do they pronounce “Versailles”? Those don’t sound like earth-shattering questions, but if you’re doing it wrong, you’re telling your readers you’re an outsider. You don’t know them, and they will erect…
You need to understand your customer’s experience with your brand so you can be proactive and deliberate in how you interact with your customers. One tool to help with that is a customer journey map, or diagram. But if you don’t follow these steps below, you might end up with a vision with no substance….
By adding benefit language to their paywalls! Why are newspapers dying? There are lots of reasons, but one contributing factor may be their paywall and subscription offers. Sorry to be blunt, but they’re pretty awful. I spent a few hours reviewing paywall messages on dozens of newspaper websites, and what I found was uniformly unimpressive….