For publishers of client newsletters
CONTENTS
Special
CM software makes customization
possible
About
the authors
© 2001 D.M. Freedman
Updated October 2004
A version of this
article appeared in
Association Publishing
magazine, April 2002
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Definition:
What's a client newsletter?
Article
Editor's note: This article won a 2003 Apex Award.
Database-driven Newsletter Content
How
large
organizations
customize
their
e-newsletters according to
each reader's interests
You have 5,000 subscribers?
Publish 5,000 different newsletters.
By David M.
Freedman
and Zo
Let's say your newsletter contains two feature articles and half a dozen brief items. Your readers are a diverse lot, with widely varying backgrounds and interests, but they have one thing in common: they are all current or prospective customers, clients, members, or donors of your organization.
Let's pull one reader out of your subscriber database. What do you know about him or her? How many of the articles and briefs in your current issue will appeal to that reader? What are the odds that that reader will get involved in the newsletter, read the articles, browse the briefs, take action in response to something they read, contact your organization for more information, register for a conference or seminar, purchase one of your publications, send a donation, apply for membership, or ask you for advice? Can you increase the odds by changing the editorial content to something more appealing to that particular reader?
Now pull another reader out of the database. Go through the same exercise. Is this reader going to get involved in the newsletter? Can you customize the content again to appeal more to that reader?
Okay, go through your entire database of, say, 10,000 subscribers and ask yourself the same questions. Well, that's not really practical because it would take you all week. And you can't be expected to publish 10,000 different newsletters just to improve the odds that each reader will get involved and respond.
Or can you?
Fantasize for a minute. Imagine that you can instruct a computer to
go through your entire database of subscribers, asking and answering those
questions, in a few seconds. Then tell the computer to assemble 10,000
individually customized e-newsletters, based on each reader's needs and
interests, and using a repository of diverse editorial content already
stored on your website. That takes a few minutes. Then automatically
e-mail the newsletters to all your subscribers, which takes about 20
minutes. It is conceivable, though unlikely, that each subscriber would
receive a unique newsletter – that is, a unique combination of articles
and other content selected from the repository.
Pure fantasy? No, the technology (specialized content-management software) exists today, and a few pioneering companies are already publishing what can be called database-driven or individually customized e-newsletters. We predict that it'll spawn a wider trend that we'll call database-driven or personalized publishing.
CM Software
Database-driven newsletter publishing involves three elements:
- A subscriber database with names, e-mail addresses, and other information that differentiates the individual subscribers or groups of subscribers
- Editorial content stored electronically, and coded (according to specific fields in the database) to indicate which subscribers (or groups) each item should be "allocated" to
- Special content management (CM) software that selects and allocates appropriate editorial content for each individual subscriber, assembles the e-newsletters, and e-mails them to the subscribers.
The database and content files must reside on the same computer or network as the CM software – or else the database and content are stored on disks that "plug into" the system where the CM software resides.
E-newsletter content may include text, photos, graphic images and multi-media. More often the e-newsletter content consists of teasers, previews, or summaries with links to Web-based multi-media content.
Note that advertisements can also be stored, coded, and allocated to subscribers in the same way editorial content is allocated.
Proprietary, off-the-shelf, or ASP software
In this article we will describe two successful database-driven
newsletters, published by the University of Dayton and Kimberly-Clark.
In each case we'll talk about the publishing process – including
marketing strategy, software development, content creation and coding,
production, and circulation – and we'll sum up the costs and benefits.
In both cases, the software needed to "allocate" the content to each subscriber was developed specifically for that organization, and is proprietary. At this time there is no off-the-shelf, shrink-wrapped CM software available for organizations that wish to publish their own database-driven newsletters. That will come, maybe in a few years. Meanwhile, some leading-edge publishing services (also known as application service providers or ASPs) have developed CM software – though not as powerful as the programs developed by the University of Dayton and Kimberly-Clark – that can help you publish your own somewhat-database-driven newsletters.
Case studies – read 'em or skip 'em
These two case studies are fairly long, so if you want to skip them
and go directly to the
U of Dayton alumni newsletter
The
University of Dayton (Ohio) is a 150-year-old Catholic university with about 6,600 full-time undergraduates and 3,100 grad students. The UD Alumni Association has a database of around 80,000 UD graduates. The university has received donations from a small percentage of those alumni, and UD wanted to develop a way to encourage more of them to actively support their alma mater.The marketing staff decided an alumni newsletter would be an effective way to keep UD graduates informed and in touch, as well as mount a fund-raising campaign. The marketing department surveyed alums in 1999 and found that many of them would welcome an online newsletter, either Web-based or distributed by e-mail. The alumni database contained e-mail addresses for a few thousand (which has since grown to over 12,000) of the 80,000 graduates.
The university's e-marketing manager, Tim Bete, was "worried that people wouldn't opt in [subscribe] to it if they were getting only general information about the university, with very little that specifically met their needs." Bete's idea was to publish a database-driven, biweekly e-newsletter to all alumni who opted in, either in response to an e-mailed invitation or by filling out a subscription form on the UD website. The e-newsletter would be composed and sent in plain text format; and would primarily contain summaries of, and hypertext links to, news stories recently published at the university's website.
UD's website has various news pages, all of it accessible to the general public, including:
- "Newest News," which features news releases from the previous six to eight weeks, written by the Office of Public Relations – sorted into eight categories, such as arts & sciences, business, engineering, law, etc.
- "Dayton Flyers New," with articles about the UD sports teams
- The University of Dayton Quarterly (UDQ), the online version of a quarterly, 48-page tabloid that is mailed to all 80,000 UD alumni
- The Black Alumni Chronicle, featuring some reprints from UDQ and some original material
- "UD in the News," which reports on press coverage of the university.
The university – any university, actually – has a rich alumni database, with information such as date of birth, high school attended, college major, type of degree, date of graduation, alumni chapter, current address, donor level, and sometimes current profession. Editors can use this information to match articles with readers who are likely to be interested in them. For example (a hypothetical one), an article about a 1967 UD law school grad who was elected president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association would probably not be sent to alumni in San Francisco who graduated in '92 with a degree in education.
Software from scratch
Before he could launch the newsletter, of course, Bete needed the
special CM software. One problem: it didn't exist. So he called a couple
of former UD students who own a software firm in Orchard Park, NY,
called LiquidMatrix Corporation.
The firm had been working with UD on its Internet strategy since 1997.
LiquidMatrix, which serves the higher education community exclusively, developed from scratch the software that powers Bete's database-driven alumni newsletter. "It was a major investment of time and resources," says Dave Marshall, founder and vice president of product marketing at LiquidMatrix. As a result, the firm kept intellectual property rights for itself and licensed it to UD. LiquidMatrix subsequently incorporated the database-driven newsletter "functionality" into its ActiveCampus suite of software products, which it licenses to other universities across the country.
The software mainly accomplishes two things: it produces and distributes customized e-newsletter; and it reports on reader viewing patterns, hits, and click-through donations.
Newsletter production
Every time a new article is posted somewhere on the UD website,
whether it's a feature of UDQ or any other news page, Bete
creates a description for the newsletter, consisting of the article's
title, a three- to six-line summary, and a hypertext link to the full
story.
In addition, he codes each description according to which subscribers should receive it in the newsletter. The article about the UD law grad who was elected president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, for example, might be coded for UD law grads, UD grads living in Pennsylvania, those who graduated from UD in 1967, etc.
Some stories may be coded for all subscribers, if they have broad appeal. Also, Bete will occasionally provide a description (title, summary, and link) to a feature appearing on a different website altogether.
The codes can be set to expire within two weeks (or any other period), so that consecutive newsletters will not repeat article descriptions.
Every two weeks, Bete sets up the program, and the e-newsletters – all the customized versions of it – are assembled automatically. He tests the process by manually e-mailing a few newsletters to himself. Occasionally he has to correct a wrong code. Then he instructs the program to email the newsletters to the 12,000 subscribers. The process takes about an hour, not including setup and testing.
LiquidMatrix's software has the ability to limit the number of article descriptions that appear in the newsletters, in addition to the personalized salutation at the top and a few boilerplate reminders at the bottom (including a brief donation solicitation, how to unsubscribe, and "other UD links of interest"). The default setting is a maximum of ten article descriptions, but Bete can manually set it to any other number.
Logs and reports
As powerful as this software is for the editorial end of
e-newsletter publishing, its reporting capability is equally powerful.
LiquidMatrix built a "redirect" reporting mechanism into the
software to measure the effectiveness of every element of every
e-newsletter, in terms of both readership and response.
"It is the equivalent of a direct mail response code," says Bete. "It provides reports of who clicks on which links within an e-newsletter [including the link to a secure Online Giving page for making donations]. When visitors click on a URL in the e-newsletter, they are first invisibly routed through the university's alumni Web server, which logs a unique code. Unlike standard log file analysis, redirect software tells us the specific person who clicked on the link, assuming that person has previously logged onto the website.
"It lets us know which e-newsletter stories alumni are reading. That provides valuable information about what type of content to create in the future."
Bete can use feedback to add information to the database about readers' interests and preferences. "Although we never ask for personal information directly, we might say, 'Click on this link if you want to get more information on this topic,'" Bete explains. Those responses become permanent database entries.
In addition to the built-in tracking and reporting mechanism, Bete uses WebTrends to mine and analyze aggregated visitor information such as hits and other responses on the UD website.
Benefits and costs
UD launched its bi-weekly alumni e-newsletter, titled New From UDQ,
in the spring of 2000. Measuring the effectiveness of New From UDQ
in terms of increased donations is difficult because the university has
jet-propelled its fund-raising efforts all around. In the past three
years the number of UD alumni donors has doubled, from 13 percent in
1997-98 to 26 percent in 2000-01.
Bete cites anecdotal evidence of the e-newsletter?s success. Online donations tend to spike after an issue is e-mailed, often within 24 hours and sometimes within 15 minutes.
Says Bete, "Subscribers to the newsletter are significantly more likely to be donors than the general alumni population. There are at least two likely reasons for this: It?s easy to donate by clicking through from the newsletter; and the subscribers probably already had a close relationship with UD and that?s why they subscribed in the first place."
There are other benefits of customization besides increased donations. One is that a fairly high percent of subscribers actually read the summaries and then click through to the UD website where the articles reside ? so they?re staying informed, involved, and in some cases active. Of the first 158,000 customized e-newsletters that Bete sent out, about 58,000 of them (37 percent) resulted in click-throughs to the UD website.
Also, the unsubscribe rate is extremely low ? less than 0.01 percent, says Bete ? presumably because readers find the content valuable.
Parentstages from Kimberly-Clark
Founded in 1872 in Neenah, Wisconsin,
Kimberly-Clark Company is a Fortune 500 company that sells personal care and healthcare products in more than 150 countries. Its brands range from the venerable Kleenex to the fledgling Huggies Little Swimmers.Kimberly-Clark launched a website called Parentstages.com in April of 2000 as part of its customer relations strategy. According to the mission statement displayed prominently on its home page, Parentstages.com "brings you the best parenting content, articles and tools that the Web has to offer so you can grow with your child."
Parentstages.com is essentially a portal for expecting parents, new parents, and "growing parents" (the three stages). The main section of the home page (the middle column) has summaries of and links to a few articles on general parenting issues. Then you can click on one of the three stages to find links to more articles written specifically for that audience segment. For example, on the growing-parent page, I found links to the following articles:
- The Three R?s That Might Keep Dads and Sons From Fighting
- Lunchbox Love Notes
- Saving for College: Three Things to Do Before Your Child Turns Five
None of the articles that the site links to are originally written for Parentstages.com. They?re all published on other websites, and Kimberly-Clark has formed partnerships with those publishers in order to share their content. Visitors who follow a link ? say, to the "Three R?s" article mentioned above ? go to the Father?s World website where the article resides, but they?re escorted by a traveling frame that keeps the Parentstages logo and navigation tabs at the top of the screen, which make it easy to return to the Parentstages.com site after reading the article. K-C calls this editorial concept "best-of-the-Web." (Note: Father'sWorld is no longer a content partner with Parentstages.)
Other editorial partners include iVillage, Women.com, Parenting.com, Americanbaby.com, CBS Health Watch, Family.com, the Learning Network, Baby Zone, and Better Homes and Gardens.
The newsletter
Visitors to the site can sign up to receive a Parentstages
e-newsletter, either weekly or monthly. The subscription
form lets readers make the following selections:
- Text only or HTML format
- Weekly or monthly
- Applicable stage or stages (expecting, new, growing parent)
- Up to four of the following areas of interest:
- Dads
- Education
- Entertainment
- Family
- Finance
- Health
- Home & garden
- Moms
At any time, subscribers can change their profile or their preferences, or they can unsubscribe. Once subscribers register, they receive customized e-newsletters every week or month, customized with descriptions of the stories they are interested in.
As Bete does with UD's website content, the Parentstages staff writes descriptions of the articles that are linked to the Parentstages website, including headlines, summaries, and hypertext links. These descriptions are coded according to which subscribers should receive them in their customized e-newsletters.
The software that assembles the e-newsletters for Parentstages is similar to the LiquidMatrix content-management program. But the Parentstages software was developed in-house by programmers in K-C's MIS-Marketing Systems department.
K-C advertises Parentstages.com in traditional media such as print and television, and it prints the URL on its infant-care product packages. It also added a button on each e-newsletter that lets users pass it along to a friend. In this way the company hopes to market the Parentstages website virally. Unlike UD's alumni e-newsletter, which is distributed to alumni exclusively, anyone in the world can subscribe to the Parentstages newsletter merely by registering at the website.
Off-the-shelf and ASP software
How can an organization publish a database-driven newsletter if it can't afford to develop its own specialized content management software or hire a firm to do so? Off-the-shelf software for this application is two or three years away, according to people in the industry.
There are two options. One is to use e-mail broadcasting software such as PS. NewsMail III, from
Pacific Software Publishing, Inc., in Seattle. NewsMail runs on Windows NT/2000 IIS servers, requires 128MB of memory, and sells for $500.Another option is to work with a publishing services provider that has its own (proprietary or licensed) software. Analogous to a traditional printer that also functions as a list-and-mail service, these 21st Century publishing services will accept your electronic content files and subscriber database, and then assemble the customized newsletters and e-mail them to the list. In some cases the provider will license the software to you so that you can do all the production and distribution in-house.
At this point I haven't found any publishing services whose software can customize e-newsletters to the extent that UD's and Kimberly-Clark's can, that is, according to the individual subscriber's needs and interests. But the services can work with segments of the subscriber database and customize an e-newsletter according to characteristics of each segment. A segment could theoretically consist of only one subscriber, but that would be a very expensive way to customized the newsletter for each individual subscriber.
iProduction
One such publishing services provider is
iProduction employs 12 full-time designers and developers, and hosts a suite of Internet publishing applications – software developed by its staff – that allow editors to create, manage, and deploy content over the Web without the need for their own programmers or IT staff, and without having to purchase expensive content management systems of their own.
The component of iProduction's Internet publishing system that handles e-newsletters is called MailZeen?/font> . MailZeen enables publishers to deliver media-rich Web pages via e-mail to subscribers who request the content in HTML format. That means readers see the entire newsletter content (not just blurbs and links), with HTML-based graphics and formatting, in the e-newsletter; they don't have to click and travel from e-mail to the Web in order to read entire articles. (Subscribers can also choose to receive e-newsletters in plain text format.)
"This is called issue-based content deployment," says Steve Horton, manager of editorial services at iProduction. "As a matter of fact, the trend that we see in publishing is using e-mail as the primary means of distributing content. The Web then becomes more of a repository for archives and related information. The problem with the Web, from a publishing standpoint, is that it doesn't reach out. E-mail reaches out to the subscriber base."
MailZeen can be used as a stand-alone application, but it can also be used along with other components to create database-driven e-newsletters. The only drawback is, as mentioned above, iProduction's system isn't built to economically customize each e-newsletter according to individual needs and interests. Publishers must segment their databases and then code their content to allocate specific content to each of the segments.
Subtle differences
Note two major differences between iProduction's ASP software and the
two systems created by LiquidMatrix and Kimberly-Clark:
- In the case of UD Alumni and Parentstages, the full-length articles (with colors, graphics, and other HTML-based formatting) reside on the organizations' websites, not within the e-mail; the e-newsletters contain only plain-text blurbs with hypertext links. iProduction's system, by contrast, gives readers the option of receiving all the HTML-formatted content in the e-newsletter itself.
- Articles reside on UD?s website and Parentstages.com for an indefinite period, not just for the two-week period that starts when the e-newsletters are sent. People who go directly to the UD website and Parentstages.com to read articles (they don't click through from the e-newsletter links) do not get a sense that there is a periodical nature to the content. iProduction's e-newsletter, however, does not depend on Web-based content, and so it has a true periodical nature – something many advertisers prefer.
The trend will continue
Certainly this technology is changing the publishing business – and the reading business. Other kinds of publications, not just newsletters, will be customized, personalized, individualized, database-driven. Advertisers will love it because it delivers pinpoint-targeted audiences.
Maybe someday even printed publications will be economically database-driven.
Of course, the database-driven publishing trend will continue only as long as it pays off. That is, only as long as customized, highly targeted content causes readers to get more deeply involved in the publications and respond in the way publishers and advertisers want them to.
About
the authors
David M. Freedman is a Chicago-based writer, editor, and newsletter developer. (Website: www.freedman-chicago.com) He is the founder and director of Newsletter Strategy Session. You can reach him by e-mail.
Zoey Herm served as a 2001 summer intern for
David M. Freedman & Associates. She graduated from Highland Park High School (Illinois) in 2003.