Growing privacy concerns and skepticism about third-party cookies are increasing pressure on publishers to build direct relationships with their audiences and collect first-party data. This data is essential for understanding your readers, delivering personalized experiences, and driving sustainable revenue growth.
But how can publishers move beyond traditional registration walls and newsletters to create compelling value exchanges that encourage users to willingly share their data?
In a recent webinar, Brian Morrissey from The Rebooting, Craig Schinn from Actable, and Patrick Crane from BlueConic discussed how publishers are adapting to a post-cookie world. Drawing from their discussion, here are five innovative content formats and strategies you can explore to stay ahead of the curve.
1. Create Interactive Content
Quizzes, surveys, and polls are a great way to engage your audience and gather valuable first-party data. By making the experience fun and interactive, you can incentivize users to provide information about their interests, preferences, and behaviors.
Nestlé, for example, used interactive content to achieve an 86% completion rate and a 65% lead capture rate. They enriched their consumer profiles by capturing detailed information such as pet type, breed, and age – crucial for delivering personalized content and offers. They also used data to segment audiences like Healthy Seeker, Puppy Lover, Allergic to their best Friends, and Natural Caregiver to further deliver the right experience throughout the journey.
But why should retailers and CPG companies have all the fun? Publishers, too, can create interactive trivia quizzes, memory games, and more to engage readers in exchange for data. With Experiences by Jebbit, you could quickly set up trivia quizzes to collect lead information or even help guide readers to the right newsletter subscription through a quiz about their favorite topics or reading habits. This information can then be used to build rich audience segments for better targeting, building relationships with donors and readers, or providing premium advertising products to partners.
2. Set Up Content Gifting
‘Tis the season for giving. So why not allow your readers to "gift" articles or premium content to friends and colleagues as another way to drive leads? To access the gifted content, the reader provides their email address or other identifying information, thereby expanding your reach (and continuing to build on your first-party data set).
Not only that, but gifting articles also allows your current readers to share their favorite content with friends and family, thus deepening their relationship with you. Hearst Newspapers saw a 9% reduction in churn for subscribers that saw an option to ‘share an article.’ With unified profiles at the ready, you can choose to offer gifting articles to specific, high-value audiences to optimize your spend.
3. Boost Events (Virtual and In-Person)
Events, whether online or offline, provide a unique opportunity to directly interact with your audience. Not only do they foster innovation and knowledge sharing, but they also offer an opportunity to survey attendees, gather feedback, and learn more about your audiences’ needs and pain points.
Gathering data from these events and connecting it to unified profiles ensures that you are continually using what you know about your readers and donors to create the most bespoke experience for them. Interactive quizzes using QR codes at an event can help bridge the online and offline experience. One beauty brand, for example, used printed QR codes on flyers to engage customers as they waited in line to get samples. The results from the interactive quiz helped dermatologists pair customers with the right product on the spot and gather thousands of new leads.
4. Gamify Experiences
Gamification doesn’t just have to be about adding crosswords to your publication. You can create fun, engaging, and strategic gamification strategies that drive leads, encourage subscribers, and more. In fact, 93% of marketers now use gamification to boost key metrics like engagement, conversion, and loyalty – highlighting its growing influence in the marketing world.
Incorporating game-like elements into your content makes the value exchange more compelling. Users may be willing to share data in exchange for points, badges, or the ability to unlock new levels, premium content, or product offers.
5. Bundled Offerings
Consider packaging your content, events, and other products/services into compelling bundles. This can incentivize users to provide more information in order to access the full suite of offerings. The key is to experiment with different approaches and find the right mix of content, experiences, and value propositions that resonate with your unique audience.
By focusing on building direct relationships and collecting first-party data, you can future-proof your business and deliver exceptional experiences that keep readers engaged and coming back.
To hear more strategies for thriving in a post-cookie world, check out the webinar.
