Welcome to the BlueConic Doer Spotlight, where we highlight the hands-on doers using BlueConic to take their data strategies to new heights.
Today, we’re thrilled to hear from Jeremy Feldman, Director of Digital Audience at Anchorage Daily News. Jeremy shares how he’s been using BlueConic to enhance audience profiles, boost monetization efforts, and create a unified source of truth for data – all while delivering a more personalized and engaging experience for their readers.
What's your role?
I am the Director of Digital Audience at Anchorage Daily News, the most widely read newspaper and news website in the state of Alaska. My primary responsibility is to oversee and grow our digital audience by leveraging data and technology to ensure we're not only reaching but also engaging with our readers in the most effective ways possible.
What are the top three things you envisioned accomplishing with the BlueConic CDP?
We've iterated on our top three goals for BlueConic a few times, but our main objectives have remained consistent. First, we aimed to enrich our audience profiles to get a deeper understanding of who our readers are and what they want. Second, we wanted to find new ways to monetize the traffic coming to ADN.com, ensuring that we could drive revenue without compromising user experience. Finally, we were seeking an all-encompassing source of truth for all our data points—something that could unify our disparate data sources and give us a clear, comprehensive view of our audience.
What’s the most exciting thing you’ve done with your data using BlueConic?
We’ve been able to drill down deeper into our audience profiles and tailor our offerings to specific audience segments. This has significantly improved the user experience by making our messaging more relevant and less intrusive. For instance, we've been able to ensure that people who have already signed up or opted out of certain communications aren't seeing messages that don’t fit them, which has helped maintain a positive relationship with our readers.
What kind of results have you seen since working with BlueConic so far?
The first big win we experienced with BlueConic was the introduction of targeted banners, lightboxes, and exit intents on our site. These efforts have proven incredibly effective, bringing in an average of 100 new paying subscribers each month. This has not only boosted our subscription numbers but has also demonstrated the power of personalized, data-driven engagement in converting casual readers into loyal subscribers.
If you could give one piece of advice to a team just starting with BlueConic, what would it be?
My advice to any team just starting with BlueConic is to fully embrace the platform's capabilities. If you can think of something, you can do it with BlueConic. The support team is amazing and will help you get set up and moving forward in no time. Start small and keep building until you have just what you want.
What’s next on your BlueConic journey?
We have a robust roadmap of projects lined up, but the most pressing one is integrating Google Ad Manager with BlueConic. Our goal is to use this integration to serve targeted ads to specific audience segments while also suppressing ads for our paying subscribers. This will help us further refine our monetization strategies while maintaining a premium experience for our subscribers.
