Your audience is the key to unlocking new revenue
In my time at Wiley, I have personally witnessed huge changes to the publishing industry. The rise of open access in particular has completely upended the way we do things, in large part for the better (we saw the benefits firsthand during the COVID-19 pandemic). But there is one area that has really been felt by societies and publishers: the decline of subscription revenue. Associations have noticed the consequences of less reliable subscription revenues, membership dues, and conference fees. But new opportunities have emerged to fill the void, including digital ads, virtual events, knowledge hubs, and much more. In order to tap into those dollars, though, you need to have a deep understanding of your audience in both breadth and depth. It’s the key to unlocking non-dues revenue and getting your budgets back on track.?
Why your audience matters?
In most cases, your revenue will come from individuals and institutions, and that could be commercial or public organizations. A good strategy taps into possibilities for both of those, but you need to discover your audience to implement.?
Your audience is your visitors, members, customers — anyone who interacts with you, in aggregate. The better you understand your audience the better you generate revenue. From a user perspective, receiving tailored, personalized messaging makes for a better experience and satisfies their individual needs.??
To give a non-publishing example, think about supermarket loyalty cards. They work because they track their users and capture information about them while earning the shopper rewards.?
Similarly, if you know a researcher has been studying a topic, has expertise, and has not published for a while, you should hit them with an appropriate and timely message to submit.?
How you can generate revenue from institutions?
Your audience is likely to be attractive to the right corporation. They are highly educated with certain skills that the buyer might be looking for. Connecting the two does not mean handing over a list of names and emails. Instead, it looks like incentivizing people to register for a webinar from a partner, for example. Or you might provide publishing as a service and market those published products to your audience.??
How to create an audience strategy for 2025?
It won’t come easily, but you’ll see increased revenue start to come in quickly from some of these initiatives.?
You need to turn anonymous users into known users?
We embrace mass authentication in our industry, which makes individuals harder to identify. You can give a service enhancement or conveniences to encourage them to login (and this is more powerful than you might imagine).?
The chance of activation increases if you target a message that is of interest and lands at the right time. To use our earlier example, if you spam someone who isn’t ready to publish to submit an article, it won’t work — they’ll just scroll on by.?
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You have to profile your audience?
Zero-party data is data the user gave to you, their area of interest for example. First-party is what you derive about the user. You can get a lot of first-party data very quickly. This could be read, search, purchase, email opens — all that history. Sometimes what the user does versus what they tell you is more valuable. We don’t always know what we think we know about ourselves.?
Your audience is not your audience — it's a share of a global audience?
Researchers interact with many publishers, and they don’t have loyalty to one in particular. Capturing more interactions helps enhance user profiles. Each interaction is weak but many interactions across sites create a lot of information. Derived information can be shared across participating organizations, and that’s even more powerful. The walled garden approach of our industry is holding us back from diversifying revenue.?
Consent is so important?
Be upfront. Gain consent. Allow users to withdraw consent or see what info you have on them. It’s a legal issue, but more importantly, it builds trust.?
How Atypon can help?
CONNECT Identity Provider gives a big increase in authentications because a user can login with a single credential. It offers a huge convenience since users don’t have to constantly fill in their username and password. We see big increases in authentications without changing anything else.??
The CONNECT Customer Data Platform takes this a step further. It brings in the IDP plus allows you to segment and activate your audience. You can do this directly on a Wiley platform or through integrations into your own marketing tools.?
Every step in understanding your audience is a step in the right direction. Remember you need to find ways to create that relationship and get consent. That will take you toward revenue diversification, always with the balance of privacy at top of mind.?
If you would like to find out more about our products and features that can help you grow, adapt, and succeed, contact us at [email protected].?
Watch our webinar ‘Strategies for revenue diversification’ here https://vimeo.com/1054496416?
Thank you, Jay Neill, for speaking at our webinar! The topic is incredibly important, and with the question 'How do we future-proof revenue?' on many of our customers' minds, it was fantastic to hear your insights.??