Data-Labor-Technology

The reader contribution model is paying off for the Guardian US. After years of bleeding red ink, the 10-year-old U.S. outpost of the British newspaper is about to get in the black after having surpassed 300,000 supporters that account for one-third of its revenue.

“It is a textbook turnaround,” said Evelyn Webster, who became CEO of the Guardian’s US and Australia operations in December after serving as interim US CEO since January 2017.

The US is tracking the performance of the parent company, where reader revenue now surpasses that of ad revenue and which expects to break even by 2019 as part of a three-year cost-cutting plan. Overall, the Guardian had 800,000 global contributors as of last October, which includes print and web subscribers in the U.K. The move into the black was helped, of course, by cost cutting; Guardian US is down to around 80 employees from 140, and it abandoned plans to decamp to Brooklyn’s Dumbo for a WeWork space near New York City’s unfashionable Herald Square.

When Webster arrived, Guardian US was primarily ad-driven; philosophically, the Guardian has eschewed the more common paywall model because it believes its journalism should be as widely accessible as possible. Now, half the revenue comes from advertising, one-third from individual contributions and the rest from philanthropic donations that are earmarked for U.S. editorial coverage. Advertising continues to grow, driven by programmatic and native ads, but at this pace, Webster believes reader revenue will surpass advertising in 18 months.

The strong U.S. contribution to the Guardian’s reader revenue — more than half of the Guardian’s global revenue from one-off contributions came from the U.S. — reflects a cultural difference that the Guardian is eager to exploit.

“Americans are more inclined to give,” Webster said. “The cultural act of giving isn’t necessarily transactional. People tend to give without any expectation of anything in return.”

Guardian US has benefited from the Trump bump that’s driven readership and subscriptions for The New York Times, The New Yorker and others. But while that support has leveled off elsewhere, reader support for Guardian US has continued, as the publisher has launched editorial series on the threat to public lands, environmental threats and other subjects it considers to be undercovered, to test people’s willingness to support specific coverage areas. (The benefits go beyond reader revenue; the public lands series ended up attracting advertising and grant money, too, Webster said.)

“Trump is not the only reason. Our desire to cover those subjects marries with what the readers are looking for and are proving themselves more inclined to support,” she said.

The challenge with one-off contributions is replenishing them. Most of the 300,000 US supporters (230,000) are one-off contributions; the rest are recurring subscribers. The reader support is mostly one-offs because the ability to make recurring contributions was just added a few months ago. The plan is to move people toward recurring contributions, which creates a more predictable revenue stream.

To that end, Guardian US has two people dedicated to reader revenue, which it plans to double to four in the next fiscal year starting in April. They’re identifying topics U.S. readers care about and are more inclined to support with their wallets, and they’re testing everything about the way it solicits contributions, from the color to placement to language of the message, which is typically British in its politeness, from a U.S. audience.

“We could be a little bit more assertive in the way we canvass,” Webster, a U.K. native, acknowledged.

Every publisher seeking reader revenue has to face the question of where the ceiling is. Webster believes Guardian US has a lot of growth ahead as it finds more progressive readers and gets better at moving people to recurring contributions. “At some point we may max out, but I think we’re far, far away from that right now.”

The post How the Guardian US got profitable: pivoting from ads to reader revenue (and cutting costs) appeared first on Digiday.

Of all agency jobs, community managers — those that manage a brand’s presence on social media — often find themselves at the bottom of the totem pole, saddled with mundane tasks like sharing pre-written posts on social media and responding to user complaints or Twitter trolls.

The community manager toils in the content mines with little fanfare. Community managers, which Glassdoor says earn less than $50,000 on average, are often not highly valued, with many agencies hiring them as part-timers or adding responsibilities outside of social media to their role, like copywriting or distribution planning. But now, community managers are in the spotlight, following Facebook’s announcement that its news feed will favor user updates and content that elicits comments and “engagement.”

Facebook’s change to its news-feed algorithm effectively means that posts that receive more comments carry more weight than ever, reducing likes and shares to vanity metrics. The change has made agencies realize they must devote more resources to cultivating conversations within comment threads.

“Brands and media outlets that acclimate to Facebook’s new focus on ‘meaningful social interactions’ will have an even greater need for community management, as users tend to comment more on content that sparks emotional reaction — good, bad or otherwise,” said Brad Wellen, group director of social media at Huge.

Leah Voskuil is one of six community managers at Brooklyn-based marketing agency AGW whose roles are evolving to be more substantial. Overall, Voskuil said the community manager role is becoming “a lot less junior” and much more than simply “putting up a post and walking away.”

For instance, before Facebook announced the news-feed change on Jan. 11, Voskuil’s day consisted of communicating with users across the agency’s social channels — mostly by sharing posts on topics such as a brand’s history or product issues and starting one-on-one conversations with users that addressed their concerns or compliments. After finishing those tasks, she would work with the agency in other areas like strategy and copywriting. Now, her job involves a lot more responsibilities.

Specifically for Facebook, instead of concentrating on responding to users’ remarks, she actively works to generate conversation within Facebook comment threads, where engagement can truly happen. Voskuil’s job is also expanding into crisis management. She now acts as a liaison between the agency’s integrations department and the public relations team to come up with possible scenarios to ensure only positive engagement positions brands at the top of the news feed.

“It’s no longer enough just to respond to a user’s tweet who has a question and say, ‘please DM us,’ and put that discussion off to the side,” said Voskuil, who wouldn’t say how much she earns or whether she will receive a raise. “It requires a lot more attention to detail. Everything I do is public, and I need to be anticipating any direction when a comment thread might be going sideways. I’m designated as a community manager, but I’m really talking to everyone because this is an all-hands-on-deck change.”

Agencies that don’t have full-time community managers will struggle with Facebook’s changes, said Adam Gorode, CEO at AGW. “In today’s agency landscape, you end up with a lot of companies that see social management and PR as auxiliary services,” he said. “The roles have to be full-time. If somebody is doing this part time as part of an agency, they probably aren’t doing the job well.”

The post Facebook’s news-feed changes put community managers in the spotlight appeared first on Digiday.

At the Digiday Marketing Summit in December, we sat down with over 30 industry executives from major U.S. brands to discuss the top platforms for social marketing spend. Check out our earlier research on how brands are advertising in the Trump era here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Top findings:

• Facebook and Instagram are the only platforms on which the majority of brands plan to increase social media spending.
• Snapchat was cited most often as the most challenging platform to advertise on.
• Sixty-six percent of brands said customer acquisition was the main goal of paid social advertising.

Facebook wins big in social spending
U.S. digital advertising spend increased 15.9 percent in 2017 to $83 billion, with virtually all new spending going to either Facebook or Google. This is poised to continue for Facebook, as it’s the only platform on which the majority of marketers will increase their social media spending in 2018, according to Digiday’s survey. The finding reinforces Facebook’s decision to acquire Instagram in 2012.

The post Digiday Research: 78 percent of brands will grow Facebook ad spending appeared first on Digiday.

If free checking accounts aren’t already a thing of the past, perhaps they should be, now that consumers are demonstrating that if something is valuable to them, they’ll pay for it.

Historically, banks have made most of their money on gotcha fees that can be crippling for a certain asset class of consumers: service fees, out-of-network ATM fees, fees for not maintaining a certain minimum balance. The lack of transparency around these extra charges only hurts their reputation for being companies that make money by taking money and it’s why it was so unsurprising when Bank of America announced this week that it’s yanking its free eBanking program and moving those customers to a standard checking account carrying a monthly $12 fee — which outraged the Twittersphere. Many people jumped to the defense of the bank’s poorer customers and ripped into the company for handing out bonuses at their expense (banks are used to this). There’s even a Change.org petition with at least 102,000 signatures opposing the move.

But banks have been reporting flat fee income for the past six quarters. Service charges on deposit accounts have hardly moved in several years and banks are changing their overdraft programs to improve customer relationships, which eats into that fee income. At the same time, companies like Amazon offering service bundles like Prime are showing the world that people are willing to pay a fee up front in exchange for something valuable to them. Fintech startups — which have better technology and cooler ideas than banks, but lack their resources and scale — are also showing customers they’re more transparent than your average financial institution both in their products and their messaging.

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

The post Why banks should rethink their fee models appeared first on Digiday.

Glossier has never been a brand to play by traditional rules, and its customer service team — dubbed the gTeam — is no exception.

While many companies have long seen customer service merely as a necessary cost center, the buzzy direct-to-consumer beauty brand, founded by Emily Weiss in 2014, sees it instead as a major value-driver.

“We inherently believe in and have invested in this team,” said Jessica White, the executive director of customer experience, the company’s preferred name for the team.

But the differences are more than superficial: The team is integrated into the larger marketing department, regularly advises on product development decisions and, according to White, is actually helping to drive customer loyalty, retention and conversions.

Today, the gTeam has grown from one member at launch to roughly 30 “editors,” a title chosen to reflect the expertise, opinions and insight that team members are tasked with providing. As on Into The Gloss, the beauty blog Glossier was born out of, that more formal know-how is tempered by a voice that, as White puts it, “is friendly, warm and thoughtful.”

It’s also casual.

“We never want our customers to feel as if they’re talking to a robot, because they’re not. Every editor on our team has a unique vibe and a different experience with Glossier products, so we all bring something different to the exchanges,” said Mallory Pendleton, a gTeam editor dedicated to social media who has been with the company for 14 months. “When I’m DMing a brand on Instagram, I want a candid response, like one I’d get from a friend, so that’s the way I think when I’m in the Glossier DMs, too — whether we’re sending emojis in reply to a mention or answering a complex product question with recommendations.”

Of course, most brands answer consumers online in the form of a live chat or a similar form of communication, but Glossier is uniquely flexible with how and where those conversations take place.

The conversations are happening across social channels like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, as well as via email, FaceTime and phone, with each editor focusing on a dedicated channel. Direct messaging on social media and email exchanges are the most common, said White, while social platform popularity differs by country. The team currently has members working in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, where Glossier products are sold.

“Instead of limiting interactions with customer service, which is the norm in the industry, we strive to create conversations with our customers,” said White.

But rather than just delving into the basic service questions about, say, shipping or returns, highly personalized one-on-one interactions are key.

For example, two years ago, a bride-to-be wrote in to Glossier, panicked about the fact that its website was out of its Haloscope highlighter, which she was hoping to use on her wedding day. One of the gTeam editors messaged everyone in the office to find out if they might have an unopened Haloscope sitting in their own makeup bags for the brand to send. They tracked one down and sent it her way. The newlywed was so pleased, she sent some of the final wedding pictures back to her gTeam contact.

“We’ve always empowered the team to go above and beyond,” said White.

But that level of intimacy is difficult to scale, and Glossier has grown rapidly since the gTeam first debuted, when the brand sold one product. Glossier now sells 23 products (excluding brand merch) and employs 130 people. White believes the growth has only benefited the gTeam: “We now have the people and the resources to fully execute on what we wanted to do,” she said.

More recently, while the Thomas Fire burned through a big portion of southern California, the gTeam had a multi-day conversation with a young woman, whose family had to evacuate their home as a result. She sent the team a photo of their beloved Balm Dotcalm skin salve, saying that it had helped keep her family’s skin hydrated in the extremely dry air. “We messaged back and forth about her experience, and stayed in touch to make sure that her family’s home was safe,” said Pendleton. When they returned home, Glossier sent them a “welcome home” package, filled with more of the balms, alongside a few other free products to sweeten an otherwise scary time.

Unlike many companies that either outsource customer service or keep the team separate from the inner-workings of the business, Glossier’s gTeam is considered part of its marketing team, a testament, said White, to its overall value.

The team’s insights from customer conversations are also regularly used to help inform broader brand strategy and product development.

“Yes, they’re one part of the team, but what they find is they’re part of a full feedback loop that can lead to organizational change,” said Erin Miller, Glossier’s director of customer experience.

A few years ago, after noticing a spike in people in a certain geographic location asking about the timing of their shipments, for instance, the brand was able to work quickly with its shipping provider to improve on the shipping speeds for that specific cohort.

In 2016, when the brand’s Generation G lip product launched, a lot of questions arose around the different shade names and which would work best for specific skin tones. To add some clarity to the confusion, gTeam members worked with the creative team to add more thorough descriptors and select different assets to better educate consumers.

“It changed how we create and think about the content we display for new launches,” said White. “We want to give customers what they need in order to make informed purchase decisions.”

Operating, in a sense, as the voice of the Glossier consumer, the gTeam is also one of the first groups to test out new products that are in development, often years prior to launch. “They help us figure out and predict all of the questions or concerns that our customers might have about the product,” said White.

If they notice any trends in what consumers are asking for on social media — like a certain type of product — they’ll also relay that information back to the development team for consideration.

Glossier has been known to hire people with diverse, unexpected backgrounds, and, unsurprisingly, the same goes for the gTeam, the bulk of whom do not come with traditional experience in customer service. A recent job posting for the gTeam lists qualifications such as “an approachable style with a personal touch” and a “no-such-thing-as-a-stupid-question attitude.” But believing in the mission of Glossier is crucial, said White.

“It comes down to: Is this something that gets you excited to come into work everyday? Do you understand and buy into the value we’re creating?” she said. “That’s super important because it contributes to the editor being good at and happy with their job.”

The post How Glossier’s gTeam is changing the definition of customer service appeared first on Digiday.

Dell Inc. is considering a range of options that could transform the maker of PCs and data-storage devices, according to people familiar with the matter.

KFC has a new celebrity wearing Colonel Sanders’ signature white suit and goatee–Reba McEntire, who stars in a new 60-second spot promoting the fried-chicken chain’s new Smoky Mountain BBQ flavor. A 30-second version of the ad from Wieden + Kennedy in Portland will air during Sunday’s Grammy Awards broadcast on CBS. McEntire replaces the noncelebrity…

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Just because I don’t qualify for the new lower corporate tax rate (Thanks for nothing, Donald), that shouldn’t stop me from getting into the largess mood that seems to be spreading faster than the
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