Continually experiment to improve results
Douglas K. Smith, Quentin Hope, Tim Griggs, Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative,You must identify and conduct well-designed experiments* aimed at increasing particular desired user actions that move those users through the funnel as well as link to your revenue strategies.
In Minneapolis, for example, grazers were shown higher density ad pages on mobile devices while a third-party tool was tested as a means to reach potential subscribers on Facebook.
Dallas deployed different marketing messages linked to the number of articles a user had viewed (e.g., first-time viewers were shown “like us on social,” more active users shown “sign up for an email newsletter,” and heavy users shown “subscribe” calls to action.
* There are many tools that can help you experiment. For example, the Minneapolis Facebook test was administered by Keywee, A/B tests can be deployed via Optimizely, and subscriber messaging can be tested via Piano. There are, of course, many, many other tools and services to make your newsroom’s testing possible.