In a recent webinar hosted by Local Media Association, speakers discussed effective strategies for leveraging customer data platforms in local media. The discussion featured Sam Ngo, director of product marketing at BlueConic, and Kyle Whitfield, vice president of consumer revenue, Georges Media Group, who shared insights into utilizing CDPs to enhance audience engagement and subscription growth.

Ngo explained how CDPs enable companies to use their first-party data to improve marketing and customer engagement efforts. Whitfield provided a detailed account of how NOLA.com employs Blueconic’s CDP for audience segmentation, subscriber retention and targeted marketing.

Whitfield emphasized the importance of first-party data in the current privacy-focused digital environment and highlighted how CDPs allow companies like NOLA.com to collect, analyze, and act on first-party data. He outlined the functionality of CDPs in comparison to data management platforms and data warehouses, noting that while DMPs use aggregated third-party data for broad advertising purposes, CDPs are designed for detailed individual-level user data management and activation.

He also provided several real-life examples of how his team at NOLA.com uses BlueConic’s CDP to manage subscriptions. One example involved creating segments of users based on their website behaviors, such as the number of articles read or specific topics of interest. This segmentation enabled them to target users with personalized marketing campaigns, including content gating, targeted newsletters and subscription offers.

Ngo and Whitfield also discussed the use of CDP data to create “listeners” that monitor user behavior, such as attempts to cancel subscriptions. These listeners trigger automated responses, like pop-up offers or emails, aimed at retaining subscribers. Whitfield shared that by using these tactics, NOLA.com achieved a 14% retention rate among users who interacted with these prompts.

Further, Whitfield described how the CDP allows the export of segmented data for external use, such as sending disengaged subscriber lists to email service providers for reengagement campaigns or targeting existing subscribers with ads on social media platforms. One of the successes mentioned was a targeted email campaign with a 50% open rate and a 3.1% clickthrough rate, resulting in a high retention rate among those identified as likely to churn.

Looking ahead, Whitfield shared plans to develop a subscriber value score using BlueConic’s CDP, which would help identify and target high-value subscribers for enhanced service and retention efforts. He noted the platform’s ability to integrate data from various sources, such as user engagement metrics and payment behavior, to create comprehensive subscriber profiles.

The speakers emphasized the importance of starting small, testing various approaches, and gradually building expertise in using CDPs. They noted that success with CDPs is driven by the ability to iterate and adapt based on data insights.

Watch the full webinar on demand here.

Editor’s note: Artificial Intelligence was used to transcribe and create an initial summary of this article, which was then edited by LMA staff.