Kerel Cooper Q&A: The Hidden Power of Logged-In Media

The New York Post, Everyday Health, and PGA Tour are three very different publisher brands that create very different content, but they’re all successfully using email newsletters to achieve critical business goals.

Representatives from the three companies discussed their efforts during a panel at the August 2019 AdMonsters Publisher Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was moderated by Kerel Cooper, LiveIntent’s Senior Vice President of Global Marketing.

We asked Kerel to share some of the insights that emerged from the discussion with Amanda Gomez, Vice President of Revenue Operations at the New York Post; Kevin Montgomery, Manager of Ad Operations at Everyday Health; and Sean Halbmaier, Senior Manager of Advanced Advertising at PGA Tour.

Your panel was titled, “The Hidden Power of Logged-In Media: Why Publishers Are Investing in Email.” So what is the hidden power of email?

You can’t really do much today from a digital perspective without your email address, whether it’s logging into social sites like Facebook or buying something on Amazon or signing up to receive content in a newsletter. And if you think about where TV is going today, with companies like Hulu, it all starts with your email address. Email is the most addressable piece of information that one has from a digital perspective, which makes it so important for brands and publishers to capture email addresses. The more they know about their audience, the easier it is to either sell products or communicate with them.

What are some of the reasons your panelists, who are all LiveIntent customers, invest in email newsletters?

They all have the same goals – to grow their audience, better understand their audience, and monetize their audience. Monetization was the motivation for working with LiveIntent. They each had a growing asset, an email newsletter, and they weren’t making any real money off it until they started working with us.

You discussed the imperative of having multiple internal stakeholders support the idea of growing an email program – including those responsible for AdTech, MarTech, and content. What are some ways to build consensus?

One is by having clear revenue projections. Revenue can always make something a priority. Another is communicating the value proposition around an email newsletter and the ability to use it to acquire new customers. The companies we’ve seen succeed have a good understanding and game plan around revenue and subscriber growth.

Speaking of AdTech and MarTech, your panel discussed their growing convergence. Why is that so important?

For a long time in our space, you’ve had two different avenues going in different directions. Marketers at media companies were focused on bringing more customers in and understanding those customers, and the AdTech team was focused on monetizing the audience. Now the counterparts are coming to us and saying, “How do we better work together? It’s great that you’re helping us monetize the inventory we have, but how do you help us better grow and understand our audience?” The knowledge of marketing is working very closely with the horsepower of advertising technology, which I think will help clients grow their businesses.

Your group predicted the industry will continue to pursue monetization efforts for email in 2020. Is there another trend you’re expecting to see?

Publishers will continue to look at email as a central identifier to help them understand more about customers – both in terms of who their customers are and the many ways they are consuming a brand’s content.

How can LiveIntent help clients achieve that stronger understanding of their customers?

We have the ability to help our customers identify the people who visit their website on any of their devices, regardless of traffic source. This helps our publishers better understand who is new to their site versus an existing user, which can lead to a better experience for the publisher and end user. We’ve also seen our customers have a lot of success leveraging our platform to grow their audience through acquisition campaigns.

Are there any other big takeaways from your discussion you’d like to mention?

I think the biggest one is about reinvesting in email. Email has been around forever, and it’s gotten lost in the shuffle as publishers look at other things like video and mobile apps and native. Email is still a workhorse that helps you grow subscribers and better understand and monetize your audience. What’s old is new again.

If you want to learn how LiveIntent can help you maximize revenue while maintaining control over your email inventory and optimizing the reader’s experience, see our Monetization Solutions.