Investing in First-Party Data enabled Aller Media Sweden to achieve a breakthrough in digital publishing

Challenge:

To consolidate disparate data sources with a single view of the customer and drive increased digital content consumption and subscriptions.

Solution:

Aller Media Sweden recognised that in order to shift print readers to digital, the magazine publisher would need to gain a richer understanding of its customers and streamline its data architecture within a Customer Data Platform (CDP).

Results:

Leveraging Tealium AudienceStream unlocked valuable insights into Aller Media Sweden’s customer base, engaging subscribers and visitors with more targeted communications. Being able to enrich more than 200,000 customer profiles with onsite behavioural data, reduced Aller Media’s reliance on the soon-to-be redundant third-party cookie and created a clear roadmap for boosting online subscriptions.

Founded in 1873, Aller Media is a major female-focused magazine publisher operating across the Nordics. In its portfolio, Aller Media Sweden has 22 brands across lifestyle, health, travel, family, home and celebrity, including Elle, Femina and Residence.

Huge growth in online readership combined with steady decline of print revenues has presented commercial challenges for Aller Media, who recognised that in order to future-proof its business, it would need a robust transformation strategy focused on driving online content consumption and growing digital subscriptions.

Aller Media saw revamping its first-party data structure and establishing a single customer view as an important first step on its digital journey. If Aller Media could gain a more in-depth understanding of how its customers were behaving online, it would be able to unlock data-driven marketing opportunities and have a better chance of converting readers from print to digital.

Prior to leveraging a CDP, Aller Media’s customer data was spread across multiple platforms – a complex and clunky structure that wasn’t fit for purpose. Its CRM lacked the ability to unify disparate data sources and achieve the Holy Grail of a single customer view.

The first step? Ensuring the good hygiene of data migration project. This involved working with Tealium to remove duplicate records and silos, as well as tagging and segmenting data. Inputting good-quality data has ensured that Aller Media can tap into the full capabilities of the CDP.

Rolling out a CDP was an important leap in Aller Media’s digital marketing capabilities and has revolutionised how it communicates with subscribers and website visitors. From a position 12 months ago when Aller Media had minimal understanding of how its readers were behaving online, it has enriched in excess of 200,000 customer profiles and created a ‘single source of truth’ from which the publisher can optimise customer journeys.

 

Rolling out Tealium AudienceStream has been a game changer for how a print-focused publisher approaches digital. Whilst our print output remains strong, it’s impossible to ignore the general shift towards digital content consumption. As a business, we knew we had to up our digital game and Tealium was invaluable in setting our objectives and understanding how to go about streamlining a complex data architecture onto a single platform” Fabian Östling, Head of Martech — Aller Media Sweden

 

The move to a CDP has been a game changer for Aller Media’s ability to target customers with ‘the right content, at the right time, in the right place’, boosting the value of its first-party data and online conversions.

Importantly, prioritising first-party data has reduced Aller Media’s dependence on the third-party cookie, thereby helping to future-proof the business for a post-cookie world. The move to a CDP has also laid the foundations for more sophisticated personalisation – an important next step as readers come to expect more tailored and individual customer journeys

“Whilst our transformation is a work in progress, taking the initial step of implementing a CDP was a breakthrough in our digital publishing activities that will define our future customer strategy. We have successfully enriched in excess of 200,000 customer profiles. The ability to enrich those contacts with their behavioral data means we now have a deeper understanding of our visitors and ensure greater personalisation. We are in the process of generating automated & personalised newsletters, which was not possible without the ability to enrich and stitch visitor profiles.

“Our work with Tealium is a partnership in every sense of the word. We test, we learn, we optimise and we implement together, combining the best technology and human expertise.. As Aller Media approaches its 150th birthday, I’m excited about where this journey will take us and how our first party data will drive our much-loved brands into the digital future of publishing” Fabian Östling

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