Three Days. Living In The Digital First World

Transcription

1 Three Days Living In The Digital First World

2 Beyond the Bio Many different hats in 25 years in newspapers Sports Writer District Sales Manager Zone Manager Home Delivery Manager Assistant Circulation Director Director of Audience Engagement Inter-State Circulation Managers Association Director of Circulation and Audience Development

3 Who We Are The Patriot-News ( Dec. 31, 2012) Advance Publications, Newhouse newspaper Part of one of the largest privately held newspaper groups in the nation Pulitzer Prize winner, 2012, Local News Reporting Advance Central Services Pennsylvania (Jan. 1, Present) Report to Advance Central Services Provide distribution, customer service, etc. for PA Media Group PA Media Group publishes The Patriot-News, PennLive, Central PA Magazine, suite of digital solutions

4 What We Do Deliver and market The Patriot-News, all associated Select products Fulfill all Classified, Legal, and Obituary listings Deliver third-party publications New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor s Business Daily, Financial Times, Lancaster Farming

5 August 28, 2012 World Turning Change to three-day publication cycle announced The Patriot-News and Post Standard announced same day January 1, 2013 Three-day publication cycle began Four months and four days to remake our entire world

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8 How many days of delivery? What Next? Home delivery days discussed prior to the announcement Stuck with three days How many days of print? Discussed whether to do seven-day single copy and e- Edition, three-days home delivery Decided to go all in on the digital-first model Embraced the strategy from the outset

9 What Next? What Days to Print? Unlike other Advance markets, when announced three-day frequency, home delivery days were not established Approached question from two directions Advertisers: what days do they want? Many told us Some asked us where did the customers want to be Readers: what days do they want? Had developed reader list for audience engagement Used it to send 11,500 s after announcement, 44% opened, 30% responded to survey

10 What Next? Three days after August 28 announcement: Launched reader survey at 3 p.m. Readers said Tuesday, Thursday Press issues No deliveries made until ~8 a.m

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12 Third-party delivery Our Partners At time of announcement, four years into delivery Started in 2008 with Wall Street Journal Provided quality delivery Comparatively, we offered distribution over a broader geography Reduced mailed copy expense for Dow Jones Would we continue?

13 No doubt about it Our Partners At time of announcement, only provider of thirdparty delivery in our market Strategically, made perfect sense to retain that control Others had doubts Partners questioned our ability to fulfill

14 Our Partners In August, 2012, delivered seven third-party publications Wall Street Journal New York Times Investor s Business Daily Financial Times USA Today The Carlisle Sentinel Lancaster Farming Independent contractor routes all seven-day commitments Delivery agent agreements, pay varying per piece rates for all deliveries Recovery contractors handle complaint redelivery for all publications

15 Our Partners Conversations took place right away with our delivery partners None believed we could continue delivery agreements Widespread skepticism that we couldn t execute Committed to continuing delivery service for all No easy task

16 Color Outside The Lines First Scenario: Seven-day Routes One contractor - Same geography - All seven days Contractor fulfills core pubs on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday Also fulfills fewer third-party publications on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday Engaged Denardo Consulting Group Did not work Worked with them twice previously Completed two rounds of delivery route reorganizations Removed more than a million dollars from the operation by geographically realigning routes and reducing per piece rates Provide invaluable costing and routing expertise, helped move from a legacy rate system designed in 1997 to a much more efficient model

17 Color Outside The Lines Scenario One Modeling began at too low of a gross expense Factor in everything it takes for a contractor to complete his or her deliveries Time (assemble, bag, and deliver), Vehicle Expense, Supplies, etc. Price point proved to be too aggressive for our market at the time Transportation hub Compete for warehouse-type work Also, did not include TMC in the initial calculations Modeling settled at higher expense, +18% Every route is different Every situation is different Rates are negotiable, and we do negotiate

18 Color Outside The Lines Second, Final Scenario: Three-day and Four-day Routes Huge volume variations doomed seven-day model Not worth one agent doing all seven days in consistent geography Two different carrier groups Three-day routes: 340 Handle Patriot-News and all third-party pubs Tues-Thurs-Sun Four-day routes: 42 Third-party publications only Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat Almost all four-day agents also deliver three-day routes One agent is four-day only

19 Color Outside The Lines Systems Considerations Third-party partners already have different delivery frequencies Wall Street Journal - different address Saturday v. Mon-Fri USA Today - Mon-Fri only etc. Lancaster Farming - Saturday only In a three- and four-day route model, subscriptions need to be broken down further Wall Street Journal: one subscriber has three different subscriptions in our system Monday - Wednesday - Friday Tuesday - Thursday Saturday Servicing all start/stop activity is a manual process Takes one employee 90 minutes a day

20 Color Outside The Lines Circ system is a classic Collier Jackson system, Atex World Class 7.09c Household addresses can only hold up to 10 subscriptions at a time This limitation forced us to be creative Created phantom households to hold the overflow 3rd-party subs Routing changes Each publication has its own routing wheel Makes all routing changes take exponentially longer Introduces possibility of human error

21 Digital First Reality PA Media Group is a digital-first media organization What does that mean? How is a digital-first model different from a traditional newspaper?

22 Digital First Reality Content All writing, photography, opinions, etc. Publishes online immediately, almost exclusively Digital Aggregates content and manages digital properties Engages readers in comments, IRL, etc. Pub Hub Curates a print experience three days per week Uses materials produced by Content Almost no involvement in what is covered, when, how, etc.

23 Digital First Reality Online reader Gets all Content info for free all the time Lean in experience Print reader Gets best editorial content in print three days a week Gets advertising content, some exclusive Lean back experience

24 Which is better? Digital First Reality Depends on the reader One of Top 25 Fastest Growing Newspaper Audiences in the country, according to AAM and Scarborough Research From September, 2012 to September, 2013 We followed the readers September, 2013: more than one half million readers in print and online

25 Circulation Lessons Learned Establish cover price as soon as possible In our transition, price not set until December Needed to contract mid-november Likely impacted agent retention, customer perception of the change

26 Circulation Lessons Learned Routing: Do it yourself RouteSmart proved an invaluable partner Much of their work, though, needed to be repeated locally Geographic boundaries Only routed active addresses RouteSmart now used by most contractors to fulfill delivery Great tool to have

27 Circulation Lessons Learned Routing: build the muscle Volumes will shift after the transition Develop internal proficiencies in modifying delivery routes, setting rates Route all the streets, all the addresses Will need to be part of our operation going forward

28 Circulation Lessons Learned Service: a journey, not a destination Early 2013, delivery less than ideal Open routes, Staff turnover, etc. By second month, situation improved significantly Daily CPT; Sunday CPT Service has improved ever since Just completed two straight month having met internal service metrics Under 2.0 Daily CPT Under 3.5 Sunday CPT Third-party service continue to improve as well Communicate up front to expect some turbulence

29 Circulation Lessons Learned Staffing You need more people than you think you will Do not change staffing levels until after the transition concludes Push back

30 Circulation Lessons Learned Set targets, and be flexible Shelved our internal service review program for contractors for four months Still paid service incentive Provided stay incentives for contractors Used pop-up service rewards to drive for better results When missed service levels in early days with third-party partners, provided delivery gratis Right thing to do

31 Circulation Lessons Learned Over-communicate To your staff To contractors To delivery partners To readers The more you talk, the more information you share, the clearer the message becomes At the end of the day, this is all about relationships Build them before you need them

32 Thank You! Dan / linkedin.com/danchrist