Beta Testing and Dan Shipper
“It’s not always obvious what’s going to resonate best with our customers, but with Mailchimp, we’ve been able to identify a strategy that doubled our engagement and revenue,” said Wombi Rose, co-founder of Lovepop.
Before a journalist starts their own newsletter, it’s essential to create prototypes and share them with a targeted audience that will want to read the content.
That is how companies such as BuzzFeed News developed and understood what people really want to read. It also helped commit to transparency prior to launching the newsletter.
Millie Tran, editor from BuzzFeed said the best part of the exercise is that it allowed the company to avoid getting too emotionally attached to one idea early and keep adjusting the product.
Tran said they had to identify an audience and what they best way to reach them would be. She said they asked their friends on Facebook, particularly those who don’t work in media and aren’t on Twitter all day.
One of the most important steps the company took to launch the newsletter was to have something audiences could interact with and react to, even if the product wasn’t completed. Tran said that helped them think about their “editorial voice” for the newsletter and the app.
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She said the feedback from family and non-media friends helped them fix the small errors they missed. One of those small critiques included using links which will allow readers to read more about the topic.
One of the most important lessons they learned from the experience was the difference between “You’re doing it wrong feedback” from “It would be better this way” feedback. Tran said it helped them make those small changes needed to make the newsletter even better.
Some of the advice from Mailchimp for creating a prototype is getting to know your fans and be a smart marketer. The best part is the author gets to decide the end goal and where they want the newsletter to end up.
The website said the main priority of the website is to make sure people can learn and improve from one campaign to the next. They have an A/B testing feature where anyone can test up to three campaign variations and build their own strategy.
It’s super helpful for Media Entrepreneurs to rely on websites such as Mailchimp when they are creating a newsletter or any company from scratch. I wonder if more journalists will start to use the features on their website in the future with entrepreneurship becoming more common in the industry.
Questions for Shipper:
- What is your advice for journalism students who are entering the industry soon and starting to think about what they want to do for their career?
- Do you believe Media Entrepreneurship will become the norm in the future with the digital first era and newspapers on the decline?
