User loyalty will make you or break you. Learn how to boost user engagement by 300% from best-in-class media companies CBSi and Thrillist in this free live webinar.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1866215,"post_type":"vbwebinar","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"big-data,bots,business,enterprise,entrepreneur,marketing,","session":"A"}']It began as an email newsletter to 600 friends. Fast forward to 2016 and Thrillist has become a leading media outlet boasting 15 million subscribers and $92 million in revenue. By leveraging the power of predictive tech and machine learning applied in actionable ways, Thrillist has developed the kind of personalization that keeps millennial users loyal in the new media publishing space.
“There’s a huge opportunity for machine learning, especially around distribution channels, to optimize what we show on-site to those users,” says Ken Peltzer, vice president of technology at Thrillist Media Group.
The primary focus is optimizing the flow of a user’s journey from first view to repeat visits, he says. Every user action is an essential metric that builds another piece of the puzzle. There’s a wealth of information in just the first click — for example, a user inbound from Facebook.
“We know what they’ve read initially, we know which market they’re in,” Peltzer says. Thrillist analyzes newsletter signups, what readers are clicking on, and where they next go on the site. From there, he says, “we can tailor our recommendation units on site every subsequent time they come to make sure we have a good mix of what we think this person will want to see.”
And they consistently A/B test their recommendation units. “The biggest lift you immediately see is page views per session,” Peltzer says, “The recommendations are stronger and more relevant when we’re basing them on a profile of what we think a user is.”
For smaller companies, Peltzer says, the hardest part is the barrier to entry, just because it takes development time. “Machine learning solutions aren’t as turnkey as some other more robust platform-as-a-service industries have become, like A/B testing for example,” he says. “It’s a relatively new industry in that sense — it’s not as easy to just throw on your site as some of those are.”
But it’s an innovation worth pursuing, Peltzer emphasizes, especially as the barrier to entry is being brought down swiftly by new entrants in the space looking to democratize the technology for small and medium-size business.
That’s where this not-to-be-missed webinar comes in. Peltzer is joined by CBSi’s Michael Powers and VB’s Andrew Jones. Together, they’ll share the best way to knock down the entry barriers, and how to deliver relevant content at scale.
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By attending this webinar, you’ll:
- Learn how to boost user engagement and retention by 300%
- Discover how predictive technology can be applied against email, website and mobile deliverables.
- Get the scoop on how digital marketing is changing, and fast.
Speakers:
Michael Powers, Vice President of Product, CBSi
Ken Peltzer, Vice President of Technology, Thrillist Media Group
Andrew Jones, Analyst, VentureBeat
Moderator:
Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat
This webinar is sponsored by Boomtrain.