CASE STUDY: FINDING THE BEHAVIORAL DRIVERS TO ACTIVATE THE NOWU

COMMUNITY
NowU is a digital media property of Gannett Inc. launched in 2014. It is
a subscription based, lifestyle site targeting individuals entering the
time in life when they are working less, have children who have grown
up and left the house, and are refocusing on individual interests, aspirations and passions.

The Challenge:
Gannett developed NowU to attract Americas burgeoning retirement-age population and
present them with exclusive, subscriber-only content and offers. Rather than treat this audience
as a homogenous bloc, NowU editors sought insights about what their readers want and why
they make the choices they do. They wanted to use these insights to develop the NowU
content and advertising strategy beyond traditional methodologies that rely primarily on
demographic data. By capturing attitudinal data about the readers, NowU editors aimed to
develop a content strategy that keeps readers engaged for longer, match readers with
products and experiences that are more individually relevant, and allocate marketing resources
more efficiently. NowU editors understood that this customer-centric approach would
improve subscriber conversions as they build this digital property within a very competitive
market.
Obtaining actionable data on user interests and preferences is difficult. The market is flooded
with tools that capture a cursory amount of audience information. But most of the standard
tools do not answer the question of Why. What drives a users behavior to read, click, share
or purchase online. Following a comprehensive assessment of various tools, NowU editors
selected Discourse Analytics (DA) as its data partner because of DAs ability to provide
individual specific data that drives activation and creates marketing budget efficiency.

The Discourse Analytics Solution:

The DA Consumer Activation Platform (CAP) allows clients to gain an unparalleled
understanding of the individuals and clusters within their audience. Unlike other audience
analytics solutions that collect data in generic ways, the data captured by the CAP are as
unique as a fingerprint. By treating a person as more than the sum of his or her demographic
attributes, DA can find the causal and predictive attitudinal drivers that connect each reader
and subscriber with the site. Through its proprietary survey tool and content consumption API
Discourse Analytics breaks down existing reader data according to specific and activating
triggers to provide Smarter and More Actionable Data.
NowU installed the CAP survey tool on its website and invited readers to provide their opinions
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on issues relevant to the online community. One percent (1%) of readers engaged with the
widget and on average answered about seven questions. The DA engagement widget added
just less than three (3) minutes of time-on-site for each reader. Twelve percent (12%) of
responses were made by users revisiting the widget on multiple visits to NowU, indicating a
high level of continued engagement. DA created actionable, individual profiles for fifty-five
percent (55%) of readers in the audience.

Value to NowU: Better Knowledge drives Better Action

DA measured attitudinal drivers of NowU readers across six dimensions deemed most relevant
to the content and products displayed on the site and presented to its subscribers. Data was
collected through a survey widget embedded on the NowU site.
Approach to fitness
Approach to finance
Comfort with technology

Preferred style of social interaction

Preferred style of enjoyment and leisure
Influence drivers
By providing rapid feedback through a
flexible platform on both cluster formation
and trending topics the CAP empowered
NowU to quickly add new content to the
question pool to enhance participation with
trending themes. Following a marginally
successful Facebook campaign around the
Oscars NowU created an integrated
overarching story theme tied to award
shows generally. DA and NowU dovetailed
questions, paid marketing dollars and
content related to the Academy and
Grammy Awards shows to drive a
tremendous increase in traffic and overall site
engagement upon landing.

Figur e 1. No w U clu ster s o f at titud inal

p ro files

DA discovered clusters of readers within the NowU audience with distinct combinations of
these attributes as seen in Figure 1. For instance fourteen percent (14%) of the audience
consisted of Go Getters people who are proactive when it comes to personal fitness and
finances, self-sufficient in managing their financial affairs, and more adventurous in their leisure
activities. Five Percent (5%)of the audience consisted of Reactive individuals who are, on the
contrary, very dependent in managing their finances, reactive in their approach to fitness and
finance, and have more intellectual interests when it comes to entertainment and leisure.
DA modeled individuals in the audience to predict content and advertising strategies using first

party datasets such as the survey tool, the DA data cooperative and also from third party
analytics tools such as Omniture. The multiple streams enhance profile construction and the
ability to make accurate predictions about content and product interests to readers. For NowU,
DA used metadata from the site URL and harnessed other data within the DA Data
Cooperative to predict political content that would most likely be interesting to NowU readers.
We made these predictions without necessarily collecting direct data about NowU readers
political preferences. These recommendations are displayed in Table 1, which shows interest
profiles of two NowU readers, one from the Go-Getter cluster and one from the Reactive
cluster. These two readers may or may not fall within the same demographic group. However,
the entire communication strategy NowU employs with them will be based on their behavioral
profile expressed through responses as well DAs predictions.
Table 1. User profiling and prediction
User 454089
Go-Getter

Attribute
Profile

Approach to fitness
Approach to social
Influence driver

Political leanings

Education
Healthcare
Senior issues

Political interests

Advertising and
marketing opportunities

Optimal product interest

Optimal financial product

User 467460
Reactive

Proactive
Socializes in small groups
Relies on objective data
not endorsements
Liberal
Conservative

Reactive
Socializes in large groups
Relies on objective data
not endorsements
Liberal
Liberal

Conservative
Budget, economics,
education, healthcare and
senior issues (high)
Hybrid cars, books and
subscriptions

Conservative
Education (high),
economics and budget
(moderate)
Performance cars,
entertainment, and travel

Low interest mortgages

Credit card offers

NowU is able to leverage additional insights gleaned from the CAP. For example we
discovered that while fourteen percent (14%) of all readers fall within the Go-Getter cluster,
20% of subscribers fall within the same Go-Getter cluster. This suggests that the prime target
for acquiring new subscribers will come from readers who demonstrate Go-Getter attributes
or who are interested in content most appealing to this group.
Among readers in the Go-Getter and Reactive cluster, three articles held universal appeal,
as shown in Figure 2. The next most popular articles for Go-Getters were content that was
action oriented and proactive, whereas the next most popular content for Reactive readers
tended to focus on solving problems. This further demonstrates content personalization
opportunities NowU can employ to increase readership and time on site and attract subscribers.

Figure 2. Popular content for NowU readers

Among NowU subscribers, we also observed the clear difference in content interest expressed
by readers in the Go-Getter and Reactive cluster, as seen in Figure 3 below. With these
insights NowU editors can make highly informed choices about which content themes to focus
on writing, and which readers to push the most relevant content to based on interest.
Figure 3. Popular content for NowU subscribers

CONCLUSION:
By understanding audience interests and preferences at a granular level, content sites have an
incredible opportunity to optimize and monetize via content, product offers and advertising.
The data enable editors and business managers to elevate from just scaled conversations and
engagement to the ultimate personalized engagement and activation.
Discourse Analytics Consumer Activation Platform enabled NowU to accomplish this. Our
engagement tools integrate easily into content management systems and our analytics engine
can generate actionable data within days. NowU utilized these insights to develop a more
informed and successful content and engagement strategy that augmented a more effective
subscriber acquisition model and advertising campaign.