Doubling mobile traffic: Dallas Morning News revamps its mobile strategy
Summary: Mobile is showing tremendous revenue growth in select markets - but only when a high volume of mobile traffic is achieved. The Dallas Morning News took on rebuilding its mobile site to increase traffic and create products that sales representatives would enthusiastically take into the streets to sell. Their new platform includes only core franchises. Mobile traffic is on track to double and IT says the sales department is now fully onboard (find mobile campaign case studies at the end of this report).
Company: Dallas Morning News
Website: DallasNews.com
Traffic: 2.9 million U.S. visitors monthly
Executives: Brian Fugere, head of Interactive and Chris Fulmar, product manager for mobile
Challenge
For several years Dallas Morning News’ mobile site was parked; “basically a screenshot with five blue links” that sales representatives couldn’t or wouldn’t sell. Executives wanted to revamp the mobile strategy from the ground up, to create a platform that was useful to consumers, “closer to the transaction” and one that sales representatives would be enthusiastic about selling. The basic criteria included:
*Content needed to be layered for cpm-based advertising and sponsorships around transction-based functions.
*The platform needed to export from the current CMS platform
*The mobile platform had to roll-out quickly across multiple properties
*The provider would need to understand the newspaper business
Strategy
Together with Chris Folmer, the product manager, Fugere chose a new platform, Verve Wireless, that is in wide use by the newspaper industry that could integrate all of their potential needs. Then they defined a news strategy that is unique to mobile. “Its one thing to take the stories and put them out on a mobile site. It’s another to think through which stories and categories of content we want on the mobile site” and what it will look like.”
To build a strategy, the pair broke down the problem into parts:
1. Identify key mobile niches that have “jobs to do” in the community.
For the DallasNews.com these included: Dining and entertainment, Sports, Weather and Traffic, Local and National news. “Weather and traffic lend themselves to mobile because of the perishable nature and randomness of consumption times.”
2. Create specific applications focused on these particular categories, using Verve’s templates and modifying them.
3.Layer-in unique local content on top of transactional applications (such as open table). The theory here is that in addition to the promotional force of the newspaper site and publication, the mobile site would also be differentiated from other providers by unique local content “ other providers don’t have access to,” says Fugere.
Using the motto, “perfection is the enemy of the good”, the team moved quickly, largely using Verve's templates. “The biggest thing with Verve for us was making sure that the content from our cms system would be displayed in a compelling manner” without a great deal of additional design required. “We moved quickly and didn’t try to customize except with a few tweaks”.
Results
Results were immediate. Mobile traffic for the Dallas Morning News, previously negligible, grew by 61% unique, page views up 48% and visits are up 81%, since its launch in July 2009 and mobile traffic continues to increase.
Best of all the sales force is enthusiastically behind the program. “We’ve laid the strategy down for revenues. Sales packages now include sponsorship, cpm banner ads and sms campaigns. We are giving the sales force the tools they can take to the advertiser that they didn’t have before. “The sales force happy to have these to sell so it’s a big step forward.”
Lessons Learned
1. Segment information and “rethink it” for mobile distribution
2. Partner with a company who undersands the core business and can move quickly.
3. Make sure that all parts of the organization - ie all the stakeholders - are involved as early as possible.
(Note: Yes, there is money in mobile, in the $8000 to $10,000 a month range per campaign, such as one from WSBTV outlined here, and text-back campaigns such as this very creative one here.) Large sites that are selling mobile display with click to call are averaging three to four large ($8000 to $10,000 a month) accounts on their sites).
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The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and MediaExecsTech, developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine, to showcases perspectives from around the world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.
