Special print sections for obituaries gain incremental revenues

At a February, 1018 webinar, wo iPublish clients, Gatehouse Media, and BHMedia, shared their best practices, revenue gaines and lessons learned from lauching pecial section in print for obituries. Here are the key take aways from the webinar

Case study: Tributes, A special section in print for obituaries 

Media: Gatehouse Media 

Key executive:  Bob Birkentall, Director of Online Verticals

Technology partner: iPublish Media 

Challenge: Gatehouse started studying how to increase obituary revenues four years ago, as part of its drive to improve its product suite,  and eventually came up with the idea of a print special section.

“I looked at how much traffic obituaries were getting on the website I was absolutely fascinated. Obituaries in the top five traffic producing sections  in 80% of our newspapers.

“We had all these ideas going around the room about how do we raise the rates? It is  a category in which you can get away with (increases) and we were under a lot of pressure (to do so),” Birkentall said. 

“We started thinking, how can we grow the traffic?  Then we started circulating back to print ….what if we had a special section?”

Strategy

As Gatehouse developed the concept on their own in 2016, they were initially hampered by operational issues. So they turned to iPublish to remove those issues and help them with the protype.

For the launch, they selected six markets that had had minimally rate increases in the past seven year,  and which were already processing about 20,000 obituaries a year via iPublish AdPortal Obituaries platform.

Next, they developed the design for the print section, and decided to launch as a mobile product in a “bundle¨and a $25 rate increase.

The section also had to have enough weight and use value to justify the increase. They settled on a minimum of six broadsheet pages.  

iPublish created a product, Tributes, with  seamless three click process for an administrator to create the pages:

1.Log-in

2. Inputting the dates selected for the obituaries to be re-paginated

3. Entering their email where the PDF will be sent for proof.

Pages can also include ads, other kinds of articles, and covers can be localized  for each newspaper and changed for each edition.

The process is similar for newspapers who are not AdPortal customers, in that case the pages are created from a feed from Legacy.

Gatehouse initially launched with an annual edition, but is leaning towards running more often; options include monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually.

Results

Of all the product improvements Gatehouse has made in the past year, the Tributes section was not only the best received, but also generated the most new revenue,  Birkentall said. 

Aside from some minor resistance to the price increase, “we had a lot of feedback and all of it has been positive,¨ he said.

“It is a highly profitable section, and we have had very good response from the community.”

New revenues from the initiative in 2017 were $500,000 and the target for 2018 is $1 million.

“Of all our product improvements, AdPortal is the most popular with Funeral homes and Tributes is the most popular with consumers.¨

In fact 80 to 90% of all obituaries on AdPortal are placed through the funeral homes, which appreciate the ease of the process and chance  to engage with families.

Families also began ordering so many extra copies of Tributes that Gatehouses now prints another extra 2,000 copies per issue, and distributes them through the funeral homes.

Lessons learned

The biggest take away from the Gatehouse experience is for newspapers  to launch with the highest possible frequency.

“My feedback is that you have to run it more than once a year,”  Birkentall said, so that family can see the section without waiting too long.

“Monthly is ideal. If I were an advertising manager on one of my properties I would run it monthly.¨

Case study2: BH Media Group

Key Executive: Terry Hall, Digital Director

Challenge: BH Media had already been a seven year client of AdPortal Obituaries with 17 newspapers  selling 72,500 obituaries per year on the platform in 2017, whennew advertising director said he had sold the Tributes special section and recommended it as an initiative.

Hall said the ease of use that newspapers and funeral homes had already experienced with iPublish had the decision easy.

“ All of  the team is very easy to deal with so we had a certain comfort level about how they would  to support our launches,” Terry Hall said.

Strategy

Hall said the goal was to make the product as easy as possible for market to deploy.

“First step to canvas newspaper to see who wanted to go first,” Hall said.  Nine of 15 newspapers signed up for the program. 

Next,  the group came up with a template for iPublish to design.

The first market to publish Tributes was  the Virginia’ Pilot, who printed their first Tributes section in early 2018.

“That same design is available to the other markets, who can adopt it as it is, tweak it, or are free to come up with something totally different.”

The Pilot also  decided to create ad positions on the pages, including a ¼, half page and full page for reps to sell, as well as a banner across the bottom. Target advertisers include funeral homes, florists and cemataries.

The covers will be localized and change for each edition.

“Each market had a number of decisions to make, such as would the format be broadsheet or tabloid size, and whether to publish monthly quarterly, twice or once a year.”

The Pilot also decided content to the section. “They wrote four articles that will be available to everyone,¨ Hall said.

A  project manager assigned by iPublish  was easy to work with and kept us organized. There was no development on our part.”

The Pilot selected to run Tributes monthly; while three  other newspapers selected quarterly and one newspaper, in Waco, chose to run only once.  Like Gatehouse, the business model is to charge a small additional fee on all obituaries, and include them automatically in the section.

Required content is the full name and death date of the deceased, and the name of the city, county and state. Optional is the name of the funeral home, and the age and birth date of the deceased. If there is an image it is included.

The section was promoted with ads in the obituary newsletter as well as print and online.

The first monthly section ran six pages, but Hall expects ones that are published less frequently to be larger. 

Results and Lessons learned

“We found it easy to use and I have gotten a lot of good feedback,” Hall said. She also said BHMedia experienced no pushback on the rates.

“We estimates the section will run 40,000 obituaries in Tributes. This revenues offsets a small fee, so this is going to be a substantial new revenue source for us.”