"People pay for what they want, not necessarily what they need," Lynn Freer, president of Spidell Publishing, said recently. "[We] really need to understand this. At the checkout counter, dothey want granola or candy, People Magazine or The New Yorker, chewing gum or vitamins? Don't use valuable real estate [or] webinars to sell something people don't want and don't want to pay for."

We will hear more of Freer's excellent insights at SIPA's 40^th Annual Conference: Pivoting for Profit, June 6-8 in Washington, D.C.—where she will be part of a CEO keynote panel. (Brian Crotty, CEO and president, OPIS, an IHS company and Robin Crumby, founder of Melcrum, will join Freer, and Don Pazour, CEO of Access Intelligence, will moderate.)

Here are takeaways from five equally anticipated SIPA conference speakers and the session that they will present:

1. Segment as much as possible.
According to GetResponse, 42% of marketers don't segment, sending the same message to their whole audience and doing no customization. Look at things like completed transactions, abandoned carts, website browser behavior, articles they're reading. "It's not just that they abandoned the cart but what was in that cart that you want to capture," Jeanne Jennings, managing director, digital marketing, for Digital Prism Advisors, said recently. "Then you give a gentle reminder with that image, typically on a 2nd or 3rd email and offer a discount."
The Digital Marketing Ecosystem will feature Jennings in a hands-on, marketing session focused on online strategies.

2. Take the time to onboard your new subscribers/members.
According to the 2015 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report put out by Marketing General, the top reason for members not renewing is lack of engagement with the organization (38%). "The key is onboarding," Robert Skrob, head of Association Marketing Inc. , recently told me. "Many have joined because of a particular problem [meaning] they've come for a need. You have to focus on that need immediately. That first point of contact is crucial... You want to become their trusted source."
In Transform Customer Value by Increasing Renewals, Skrob will help increase your renewals.

3. Be creative about where you can get data and what you can do with it.
Jeffrey Litvack, formerly chief digital officer at ALM Media and now the newly named CEO of ClearView Social, recently spoke about the potential value of taking unstructured data and giving it structure. He said at one point they took data from the Department of Labor, structured it, created algorithms, and then sold it back to the Department of Labor. "Don't limit yourself as a publishing company," said Litvack. "Think of yourself as an information company."
From Information Services to Marketing Services: The New Reality for Modern Publishers will feature Litvack, Krystle Kopacz, chief operating officer, National Journal Group, Government Executive Media, and Stephanie Eidelman, CEO, insideARM LLC, moderated by Lucy Swedberg, EVP and publisher, Wellesley Information Services, a division of UCG.

4. Highlight your storytellers—those are important communities you're building.
Jaclyn Baldovin, online content manager for Business Management Daily, spoke recently about Cal Butera's blog posts and cartoons for BMD—under the title The Savvy Manager. "You want to build a following around your influencers, putting a face to the company. People want to connect with people not brands." And stories, which Butera tells well.
Baldovin and Matthew Cibellis, director of programming, live & virtual events, Education Week, will speak on Social ROI: How to Measure and Track the Return on Your Social Media Campaigns.

5. Don't be shy about getting your nerd on.
This is just from yesterday's post, but I thought it is worth repeating. "If we have a really technical topic, we like to get really nerdy with it," Jared Waters, training director for Business Valuation Resources, said. "You can forget how passionate people are on something as dry as business valuation. We try to embrace that passion—here's something that's really, really technical. We'll get 15 or 20 people to our more esoteric topics, but those 15-20 people are also the top experts in their fields. It's one way we try to lead by going deep in this niche."
Crowdsourcing Data and Content will feature Waters and Russell Perkins, managing director of InfoCommerce.