The Wall Street Journal studied how different reader habits affected subscriber churn. It looked into how various products and subscriber actions affected customer retention during the first 100 days after a reader had signed up. They found that “playing a puzzle had a more dramatic impact on reader retention than other actions the team had been promoting."   We know that quizzes can be good for lead generation, but interesting that they can boost retention as well.    Research last year from Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative looked at audience data from three major metro dailies. Their conclusion was that the frequency with which a reader comes back to a publication’s website “is the single biggest predictor of retaining subscribers—more than the number of stories read or the time spent reading them.”   So with that established, here are a few successful quizzes and one contest:   Remote educ ...

Offer content—video, gamification, polling—and then bring people together around that. Speaking at the ongoing-through-May CES Deconstructed Jesse Serventi, founding partner, Renovus Capital, said (in a virtual discussion) today that we're really just starting to learn how to "have a keen understanding of how to engage an audience virtually. A lot of it is asynchronous. You're on an island. You're going through it by yourself. It's tough to engage. But then it's also synchronous where you might be watching many hours of content. That's tough too. The companies doing the best job are bringing in both. They might be starting off with prerecorded asynchronous content, watching video, doing a multiple choice quiz, and then coming together to do a group exercise around that and developing relationships—reaching you through multiple modalities. That's just a great way to engage the customer or get customers hooked in an even better way than live in-person training ...

I tuned into a live online concert a couple Saturdays ago on Facebook Live, and the flute and guitar duo dazzled. But the other exciting aspect was watching—and participating in—the comments section on the right side. Although I wasn't directly communicating with the people, it kind of felt that way when I responded to the music or played off of one of their comments.   When it ended, the flute player reached out to me—I was one of the organizers—and responded to a nice comment I made. And I reached out to a couple commenters that I hadn't spoken with in a while.   In an article last week on MarTech Advisor titled We Took Our 500-Person User Conference Virtual in Just 5 Days: Here's What We Learned, Dayana Nevo, VP marketing, WalkMe, wrote about the importance of networking. "You need to create engagement throughout the event to make sure that people stay tuned. This includes finding ways to network on social media."   Su ...

As Education Week gears up for another Online Summit this afternoon—with more than 2000 registrants signed on—it is clear now that, knowingly or not, the publisher was amazingly prescient in starting these in 2018.

Half the respondents who have attended a virtual event said they would do so again. But only a third of those who have not attended a virtual event indicated an interest in attending one. So there's an education component here. But a virtual event remains an attractive option because it helps offset the biggest stressors of attending events—being away and logistics—especially in these troubled times of people traveling less.   Education Week's Online Summits "are an ideal way for busy educators to access timely information about a range of critical issues in K-12 education easily by using their phones or desktops and integrating their learning directly into their usual workflow," wrote Matthew Cibellis, director of programming, live & virtual events, for Education Week, in his 2019 SIPAward-winning entry. "This cross-departmental partnership led by the editorial team's deep, rich content in a multitude of K-12 areas provides learners ...

Two weeks ago I wrote about Copyrightlaws.com's Zoom On In, a 20-minute virtual lunchtime session they do to focus on a specific topic. Last week, I'm told that they got 250 listeners signed on! Lesley Ellen Harris also co-presented a SIPA webinar about Zoom On In on Jan. 16. (Watch it here.)

A couple weeks ago, an article in The Washington Post reminded readers that "Thirty years ago this fall, the savings and loan crisis penetrated America's living rooms." And that "The Keating Five story was actually broken by the National Thrift News, a small mortgage industry newspaper, not one of the major national newspapers such as The Washington Post, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal."   I bring this up because the winning 2019 SIPAward entry for Best Video Product came from Editorial Projects in Education (Education Week) and, while not breaking any major news, it did have an impact in a change that might save lives—on Thursday, vaping maker Juul halting sales of mint-flavored e-cigarettes, its most popular product.   This comes amid expectations that the Trump administration is close to imposing a ban on all flavored e-cigarettes, except for menthol and tobacco, according to the Post. The fact that Education Week played a part in moving ...

I just scored 5 out of 10 on Financial Times' FirstFT newsletter's weekly quiz. I did at least get the question on what percentage of fantasy sports players are women—7%, 15% or 29%. (See below or take quiz yourself here.)

Two weeks ago, I wrote a Motown-inspired best-of from SIPA Annual 2018 and a gentle push for the wonders to come at SIPA Annual 2019, June 3-5 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. But apparently I missed some obvious song titles!

Decisions can be intimidating, until you make them. Then you can move on and adjust when needed. When it's time to make a decision, stop wasting time, former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Meg Whitman said in an interview with Forbes.