If you love aviation, transport, history or sport, you’ll probably have come across Key Publishing. It publishes over 25 magazines and digital editions on these subjects, plus websites, databases, books and directories. The content is available in 200 countries and is read in six different languages.
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The challenge
Just like lots of publishers, Key had a traditional commercial model that relied on print. The team knew they needed to switch this up because the industry is changing. Print revenues are under pressure and audiences increasingly want digital delivery.
To make a success of the switch Key focused on three requirements. A revamped web presence because the existing sites were too difficult to manage and didn’t pull their weight. A streamlined process of publishing online to make it more feasible. And a way to monetise a huge amount of evergreen legacy content.
Drupal was the springboard. Today, Key has a digital-first approach that drives digital subscribers. It’s working too. Key’s new revenue streams grow year-on-year.
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Why Drupal
The Key team knew their new approach would be built around Drupal. It’s the content management system of choice for media businesses around the world. It’s incredibly powerful at the back end but incredibly easy to use at the front end – perfect for Key’s busy publishing team. But that’s just the start.
We can also create bespoke integrations with tools like Google Flexible Sampling, HubSpot and Dotdigital – tools that help Key drive its digital transformation.
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Our approach
Ultimately, Key’s goals were simple. The team wanted to take a digital-first approach that didn’t overburden anyone with extra work. They also wanted to boost digital revenue without losing sight of their loyal readership. The way forward had to be a subscription-based model rather than an ad-supported one.
To support Key in achieving these goals we focused on five areas:
Streamline the process of publishing print versions of articles
Leverage the value of legacy content to give Key a powerful web presence from day one of the new system
Develop a new website design that would give the modern, user-friendly experience visitors expect
Develop a new content permissions system so we could put paywalls and tiered access in place
Use targeted marketing activities to drive subscription revenue.
Driving digital subscriptions
The next step was boosting visitor numbers and driving digital subscriptions. Here’s what we’ve done so far.
The new website supports Google Flexible Sampling. This allows Google to index the entire site. Visitors from Google search results can view a few articles before being shown a paywall. The huge amount of high quality content on the site means this has been a huge boost to its SEO and therefore traffic to the site.
We used HubSpot to sync all Key’s marketing and subscriber information and provide a single access point for all outbound marketing activity. We now use HubSpot to upsell and tell visitors about new content they will find interesting.
Drupal automatically generates monthly newsletters containing the most popular content. These are sent to a HubSpot-managed audience using an integration with email marketing software Dotdigital. It’s a valuable way to make the most of the hundreds of articles published on the site each month, drive return visits and, ultimately, subscribers.
To boost user engagement even further we integrated RSS feeds and event information. We have also used bespoke quiz functionality. Personality tests and ‘right and wrong’ quizzes help reduce bounce rate and increase social media shares.
