Yesterday, we attended the keynote speech “The Membership Economy: What it Means for Specialty Publishing” at the Business Information & Media Summit. The speakers focused on how publishers are building communities from their subscription/audience databases. The key difference between memberships and subscriptions is that a membership offers two way communication, whereas with a subscription, the data is just going one way.

Having access to website and email engagement information was one strategy mentioned, and to do this, companies need access to this data in a usable format. Identifying a customers primary attributes is the key component in making sure that you’re providing relevant data or content to each member. In Multipub, you may use orders, engagement data, comments, notes, and activities to help construct the member profiles.

While audience and customer data is important, publishers also need an audience management system that supports a complex product and pricing structure, along with metering. To gather this valuable data, look for solutions that allow you to define your own types of customers and products and collect an unlimited number of demographics. With this, you should be able to store all data for each of the various member types and access it easily.

Learn more about how Multipub helps companies grow their audience and know their customer.